Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus (Game Review)

Abe's second adventure is much darker than his first unexpected journey where he had to had to save his fellow brethren from ending up on the menu.
This time, Abe will lean or a twisted plot involving the bones of his ancestors. The Glukkons are up to no good again and only Abe can restore peace to the dead and rescue even more Mudoken than before. This is Abe's Exoddus.

Shortly after Abe's success of rescuing 99 Mudokens from RuptureFarms, he receives a vision from 3 Ghosts "The Weirdos" who plead for Abe's help in stopping the Glukkons from digging up Mudoken bones at Necrum (the Ancient Burial Grounds).
Abe and some others go off in search of Necrum but struggle to hold faith during the day's journey until they catch onto the trail.
After infiltrating the grounds (now a Mining Facility), does Abe predictably end up falling off a cliff and away from his pals and the main path, and ends up alone just like last time.

I know it's been a year since I wrote a Review of the first game, but I've been busy and I realised that now's the time to get round to writing up a post on the hit sequel.
I remember when I first started playing this game, the same time as I started playing the first one with my neighbours at the time. We were entranced by the dark beginning of this game and how it caught our attention when I was in Primary School.

That opening monologue in the dark green water was mysterious and was a prophecy of Abe's destiny for this game. And when that opening cinematic began with chilling music and we see the (now changed) Moon and the Necrum bone grounds. Abe's opening monologue was sad like the first one and even astonished us when we saw Blind Mudokens, where there eyelids had been stitched up close... that must be demented to even think or go through, even for a PS1 game to show right from the start!
The game did give me chills even before starting but I do enjoy playing it because it felt like the previous one but with a lot more to it whilst retaining that same simple layout as the first one.

The sequel had a lot to offer and even required 2 Disks to play it all on and shows that a lot of effort and new content had been added to make it more unique to the first one.
The Gamespeak had grown bigger including Abe's voice hitting puberty and he had a couple new phrases and actions too.

We were also now able to control and make Glukkons, Scrabs and Paramites compared to just being able to control Sligs. Now we could manipulate more enemies in the world to help us advance further as well as have a little fun with them. Whether that meant making them order others to do their bidding, watching them move around or just ending their lives as if they meant nothing, once Abe's had used his chanting ability to possess them.
And thank the Odd, for the amazing new Quicksave feature which allowed us to make a quick save in less than 5 seconds and would helps us return to that very spot after our unfortunate demise. But it must be used carefully, you don't want to quick save right before dying or falling otherwise you'd be caught in an endless loop (done that before). So it's best to still save to the Memory Card if you want to return to the game later. The quick save is just another fallback but it can't be loaded when starting the game up.

The graphics looked the same-ish but the world had a lot more to offer like new environments, a bit more colour in the foreground and background and the new ability to play in the background after using wells or teleportation devices to go further back in order to save more Mudokens or continue further in the game. This time it's not just seeing Abe in the foreground throughout the game because their's more to it and more complicatedly intelligent ways to play in this one. Though to be fair, we did have this in the previous game sometimes too but I forgot to mention it in the first post.
I'm glad that the side-scrolling effect was simple and just like the GameBoy, you can see only so much on the screen ta had been programmed on screen and only by moving off screen would more of the environment be shown and explored, which is a cool method compared to first-person games nowadays where you have to keep a swift eye out at all times.

As the game goes on, their's more colour whether your in the dark mines, ancient temples or barracks of the enemies and it helps that the light and highlight colour changes per region instead of it being just plain nighttime darkness. And sometimes it was weird that the sky was green over in the Slig Barracks, is that from green gas in the air or greenhouse gas or something?

Over last year and having to replay the game again after the nth time, I had discovered a useful tip on a YouTube Walkthrough on how to find more Mudokens and reach hidden locations. The clue was discovering Green Bottles (don't start singing the song) and that if you see those in the room, there's bound to be a hidden ledge that will take you to a secret location to find more Mudokens. You'd know by the achievement tune that's played in both games and maybe see a Smiley Face graffiti somewhere.
Like Lewis, Tom and I did with the first game, we wrote down cheat codes to skip to levels or to watch cinematics. And we cheated to make Abe's invulnerable and watch the enemies try to kill him and they'd have no effect. Plus we found a loop in the game where we could save 10 Mudokens repetitively after like 30mins of gameplay which is how I achieved 300 Mudoken Good ending once, but not in a cheat free way, yet ha.

