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  #1  
04-11-2022, 09:49 PM
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but i also still stand by all my gripes over the direction oddworld seemed to be taking as nnt revealed more about itself and the future of oddworld

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04-12-2022, 02:20 AM
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but i also still stand by all my gripes over the direction oddworld seemed to be taking as nnt revealed more about itself and the future of oddworld
I actually booted up NNT yesterday after playing through Soulstorm over a few weeks, and what surprised me was just how different NNT felt. I'd assumed Soulstorm played much more like NNT than I remembered, but in retrospect NNT is much closer to the original game than it is to Soulstorm.

And that's a good thing.
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  #3  
04-12-2022, 11:16 AM
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New 'n' Tasty retrospective

No, NNT is anything but a good thing.
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  #4  
04-12-2022, 02:43 PM
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Nah, just because it isn't perfect doesn't make it bad.
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  #5  
04-12-2022, 03:04 PM
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It never crossed my mind to even consider it close to perfect. My reference point was being good, which I don't find it, at all.
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04-12-2022, 03:41 PM
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i like soulstorm more than NNT. in my brain i just can't care about NNT because it's a 1:1 remake of AO. right? i can't remember if there are differences aside from some quality of life changes and areas no longer being broken up into separate screens. i couldn't ever see myself playing it again because i'd just play AO instead. i prefer how AO plays by a long shot even with the grating shit, like only one mudokon being able to follow you at a time.


soulstorm at least feels like a new game even if it's a retelling of AE's story. i also think it's not a good game by any means. also i'm not sure if i'd ever replay it again either. actually idk what my point was
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04-12-2022, 11:52 PM
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It never crossed my mind to even consider it close to perfect. My reference point was being good, which I don't find it, at all.
My point was that too many Oddworld fans consider NNT bad because it isn't a perfect remake, and they fail to judge it on its own merits as a result. I think the game itself is far from a bad game - it's not perfect by any means, nor is it better than AO, but it's a decent attempt to remake AO in a 3D engine and it's very playable.


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i like soulstorm more than NNT. in my brain i just can't care about NNT because it's a 1:1 remake of AO. right? i can't remember if there are differences aside from some quality of life changes and areas no longer being broken up into separate screens. i couldn't ever see myself playing it again because i'd just play AO instead. i prefer how AO plays by a long shot even with the grating shit, like only one mudokon being able to follow you at a time.


soulstorm at least feels like a new game even if it's a retelling of AE's story. i also think it's not a good game by any means. also i'm not sure if i'd ever replay it again either. actually idk what my point was
NNT is forgettable, Soulstorm is bad? I can get behind that.
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  #8  
04-13-2022, 12:06 AM
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My point was that too many Oddworld fans consider NNT bad because it isn't a perfect remake, and they fail to judge it on its own merits as a result. I think the game itself is far from a bad game - it's not perfect by any means, nor is it better than AO, but it's a decent attempt to remake AO in a 3D engine and it's very playable.
I am under impression we've played different remakes. What merits does NNT have that isn't straight up taken from the original game? Each thing they added on top of that is always tied with some nasty downside that stands out enough not to be ignored. Every single addition is like that, with no exceptions.
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04-13-2022, 01:18 AM
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I am under impression we've played different remakes. What merits does NNT have that isn't straight up taken from the original game?
See this is exactly what I'm trying to point out - people get so hung up on NNT being a remake that they have to constantly compare it back to the original game. Anything NNT has that's good gets attributed to AO and doesn't count; everything it does wrong is a damning indictment and shows that it's a bad game and AO is better. It lives or dies purely on how it measures up to the original.

NNT is a remake, so of course it's going to take a lot from the original game! The point of judging it on its own merits is not to say "the game is bad because all its good qualities come from AO", it's to say that taken as a complete gaming experience by itself, it's a decent game. It's an engaging 2D puzzle-platformer with interesting level design, simple mechanics that are easy to pick up but difficult to master, and an interesting aesthetic that in places* is gorgeous.

Does most of that come from AO? Sure. Does NNT do them better than AO? For the most part, no, but it doesn't do them badly.

You seem to think that NNT is worse than AO. I honestly don't disagree! But my point is that you (and many other Oddworld fans) write off NNT as bad because it doesn't meet or surpass AO's bar of quality. That may be dissatisfying, sure, but being worse than AO doesn't mean a game is automatically bad - there's plenty of good games that are worse than AO out there.


