Hello ladies and gents. I thought I’d set up a Soulstorm megathread here purely because this forum has been waiting for a
new Oddworld game since 2005, and it only seemed fitting that we discuss Soulstorm on OWF while we still can.
Probably goes without saying, but please put spoilers in spoiler tags!
What are our thoughts? Personally, I think it’s OK. It’s a shame I can’t sit here foaming at the mouth in excitement about Soulstorm, but I think it’s just lacking in a few key areas that really set AO and AE apart from other platformers (and indeed, other games across genres) of their day. A few brief points:
• The music score is severely lacking, comparative to Abe’s Exoddus. Every track in the original game was memorable and distinct, harmonious with the area you were in. The FeeCo depot music to me for example, is an iconic Oddworld track. Bross’ soundtrack is very samey, and not a single piece of music has so far stood out to me. I hope that that changes when we get to the industrial areas later in the game.
• The actual locations in game really to a good job at giving a sense of depth and scale. This really turns Abe’s journey into something epic, which seems to be what the developers are going for. Fair play for that. With this said, a lot of the areas feel very samey. All the ‘native’ areas in the first few levels of the game blend into one another. What I presume to be Monsaic Lines at the start, has been scrubbed of its original charm, and is now a russet brown sanctum surrounded by russet brown desert and russet brown canyons. I have only seen one vista so far that made me stop for a moment and think, ‘wow, this is really cool’, whereas with AO and AE I frequently stopped to take in my surroundings despite them being static screens in lower resolution.
• The UI isn’t an issue for me. It’d be nice if it was a little more Oddworldy in aesthetic, but it’s not the end of the world. I appreciate that the interface is not very intrusive. That said, holy shit the constant achievement pop-ups are immersion breaking. There seems to be no way to turn these off on the PS4 which sucks. I know there’s a healthy community of people who want to get 100% game completion and speedrun levels, but for those of us who are invested in the story and are less into the meta-game, achievement pop-ups are really frustrating. It’d be great if we can toggle these off in a patch update.
• Actual gameplay is mostly enjoyable I think. Jumping up ledges is fucking annoying though, and I’ve died more often from just not getting what I thought would be a perfect jump correct, than from the actual puzzle difficulty itself. The crafting mechanic does actually work, I think. I don’t mind making smoke bombs and stuff like that, definitely found the smoke bomb sections of the game more fun than just setting things on fire and then putting them out.
• The opening film is gorgeous. Really did a good job of setting up the game, although the script is a
little off in places. I don’t know if Abe was meant to be much of a talker because his actual voice changes from cut-scene to cut-scene. I appreciate the characterisation of Abe as the reluctant messiah, and I think the game has so far done a really good job of bringing that out. I am a little disappointed at the lack of an actual story … I don’t know if I’m just misremembering here, or looking back on AE with rose tinted glasses but I feel like there was a lot more actual story development despite there only being a few cut-scenes in game. Soulstorm seems to pick up story threads and then just drop them. One things that comes to mind is when Abe runs off at the end of one of the earlier levels, followed by three flying sligs. You assume we’re going to jump into a cut-scene that factors this in or at least have this chase organically set up the next level but nope, nothing.
Another time a mudokon talks about hearing fleech screams in the mines, with the implication that all his buddies have been picked off by fleeches one by one. You even have to grab some fleech guano as one of the game objectives, but no fleeches ever appear. Just some slogs.
I'm only coming up to the Old Trellis now, so I do think there's plenty of time for Soulstorm to pick up and improve in the areas that are letting it down. Fingers crossed! And despite my criticisms, I'm still enjoying the game, which I think is the most important thing.
e: so I got to the slig barracks and both the story and the environments are improving, the latter significantly. They got that green shade juuuuust right.