The controls were the same as the previous game. But if I was to state some new additions to the game, I'd mention some new enemies. The Flying Sligs were packed with explosives but were fun to control once you'd possessed them. The Fleeches were frustratingly invulnerable f***ers who'd follow you up and down ledges until they'd consume you, they were a b*tch to evade or avoid from.

And one of the best things was the ability to possess your fart cloud and use it as a remote control explosive... yeah! It can't get anymore grossly funny to have your fart fly around and explode and literally blow up your enemies, and it wasn't the smell that did it!
Also by holding down the L2 button for Abe and the Glukkons, we have an extended set of speech options if we were to call out more than one individual. It seems hard but if you look in the manual, you'll see the list of phrases when holding down either L1 or L2 and pressing any of the shape buttons.

It's good to see that the sequel was far bigger than the first game and we have 2 Disks to prove it. The plot may have been darker and a bit sinister but it was interesting that Abe would uncover a plot where a drink had more in it than an addictive taste. I almost thought in the beginning that his buds would help him out but they fell to the drink's addiction and it was up to Abe to cure his sick friends as well as uncover the dark ingredients.

The game was longer and involved exploring many locations even temples that resembled Scrabania and Paramonia from the first game, only they were far more native and had Mudoken connections from the past. And the game resembled the same layout as the first one thanks (it runs on the same engine) to Abe having to survive 2 temples in order to be rewarded a power that would help him. It's not lazy but to me, it's more genuine that even if it's the same as before, it's still uniquely different instead of just slapping a new title on this sequel.

The game is a lot tougher with challenging puzzles and playthroughs where you'll need your wits and patience if you are to advance and try to save as many lives as possible. Abe will need the co-operation of his fellow brethren in order to unlock doors and the term "leading the blind" is very hard indeed. Their path is full of meat grinders which one wrong move or bad timing can cause them to explode and watch the flying mince on screen and Abe's can only respond with "Oops!". It's very smart and tough to navigate sometimes but there are lots of fun moments when the chain reaction of explosives go off or when you enter the Mine Cart and get to run over all in your path (especially in the Necrum Mines) but best still be vigilante of the Mudokens.

One of my 2 funniest moments in the cutscenes had to be when one of the 3 Glukkon Director Phleg states in an interview how he's pi**ed and calls Abe a b**tard for ruining his career and stopping the ingredients from coming to make more brew. And I can't forget to mention that time that Abe's lands the wrong way and damages his nuts lol.

One weird thing about this sequel is the discovery back in 2004 of this music video by Music Instructor who used the cutscenes from the original game and managed to super impose themselves into the cutscenes as well. It was weird but strangely interesting to see such dedicated fans make up a song and to even get Abe's voice actor to add in some lyrics too ha. I wonder how they won the rights and managed to create this?

Just like the first game, depending on how many Mudokens you save you would receive either a Good or a Bad ending. Since you had to save a minimum of 50/99 Mudokens for the first game, in this one you must save a minimum of 150/300 Mudokens (not much). When I managed to complete the game when I was little with Tom and Lewis (or if we just saw the cutscenes by cheating) we were astonished by the Bad Ending on how treachery was the theme and the ending wasn't good for Abe at all (like the bad ending of Oddysee). But with the Good Ending being canonical, it was a celebratory outcome and was also longer than any other cutscene in both games and also the start of a new adventure in time.

Speaking of the third game, it was nothing to what I could have ever imagined. More on that in a while and not as long delayed as this review. I got to see the cutscenes and play a bit of the game before my friends Ray and his brother Jereth would head off to Scotland back in my last year of Chesworth. When I did get to play it, it was a mixed experience full of letdowns due to the backward compatibility area but the game was stupendous!

I'm pleased that I remembered to write this review up and just in time on the same day, a year later from the first one. These 2 Playstation treasures will always be special to me because of their differences to many gaming series, it's underrated popularity and the fact it's just Odd! Why not look for them yourselves on the Playstation Network or buy the PS1 games yourselves like how I bought FFVII back in March at last (still trying to finish that as my first FF before I unbox my Xmas PS4... yeah!) I'll get round to finishing that soon since I only started it back in November 2016 and really want to either finish it or get round to my PS4 since I'm really good at procrastination...