:
Each thing they added on top of that is always tied with some nasty downside that stands out enough not to be ignored. Every single addition is like that, with no exceptions.
  • Having the camera free-flowing and utilizing perspective and angles adds depth and makes the environments feel more connected.
  • Mapping the throwing mechanic to a controller thumbstick makes aiming rocks and grenades far easier and takes out the guesswork in landing a shot.
  • Being able to throw bottle caps to get the attention of sligs and scrabs means you don't have to wait around on enemy patrol cycles as often.
  • Including the gamespeak option to talk to multiple mudokons simultaneously removes tedium some of the original puzzles had.
  • Quicksave!
  • Adding difficulty options makes the game more accessible to newcomers while still allowing people to have a challenge if they choose to.
  • The level select system makes going back to replay levels and try for better endings much easier. I personally enjoy loading up the game and playing a level or two, without having to go through the whole game again.

I'm not trying to argue that the game is perfect, because it isn't. I am perfectly aware that the game has issues, and plenty of them stand out to me as things that bring down the experience. I'm not even trying to convince anyone that the game is better than AO.

But it's not a terrible game, far from it. You might not like it, you might consider it worse than AO, and to you that probably means it's not worth your time. That's fine. But games shouldn't be judged in black-and-white good-or-bad. NNT is a mixed bag - it does some things well, and some things poorly. But I think it's a mistake to write it off entirely - because as we've seen, things can get so much worse.


*I've voiced my criticisms of the game's aesthetic choices before, but I personally think NNT really does the native environments of the game justice. The Scrabanian Temple in particular stands out in my mind as an area that looks straight up better than the original.
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  #10  
04-13-2022, 02:58 AM
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See this is exactly what I'm trying to point out - people get so hung up on NNT being a remake that they have to constantly compare it back to the original game. Anything NNT has that's good gets attributed to AO and doesn't count; everything it does wrong is a damning indictment and shows that it's a bad game and AO is better. It lives or dies purely on how it measures up to the original.

NNT is a remake, so of course it's going to take a lot from the original game! The point of judging it on its own merits is not to say "the game is bad because all its good qualities come from AO", it's to say that taken as a complete gaming experience by itself, it's a decent game. It's an engaging 2D puzzle-platformer with interesting level design, simple mechanics that are easy to pick up but difficult to master, and an interesting aesthetic that in places* is gorgeous.
I dismiss the whole notion of "you can't judge a remake on its own without comparisons to the original". I find it really dumb. Let's say someone makes his OC Coldsteel The Hedgeheg artwork which is a traced over Sonic artwork, do you judge it as it's own thing, or what they did with it? Assuming the former, if you praise the elements of the new art like the character proportions or the pose... are you really praising the new art? The sole reason those are there is because he traced over the original art the author didn't make.

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Does most of that come from AO? Sure. Does NNT do them better than AO? For the most part, no, but it doesn't do them badly.

You seem to think that NNT is worse than AO. I honestly don't disagree! But my point is that you (and many other Oddworld fans) write off NNT as bad because it doesn't meet or surpass AO's bar of quality. That may be dissatisfying, sure, but being worse than AO doesn't mean a game is automatically bad - there's plenty of good games that are worse than AO out there.
Oh no no, don't get me wrong. I do think New N Tasty isn't a good game, not just a not good enough of a remake. It's a bugged mess with glitchy animations, audio problems and tone/atmosphere issues.


>Having the camera free-flowing and utilizing perspective and angles adds depth and makes the environments feel more connected.

At the cost of many bugs and weird behavior when you're on the "edge" between "screens".

>Mapping the throwing mechanic to a controller thumbstick makes aiming rocks and grenades far easier and takes out the guesswork in landing a shot.

On the downside the throwables have no weight to them now. And no, there's still as much guesswork. And no, in AO the trajectory of the grenades is always the same and predictable, and if you say that you need to throw them once to know it, it's as much of a guesswork as the NnT/SS throwing lines.

>Being able to throw bottle caps to get the attention of sligs and scrabs means you don't have to wait around on enemy patrol cycles as often.

This is very bugged (and a really forced feature), they sometimes hardcode sligs to only pretend they're looking and they unnaturally turn towards you (I mean, more than their usual glitchy animation) and insta shoot you.

