Just remembered how I used to scream...
 

Hey, I've just remembered that I used to scream and run out of the room, throwing the controller down, whenever something scary would happen on Abe's Oddysee :).. I must have been 8 years old when I played Abe's Oddysee, and it would be parts like when you pull a lever and all of a sudden you get slogs spawning at a kennel and running towards you. And I used to have to let my dad do these bits coz I'd just scream and run off lol... yerrr... does this sound familiar to any of you? Please say yes o_o...

I used to watch my mum play it when I was 3.

I can safely say I felt the same fear.

Yeah, and somehow Abe's Exoddus couldn't instill that feeling... the ambient was different, and perhaps quicksave contributed to water down the experience as well.

You're right. Quiksave did change the atmosphere... from maddeningly annoying to actually playable.

I played Abe's Oddysee with my dad when I was 'bout... 6 years old and I was mostly excited to see new enemies and environments than I was scared. The last levels were pretty intense though. I remember when my dad let me try few of the last levels I was all "Aaah! A mine! What do I do?!" and then I ran straight into it and exploded. Hah.

Anyways, believe it or not, but I played Abe's Exoddus for the first time last year. We played it with my dad, it was fun. Good times!

I remember being really scared of the Fleeches and I remember my uncle saying "Just wait until the Scrabs!"

I first played it at like 5 or something and was never scared. I laughed when I got shot or eaten.

Scrabs scared the shit out of me when I first played AO. Especially because the first one you encounter in the Stockyards kills a mudokon as soon as you enter the screen, then goes to jump on it and then eats it. I was like... ZOMG!!!!!!!

l first played it when i had 1 and a half years,yer i was born in 1996,well i had fun saving muds,but more fun was running and killing muds,and making abe stand on an edge at those first mines afther the no talking to employees sign,i would stay at the edge press a random button so abe says i dont know and ram him into the mines :D ,but even today some parts,especialy when abe explodes or gets squashed by a meat saw i twitch,and the scary parts were ubxs and that rolling stone that would shuash anything in their way,and the first time i saw scrabs i liked them XD

I remember playing AE when i was 6 and i had recurring nightmares from the Fleech parts and yeah also a scrab fan :D my dreams stopped when i hired a scrab to kill em all xD
oh yeh im back

That means that I'm older than you! I thought I was one of the youngest (I'm 15).

The scariest thing for me was always at the start of AO, when the insect noises are going, and there's on particularly loud one, then Abe pops up and says "hello". I believe I had a nightmare about that when I was very young!

The only games that have scared me to the dark nightmares was Hexen + Soul Reaver 2 and Metroid Prime 2 Echoes.

SO.TRUE. I remember playing this game for the first time in a demo, when I got my playstation, sometime in 1998, when I was 6.

I'ts true that AO has that sense of a new, strange and scary world. Probably the only videogame that actually gave me a sense of discovering a alien world.
Something that wasn't terrorizing but was a bit scary to look at at first. Well, for a 6 year old anyway. It was really like entering a dark new world.

I had 2 demos that came with the psx and I remember being scared of 3 4 things:

Medievil's intro (I had nightmares :p)
Lifeforce Tenka (quake-like shooter, I couldn't move out of the spawning spot, I was too afraid to go on)
Q-something game with cubes (forgot the name but it was a game were you were in a black space and cubes would immediately try to swash you!)

and Abe's Oddisee.

I remember staring at that black screen, waiting to heard those strange animal sounds from the intro.

And don'te even talk to me about the first room xD. Man, I was soo scared that I would miss the jump and that that slig would catch me!!

When I was a mere fuzzling I was terrified of staying on the one screen for too long, I always thought all those Sligs and slogs ever chasing me would finally catch up and utterly slaughter me. I really miss that in the new games especially Munch's Oddysee, I wish guns were still a one shot kill.

That feeling I had only had me drawn into the series closer. I think Oddworld (Well the first two games at least) has had the perfect balance between humor and gore.

