I haven't posted here in a long time but here goes.
I think there are various changes that should be made to improve quality of life of Abe's Oddysee and tighten up puzzle sections in particular. I'm not talking about things like quick saving or improved gamespeak, I'm talking about objects and characters you interact with in the game.
1) Overly obscure solutions to puzzles.
There are some places where the items you need to progress (rocks/grenades/red chanting rings) are nowhere near the area you need them. For example there's an area in Scrabania where there's a floating mine flying around a well, with some sligs in the background. The intended way to blow it up is with a red ring, but the actual ring-bearing mudokon (who has no other purpose in the game) is several screens ahead and it's more likely that the player will just try and hit the mine with rocks which were a few screens back.
Another example is at the end of Zulag 4 of RF where you have to possess a slig and kill an insane amount of slogs. There are some mines (on the screen with the factory shutdown switch) that I'm pretty sure you're supposed to blow up with grenades, but the nearest grenade machine is several screens back, past some sligs which take quite a while to sneak past. It feels like going back to a previous area to get them. Despite the machine being so far back, the mines I talked about are the only reason you need that machine, so it should be closer to that area. Without the grenades this is a ridiculously messy, complicated area to try and complete, not to mention time wasting (more on that later).
2) Easily skipped puzzles.
Basically the opposite of 1); Sometimes you can take rocks and grenades into areas they aren't designed for, and bypass sections of the puzzles altogether.
For example, when making the return journey through No-man's Land, you go through a bird portal and end up in a section with a ton of mines, motion detectors, a lightning bolt and a UXB bomb. There's a very specific way to get past all of that, but if you carry rocks from the previous area then you can just bypass most of it.
Another example is the various chambers in Zulag 2 and 3 of Rupture Farms. You can carry grenades from one chamber to another and bypass certain challenges, even though each chamber can (and should) be solved individually without grenades from other chambers.
If you allow people to take items in to areas they weren't supposed to, you allow them to skim over parts of the game, and they might not even realise they're doing it. Make it so that certain areas take away your items, like the "No farts" areas in Abe's Exoddus.
3) Tedious Whistling
I won't talk about whistling in general, but there are some sections where you have to whistle for the same native mudokon to get red rings from it multiple times. It would be better if the mudokons automatically gave you the rings any time you were on screen, after you've given them the code once.
4) Slog Stampedes.
What the hell were OWI thinking when they made these sections? I'm talking about when a gigantic swarm of Slogs pour out of a tiny hut one-by-one like clowns out of a car. You have to possess a Slig in order to kill them all, but it really just means holding down the shoot button until they stop coming.
The idea is fine since it forces you to use the Slig, but the amount of slogs is just insane. One of these sections (that I mentioned before) lasts about a minute and I'm pretty sure there's over 100 Slogs. It's a total chore and it comes before a challenging part where you'll probably fail and have to waste another minute killing them all over again. Cut the number of Slogs down drastically and it would be fine.
Sorry if my descriptions aren't very good, I can elaborate more if needed, but it's already a long post.
Last edited by Hazz-JB; 04-10-2012 at 12:26 PM..
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