>Including the gamespeak option to talk to multiple mudokons simultaneously removes tedium some of the original puzzles had.

Except it didn't really have much tedium to begin with (especially if it's the first time you're playing it), as it had 3 times fewer mudokons, as opposed to the copy pasted 200... Plus sometimes there was sometimes a puzzle reason to do so, e.g. first stockyards escape secret area that required you to do a few routes in a dangerous scrab territory (Which they addressed in NnT by adding electrical gates to further make the level aesthetics worse)

>Quicksave!

I thought you were listing positives... I hate the concept of quick saving (or saving anywhere) in a game like that with passion.

>Adding difficulty options makes the game more accessible to newcomers while still allowing people to have a challenge if they choose to.

Oh yeah, I chose hard and the UXBs and meatsaws became completely unpredictable (even though I played it after they patched the saws so they are no longer longer to CPU cycles). Nice "challenge". Not to mention UXBs are no longer synced to the beeps.

>The level select system makes going back to replay levels and try for better endings much easier. I personally enjoy loading up the game and playing a level or two, without having to go through the whole game again.

I don't really think it's very important to me, but it could be to someone who somehow got the bad ending and wants a good one, I guess. Though if you got a good one and want to get the bad one you need to do the whole game again afaik.

:
I'm not trying to argue that the game is perfect, because it isn't. I am perfectly aware that the game has issues, and plenty of them stand out to me as things that bring down the experience. I'm not even trying to convince anyone that the game is better than AO.

But it's not a terrible game, far from it. You might not like it, you might consider it worse than AO, and to you that probably means it's not worth your time. That's fine. But games shouldn't be judged in black-and-white good-or-bad. NNT is a mixed bag - it does some things well, and some things poorly.
Sorry, I don't agree about the doing things well part.

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But I think it's a mistake to write it off entirely - because as we've seen, things can get so much worse.
I won't like NnT more just because of a threat of the art getting worse if I don't!

:
*I've voiced my criticisms of the game's aesthetic choices before, but I personally think NNT really does the native environments of the game justice. The Scrabanian Temple in particular stands out in my mind as an area that looks straight up better than the original.
I am of a different opinion. While the original renders bear the marks of the game's era, I wouldn't pick - as far as the aethetics alone go - Scrabanian Temple from NnT over AO, due to the overambundance of bloom and overexposed light (and oversaturation). Some terrain textures are really low resolution as well, though it's technical and not aesthetics. It's also difficult for me to separate how this game "looks" into "the static" and "the dynamic" parts, and the shoddy animations took the fun out of watching this game in motion, no matter the location.
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04-13-2022, 03:02 AM
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I've been meaning to revisit New 'n' Tasty now that I'm able to approach it with more realistic expectations.

I tried it for the first time in 2020 having finished a replay of Oddysee (one of my favourite games of all time) in 2019 and I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I thought they took everything that was good about Oddysee and just bastardised it to be more appealing to the lowest common denominator.

But I think with some time to breathe, I'm intrigued to try it just in its own right and without particularly comparing it to Oddysee.

I've always considered Oddysee more of a puzzle game than anything else, so if New 'n' Tasty can just be a serviceable platformer instead, that might be fine.
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  #12  
04-13-2022, 03:21 AM
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I beat NnT three times, I think. With a couple-years-long break between the last attempts, and with as open mind as I could have on the last attempt. Sadly, my perception of it didn't change.
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04-13-2022, 04:34 AM
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NnT is fine
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04-13-2022, 12:09 PM
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I beat NnT three times, I think. With a couple-years-long break between the last attempts, and with as open mind as I could have on the last attempt. Sadly, my perception of it didn't change.

Varrok if you thought NnT was shit why on god's sweet earth did you play it three times? I thought it was OK and I haven't even completed it twice.
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04-13-2022, 02:04 PM
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I dismiss the whole notion of "you can't judge a remake on its own without comparisons to the original". I find it really dumb. Let's say someone makes his OC Coldsteel The Hedgeheg artwork which is a traced over Sonic artwork, do you judge it as it's own thing, or what they did with it? Assuming the former, if you praise the elements of the new art like the character proportions or the pose... are you really praising the new art? The sole reason those are there is because he traced over the original art the author didn't make.
Putting aside the really weird tracing strawman... A remake can absolutely be compared to the original material it's based on, but that's not the only criteria for it to be judged by. If a remake isn't better than the original work, that doesn't make it an outright failure. That's really the core of the point I'm trying to get across here.