I do admire the Abe games for their portrayal of death. One hit, one kill, no long death sequence. You get shot, you gasp, you fall over, you die. Just like real life.

Apart from the turning into birds bit.

I managed to complete Abe' Oddysee as a kid with no help from my parents. And I didn't get scared like you bunch of wusses.

AO/AE really had the perfect tone: dark and serious, but with the occasional bit of simple humour. Playing them really reminds me how much I hate MO's shift towards slapstick and "funny" sound effects.

I remember my first slig. That guy scared me, and it definately made their allegiance clear, but I think it was mostly the music that did it. I remember the tension of the slig on that platform in the middle of nowhere. I was really tensed up. I waited for just the right moment to enter the door and sneak off-screen.

The only time I really ever got scared to something more than tightening my fingers, which I did several times, was when I was killed. Every time I got shot, skewered, smushed or fell off screen, I would jump in my seat. By the time I first tried to take on the fleeches, I sneaked, sneaked, sneaked. Even then, the fleeches woke up. Panic would always insue.

Ah the fun those guys were. I'd always jump when I died, but then laugh it off.

By the time I first played it I was 9 and wasn't scared but my brother admits being terrified of slogs at 8 and he even had a nightmare about them once. =(

lol i started naming creatures from the abe games,the fleeches were scary too for me :)

That's too true xD. I remembered too, I used to be scared all the time, fearing that they could catch me. Sligs included too.

Yep, Munch is just too cartoony for Oddworld. And it lacks the serious tone and most of the dark comedy that contrasted beautifully with it.

The "one-hit kills, dead and done" also added to the tension, seriousness and dark humour of the games. Specially AO which was perfect in this.

This game was indeed perfect and I'm happy to have experienced it as one of my first ever games played.

me too

Until a little while ago there were parts of AO that I hadn't even seen. My disk is quite scratched and after jumping through the bird portal in the stockyards to return to Rupturefarms it doesn't load. Even the level select cheat didn't help, as it then took varying amounts of time (between a second and never) to load each screen. It's probably for the best, as, having now seen the game in full (thanks, youtube!) I can imagine my younger self being shit scared of some of those areas.

Use brasso on your Disk. It worked for my bro's Brian Lara cricket for PC game ;)

The problem with making munch one-hit kill deaths is that it would probably end up more frustrating than oddysee. You have to consider how many angles you can get killed from, how much stuff can attack you at one time, and the simple fact that you don't have a clear view of everything around you. It just turns into a badly designed survival game at that point.

Anyway, I don't think I ever got terribly scared from the games. I do jump a lot though, even today. The 2D games like throwing in those Fuck you moments where you pull a lever to have a platform go down only to have a slig pop up out of nowhere and you have very little time to react. I play with headphones on so maybe it's just how loud the sounds are when Abe dies and stuff, but it still makes me skip a beat.

It's strange too, because I can get morbidly terrified of some silly things. Like pokemon!

It only took armored Vykkers 2-3 hits to kill Munch or Abe, and I remember that being incredibly annoying as it was. One hit kill in any 3D game is a bad idea, especially one like MO where you play characters that aren't sufficiently armed and have no ranged attacks.

It was years before I conquered my fear of the first electric barrier in AO.

I remember I discovered how to possess enemies by accident. I was too young to understand the "possession is 9/10ths of the law" joke on the back of the box. :p

I found out about possession from an online walkthrough because I couldn't understand why I hadn't saved 28 muds in the original Rupturefarms. Mind you, I hadn't found any of the secrets either. I think I had assumed that there was some way to get to Zulag 2 that I'd missed.

I think they might have been able to pull it off with enough time and consideration, but that's MO for you.

Even if they couldn't, just reducing the amount of overall health and altering some puzzles would have dramatically changed the way the game felt - as it is characters have a ridiculous amount of health and it really cheapens things.