Fruitless back-and-forths over Tomb Raider often put me in the same headspace: thinkin' about Oddworld. Now there's a solid cinematic platformer for the PlayStation 1, one with expressive characters, imaginative environments, a great sense of humor and actual messaging to compliment it's fun and often challenging puzzles. Lara can't like, mind control a bear and make it explode. I rest my case.

But opening up my copy of Abe's Oddysee immediately presents something bleakly funny: the definition of a quintology. Oh Lorne. Poor Lorne. They screwed the man at every turn. From pressing the first run of discs with a repeatable, game breaking bug (in Lorne's words, the person who made this call was not "a Gamer"), to Gamestop publishing a guide that immediately funneled new players into the most difficult hidden screens of the game, to his regrets over Exoddus and Sony throwing Soulstorm up on PS+ to die... Like Xenosaga and Shenmue, it doesn't matter if you have a story to tell or the creativity and temerity to do it, the games industry will chew you up and spit you out like some form of tangy meat popsicle. New n' tasty indeed.

Listen to Lorne Lanning talk about Oddworld for any length of time, and it becomes quickly apparent just how passionate and creatively driven he is. Ars Technica's extended War Stories interview is something I throw on at least once a year because I find his background to be fascinating, and his recollections on navigating creative and industrial fields leading to the formation of his studio, Oddworld Inhabitants, provides a considerable amount of insight as to how his worldview - and consequentially, the themes of Oddworld - formed.

Abe's Oddysee was always intended to have a message, and so gameplay was appropriately designed around the particular anxieties and beliefs Lorne wished to express. As funny as it would be to find Abe strapped, you don't shoot guns, something that was a point of contention with staff at Oddworld Inhabitants. Instead, you "shoot words" (and farts) through gamespeak, a mechanic that allows the player to interface on a more personal level with the game than simply pulling a trigger... Though through mind control, you do still do that. Sometimes the creative process demands compromise.

One complaint I would have about this system is that much of your time rescuing Modokons is front and backloaded, with an extremely lengthy middle game chronicling Abe's trials outside of Rupture Farms tucking most Modokon rescues behind hidden screens and portals. To a certain extent, loading the game so full of secrets is good and provides replayability, but I found the puzzles in which you're trying to disarm a hazardous area and lead as many Modokons to safety as possible to be more engaging than the segmented puzzle rooms of Paramonia and Scrabania. Elum, Abe's mount, does fill this role somewhat, but I twice had him despawn requiring me to reload a save and lose progress, so I'm a little upset with him right now.

The end game also gets absolutely brutal, placing checkpoints far and between sequences that require precise timing and manipulation of enemies. Controls are rarely the issue so much as understanding the order of operations to get through the multiple levels of Rupture Farms, but when everything clicks and you execute on a perfect run, it feels good. The end of Abe's Oddysee has some of the most genuinely tense moment-to-moment gameplay on the system, it is agonizing as it is great. Wait, what do you mean I didn't save enough Modokons? Hold on, why am I being teleported back to the start of Rupture Farms, wait--

While the experience of playing Oddysee can at times be a bit uneven and even frustrating, I do think it comes together into something really special. The texture of the pre-rendered environments, the clay-like quality of the character sprites, the ways in which Rupture's oppressive and hostile factory gives way to barren wastelands drained of resources and life all for the sake of capital, and how that is conveyed humorously both through the game's writing and the player's own machinations... it's great. I really like Abe's Oddysee. 3.5 out of 5 smooches on the cheek for Mr. Lanning, but not 5 because Lorne is apparently never allowed to have a quintology of anything. I don't make the rules.

I'm not very high on cinematic platformers. Hell I find trial and error gameplay frustrating beyond belief. But for once a game with that kind of energy hooked me. The world of Abe's Odyssee is something to behold, the drop dead gorgeous pre rendered backgrounds, the atmosphere and the story is all masterfully done. Unlike most games in the genre the deaths are entirely your fault and you will learn from your mistakes. This isn't like Heart of Darkness where you die by random BS. This is the pinnacle of the genre for a reason. If you enjoy the genre or want a fantastic game to stare at this one is for you

Oddworld is one of the most artistically, narratively, and sonically beautiful, dark, funny, and mysterious game worlds ever created, and it all began here in Abe’s Oddysee, the original, iconic, first chapter in its saga.

