The Stack

Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee has two player characters. First, there’s Abe, hero of the first two Oddworld games and generally acknowledged savior of his people. Despite being an alien in an environment where the design of the aliens is generally rather inventive, Abe is basically humanoid. Then there’s Munch, a member of a newly-introduced aquatic species called Gabbits, which are vaguely frog-like, but with oversized heads and only one central hind leg. It takes a while to establish relative scale, because Munch is at first seen only around completely new alien types, but it turns out that he’s about half Abe’s height. Somehow I got the impression years ago the Munch was female, but that turns out not to be the case — in fact, now that I think about it, there aren’t any female characters in the Oddworld games at all.

The first level has you playing as Abe, presumably for familiarity’s sake. This is followed by a few levels as Munch, and after that, they meet up and you play levels with both of them together, switching control between them freely to use each one’s special powers to overcome obstacles. What are those powers? Primarily, Abe can jump and Munch can swim. Also, Abe can chant to possess Slig guards, although this uses up spooce energy — yes, spooce turns out to be good for something other than opening doors. Munch has a cranial implant that lets him operate machinery, obtain power-ups from vending machines, and unlock the cages containing captive Fuzzles.

Fuzzles are sort of like tribbles with googly eyes and jaggedy grins. They’re important as a gameplay element because we need something to rescue, and the Mudokons are by now all free. There are still Mudokons around, but they don’t need rescuing; they’re here to assist Abe, mainly by chanting at special doors that can only be opened by a certain number of Mudokons chanting at them simultaneously. This game really likes its special doors.

So, Abe can recruit Mudokons and Munch can recruit Fuzzles. In both cases, you can do something with them that the previous Oddworld games didn’t support: you can send them to fight your enemies. Which works because Sligs have apparently forgotten how to use guns. This is a massive change in the character of the series.

I remember coveting Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee back in 2001, when it was an Xbox exclusive. It was Oddworld in 3D! (Tomb-Raider-style behind-the-back view.) That was still a fairly big selling point at the time. Major 2D-to-3D adaptations had existed for about five years at that point, since Mario 64 in 1996, but hadn’t yet really settled down into something formulaic. Some were amazing, and some were terrible, and that very discrepancy made the field as a whole interesting to me.

Also, I feel like I must have had a serious jones for collectibles at the time. The main thing I remember from the demo kiosk at my local game store was that it had 3D Abe walking along a trail of little bloblets that disappeared like Pac-Man pellets, incrementing a counter as they went. For some reason, I found this tremendously appealing.

These bloblets, it turns out, are called “Spooce bushes”. They contain an energy that, in sufficient quantity, unlocks certain doors. This is pretty much orthogonal to everything else in the game. You just have to collect a certain amount of spooce in addition to your other goals for an area, and you generally do it by following lines of closely-spaced bushes. The bushes grow in lines because their real purpose in the game is to show you where to go. Abe’s spirit guide admits as much in-game.

And that’s emblematic of what seems to be a big difference from the first two Oddworld games. I’m about two hours in, and the emphasis is still on following directions rather than solving puzzles. This is the sort of thing people complain about when they complain about the state of games today. The first two games may have been excessively difficult, or at least excessively cruel — certainly the New ‘n’ Tasty remake took numerous steps to reduce the cruelty. Munch’s Oddysee may have been an overcorrection. But we’ll see if that changes over the course of the game. I’ve already started seeing some of the more blatant environmental hintage go away. For the first few levels, every lever or cage or other interactable object has a circular pattern on the floor around it, a sort of “Use this!” marker. Those are starting to disappear. Maybe the spooce lines will go away too after a while.