It’s been an unbelievable 14 years since everyone’s favourite Mudokon, Abe of Oddworld, graced our consoles with his first adventure, Abe’s Oddysee, and since then we had three more Oddworld games, too; Abe’s Exodus, Munch’s Oddysee, and Stranger’s Wrath – all great games. Now, after all this time, we are all going to be treated to the best thing that could ever happen in Oddworld… A HD remake of the original Abe’s Oddysee, with full 3D graphics in the same old side-scrolling, 2D perspective, with brand spanking new physics!
The master of Oddworld Inhabitants – the company behind all of the Oddworld games – Lorne Lanning, said to games magazine EGM, that ”Abe HD is going into production. It’s basically Abe’s Oddysee being redone in a 3D physics engine as a 2D side-scrolling platformer.” This is great news for any fans of Abe and his game-speak antics of old. Pressing buttons that make him fart, making him laugh and cry, giving orders to fellow Mudokons and watching them run helplessly into meat grinders (whether you want them to or not), slapping sligs, whistling to slogs, hiding from Paramites and Scrabs, riding Emu, possessing enemies to make them run off cliffs and/or shoot their own buddies, and most importantly, perpetually running for Abe’s fecking life!
It’s a odd world in Oddworld, but one that we will welcome with open arms in the form of a HD remake of a masterpiece.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Format: PC
Year: 2001 – present day
If Return to Castle Wolfenstein was my first date with PC gaming, Battlefield 1942 was when she invited me to meet her parents, and the relationship went to the next level. My god, did I really just write that analogy?
Format: PC
Year: 2000
It may look clunky as hell thanks to the original Unreal engine, but Deus Ex was a pioneer in videogames because it gave the player so many choices to make. It resulted in one of the deepest gaming experiences of the time, because it went to great effort to show the consequences of those choices. The story was spread across many ‘hub’ levels, giving you total freedom to approach your objectives whichever way you wanted, aided by an RPG style upgrade tree that you invested in as you played. Wanna finish it without killing a single soul? That is entirely possible. Prefer to tool up with a rocket launcher and just murder your way to the end? Nothing could stop you. Your NPC allies would respond differently back in the Unatco base, depending on what you did out in the field. This level of responsiveness was unparalleled for a long time, to the point that even if you walked into the ladies toilets, your boss would scold you for it during the mission debrief later on. It was many little moments like that which made the game so memorable for me.
Format: PS3
Release date: 2010
Heavy Rain is more like an interactive movie than a game, and it is mostly excellent. It’s a game about choices and living with the consequences. I played it through twice myself, just to see how different decisions affect the story and its ultimate conclusion, but to say that my first try was emotional would be the understatement of the century. This game almost broke me. I’ll tell you how soon, but first I want to recount the story of one of my friend’s choices… Like I said, watching Heavy Rain is just like watching a movie, but watching your friend play Heavy Rain gives you an amusing bit of insight into their psychology. The results can be hilarious.
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