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Oh no no, don't get me wrong. I do think New N Tasty isn't a good game, not just a not good enough of a remake. It's a bugged mess with glitchy animations, audio problems and tone/atmosphere issues.
Look, I can't convince you that you should enjoy a game you didn't like. Most of the issues you have with NNT are issues that I have with it as well; I think you may be overstating some of them because of your preference for AO, because some of the problems you highlight feel like minor flaws to me. In particular:


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On the downside the throwables have no weight to them now. And no, there's still as much guesswork. And no, in AO the trajectory of the grenades is always the same and predictable, and if you say that you need to throw them once to know it, it's as much of a guesswork as the NnT/SS throwing lines.
This doesn't line up with my experience. Thrown items still have weight to them - you just have finer control over aiming them. The trajectory in AO never feels intuitive to me outside of throwing at very close targets, because the D-pad/arrow keys map to fixed arcs that feel arbitrary. NNT gives you a solid indication of your item's trajectory, and a hint as to the arc, which feels so much easier to predict.


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Except it didn't really have much tedium to begin with (especially if it's the first time you're playing it), as it had 3 times fewer mudokons, as opposed to the copy pasted 200... Plus sometimes there was sometimes a puzzle reason to do so, e.g. first stockyards escape secret area that required you to do a few routes in a dangerous scrab territory
There's never a good puzzle reason to do so though. Every puzzle that requires you to lead multiple mudokons past the same hazard is tedious in AO, because the game is designed to force you to repeat the same navigation multiple times. It never feels good, because it's just challenge by repetition. NNT makes it so you only have to navigate the challenge once - much less tedious.


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I thought you were listing positives... I hate the concept of quick saving (or saving anywhere) in a game like that with passion.
If you don't like it, you can always use the checkpoints, just like the original. But Quicksave is a quality of life feature that makes life so much easier for us mere mortals, and it's a major reason why AE feels so much more approachable than AO despite arguably having many more difficult puzzles to navigate.


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Oh yeah, I chose hard and the UXBs and meatsaws became completely unpredictable (even though I played it after they patched the saws so they are no longer longer to CPU cycles). Nice "challenge". Not to mention UXBs are no longer synced to the beeps.
There are certainly some meat saws in the same that are downright bullshit, but the UXBs are absolutely predictable. The timing differs from the original, but it's not random.


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Though if you got a good one and want to get the bad one you need to do the whole game again afaik./
Yeah, but I think there's probably a lot less people who a) get the good ending first time, and b) choose to go back to get the bad ending instead of just watching the cutscene on Youtube or something.


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Sorry, I don't agree about the doing things well part.
Well frankly you're wrong. The game might not meet your expectations and it certainly has problems, but it's simply unfair to say it does nothing well.


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I won't like NnT more just because of a threat of the art getting worse if I don't!
It's not meant to be a threat, but a reminder that there are far worse games than NNT out there. It seems silly to me to dislike NNT so much when it's clear that it's nowhere near as bad as many, many other games out there.


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I am of a different opinion. While the original renders bear the marks of the game's era, I wouldn't pick - as far as the aethetics alone go - Scrabanian Temple from NnT over AO, due to the overambundance of bloom and overexposed light (and oversaturation).
This I just don't get. Maybe in Rupturefarms, but the Scrabanian Temple is the one part of the game where bloom and overexposed light works perfectly - it's a dark temple, in the middle of a desert, with the light from the setting sun outside streaming in through the windows. It's the one place in the game where the dynamic lighting really, really works.


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I beat NnT three times, I think. With a couple-years-long break between the last attempts, and with as open mind as I could have on the last attempt. Sadly, my perception of it didn't change.
Yeah frankly I'm with STM on this one. I think it either says a lot about NNT or about you that you completed it and then came back to it two more times. Perhaps you don't hate it all that much after all...


Regardless, I can't convince you that a game you didn't like is Good Actually, but I at least hope that people can give NNT a bit more of a chance than "is it better than AO or completely irredeemable trash". It does a disservice to the game to write it off for its flaws, because I think there's still a lot there to enjoy, and there's a lot that can be learned from NNT about how the series could have progressed. I think one of the saddest things about Soulstorm is that it completely failed to learn from any of the lessons NNT had to teach.
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