Excitement turning to frustration

[Soulstinger]

I was absolutely floored to see a new Oddworld game, but as soon as I got my hands on it the shine faded very quickly.

Dont get me wrong, the fluidity of the scenery, the familiar zaney surroundings and irreverent dialogue are great...

But one of the things that made the originals work was their tight controls and specific animations. Holding throw and pointing x direction made a rock go x spaces. Jumping from a stand still went x spaces, a running jump went x spaces. The platforming was tight and tidy. Oddworld was prince of persia/fade to black with goofy sci fi settings.

This game has exceedingly loose, floaty controls, vague threat zones and utter garbage for arc delineation. Challenges requiring repeated aiming from a football field away with just the barest hint of the arc of an RPG, needing split second timing, pixel perfect sniper aim, just do not work with sloppy controls.

It is entirely playable, enjoyable, and everything works per se, but for anyone who played the originals and wants to save 100% of your Mudokan buddies, this game is rage-inducingly frustrating.

[SOFA_KING]

I'm slowly sharing that experience . I love it.. But not like the originals, and I purchased on PS and PC.

[zabealgorta]

Exact same experience here. Loved the old games. Even enjoyed New n Tasty. But this games feels... clunky, and controls are annoying. Definitely way worse of a game than I was lead to believe it would be...

[Necroscourge]

The early levels seem to be the hardest, because the game steals your inventory items from mission to mission and you're pretty limited in strategies.

[v00d00m4n]

i was hyped for this game too, but once i started - every second of game felt more and more frustrating and like "this is not as good as it was in Abe 1 and 2, this is no what i expected". It started from intro where instead of futuristic holopad with news you are shown newspapers that dont feel like part of oddworld settings at all, then it continued with very minimalistic menu that felt worse and less detailed than original 2 games. Then there was prerendered intro with compression artefacts and not 4k real time graphics quality. Intro was unskippable and long, also it break immersion by showing ending and them jumping to "some time before", that broke linear immersive storytelling from Abe's perspective (in original everything starts with abes and ends with abe, everything you see is what abe sees), also it was a cheap cliche. Mudokons that was running train kind felt weird, way too human than they was in original games, their dialogs was not funny, abe was doing nothing and just held a stone, then there was a part again that focused on other characters before it got to Abe. Then Abe introduction was absolutely pathetic, he felt like totally different character who is still slave, and lost all of his will power and charm. Then they was attacked also in a very cheap fashion, and Shaman died in a worst cliche possible, doing nothing to save himself. And all of this was with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lense flares and lense dirt on screen that went out of fashion half of decade ago. Intro was not impressive at all and felt weak.

But then gameplay started and oh boy, it was terrible! They broke or changed everything that was good about original games - mostly immersion and logic. They added HUD that was not in original game, tips now shown not in game displays but in overlays that pause games and break gameflow, they also now has videos with spoilers for total idiots, they added looting and crafting and selection wheel that also pauses games shows hud and breaks immersion completely. UI itself looks like template placehold and not like final game UI, it lacks any stilization that would make it less distinguishable from game world. Instead of autosaves each screen there are checkpoing terminals like every 50 in game meters, which may be good for saving but breaks immersion because their presence in game world makes no sense, and they could just add unnoticable autosave triggers at same places. But worst part of story - controls, animation and physics does not feel as precise as it was in original game, everything kinda feels junky and clunky and unpolished and absolutely worse than original game. Its a downgrade in every aspect except for graphics, but they still cant handle real time cutscenes and do prerenderds like in original game (which is they only part of original game that is bad nowadays) so i cant say im totally satisfied with graphics.
Also there are some indicators everywhere, icon above head of abe, when he interact with anyone or anything there is an ugly aura or sphere around him, when he chants there is ugly blur on full screen. Also he cant fart and whistle anymore (not that im fan of fart jokes but it was part of original charm of game, also whisle was useful for trolling enemies), god awful inventory managment breaks game flow many times. And... i was so frustrated i rage quit game and watched some videosof further sections and was horrified by addition of full looting and crafting and tower defence mechanics and downgrad of mudokon's ai that together totally ruined game for me.

So i dont feel like i even want to keep playing it... i better play classic abe odyssey and exodus and munch and stranger despite their old graphics and will get more joy from them to wash out this bad aftertaste Soulstorm gave me.

I head before people hated this game on PS4 and Epic, but i did not believe it was so bad in terms of game design and coding and started it with feel that they are all wrong and game is good, it can not be not good, because its oddworld. But oh boy, how wrong i was.

Oh and another little factor of frustration is that game lost even its original logo style, now Oddworld Soulstorm logo looks like shameless rip off of star wars spin-offs logo style. Also i have a bad feeling that this sequel has some modern awful disney vibes here and there.

[jrc6805]

I guess each to their own. I'm an old man. I bought and played the two OG games on an ancient PC using keyboard controls. I loved the game and was all-consumed much to the dismay of my step children having only one PC in the house.
Fast forward to this year, and this game. I suffered, and continue to suffer, the same described frustration you all have expressed. And with the help of watching some walkthroughs and too many hours of countless fails and splattered Mudokans, I finished the game but with the "Bad ending." However this now allows me to skip through the levels and replay each one working through the levels.
I am finding that the games is a LOT more fun the second time through and the glitchy controls are somewhat better although there are times I suspect demonic posession of my Xbox controller hooked to my new rocket ship Graphics card and PC. I am impressed by the graphics and animation. I feel it SHOULD be different, but better different based on the same character. I admittedly would like less iffy controls. I feel if it were easier, folks wouldn't like it as much or play it as much. You get so much time invested it's hard to chuck it all and quit playing it. Even harder is to watch a walkthrough and see someone else breezing through what gives me fits but still quitting. I encourage everyone to stick with it and tough it out.
I find using the game controller easier to manage than the keyboard and mouse but we like what we like.