If it weren’t for one major drawback in the gameplay department, I would genuinely consider Abe’s Oddyssey to be one of the rare examples of a truly perfect game, seeing how everything else besides this lone design oversight is masterfully executed, like a great film, lean and mean with zero fat on its bones, brilliant in its visual storytelling, filled with flawless character design, classic physical comedy (I view Abe as the Buster Keaton of gaming), and often Rube Goldberg-esque, ingenious puzzles.

That’s just it, though. Its deadly gauntlets of perfectly-timed obstacle-dodging, enemy-outsmarting ingenious puzzles can sometimes feel like they literally require you to be a genius. Now, I’m obviously aware that it’s an older game, the studio’s first attempt at a game, and, frustrating or not, young children were able to complete it at its time of release. Thus, its high difficulty is by no means an objective design flaw. It’s a deliberate design choice. However, it could certainly be a barrier to much of the game’s imaginitive and inspiring later content for someone not used to such brutally unforgiving retro game design.

If the difficulty, itself, is not its one major flaw that keeps it from being the otherwise perfect game that it could be, then what is? Well, it’s definitely Abe Odyssey’s checkpoint system. Firstly, there’s no quick save. Again, this is, in itself, not a flaw per se. However, being able to try the hellishly challenging puzzle in the room you’re in over and over until you get it right would be just fine. Some might even still give up and quit, as it would still retain each individual room’s challenge. You can’t do this. Instead, you’re often forced to also do the past 4-5 dangerous, difficult, “miss a jump by a pixel and die” puzzles in the rooms before the one you’re in if you die and it wasn’t near one of the uncharitably-placed checkpoints.

So, “Checkpoints punishing. Checkpoints bad.” That’s it? Well, no. To compound their poor implementation even further, in the original PS1 version, there is no indicator, be it visual or aural, to signal that you’ve even reached one. You have no clue where the last one you passed was (except for load screens, which one can typically assume do signal a checkpoint, but which aren’t always super frequent).

There is a “Save” option on the pause menu, but this only saves up until your last check point, meaning that if you save and turn off the game six difficult rooms after a checkpoint (and, remember, you likely won’t even know that you passed one), you’ll be brought back to wherever that mystery checkpoint was upon the next time you load your save.

I think it’s telling that the sequel to this game was not released decades later, with changes made to the checkpoint/save system in order to appeal to “babies” used to modernized game design, who know nothing of the days of “actual challenge”. Instead, the sequel to Abe’s Oddysee, Abe’s Exoddus, came out very shortly after and (what do you know!) included the ability to quicksave anywhere. Given the fact that the sequel is not notorious for being some dumbed down or overly easy entry, this can really only be interpreted as the developers, Oddworld Inhabitants, admitting that there WAS one element that wasn’t perfect in their previous work of art, and they wanted to fix it.

So, that’s why a perfect game has a big enough flaw to rob it of a perfect score from me. Thankfully, while I write and share this review to both organize my thoughts on something I love and potentially help someone who’s thinking of playing the game, it won’t be playing any part in the public opinion of the game. This game has already been long-cemented as a classic, and rightly so.

The story of Abe’s Oddysee is a tale that could easily come off as preachy, but while it is surprisingly heavy and dark, it offsets this with moments and characters that are anything but serious. In a way, this is the perfect example of a “message game” and how to do it right. It’s an admirably empathetic, but also highly critical story of greedy corporations, environmental plundering, and an obvious love for and goal of a wider-spread understanding and respect for everything from nature’s underdogs to the shamanic rituals of indigenous tribes and the overall power of myth. It posits that an epic and noble quest, the kind that can be found mirrored and shared across cultures and best summed up by Joseph Campbell as “The Hero’s Journey “, can begin within the soul of even the most unassuming of “heroes”.

Abe’s journey takes him from a cynical, vicious, mercenary world of industry and apathy into one of old, grand temples, new cultures, and strange species. There’s an unspoken emphasis on using the land while being in harmony with it (rather than striving for control over it), a connection with beasts for mutual aid, the mysterious power and magic of ancient music, and, of course, the universal, healing humor of flatulence.

The way Abe Oddysse’s checkpoints were handled is a shame, and it can sometimes make it harder to get lost in some of its puzzles, trying again and again, and happy to, due to a brain-teasing drive spurred on by fair design, rather than frustration. However, absolutely nothing in the game hinders the player’s ability to get lost in the game’s world, one that, odd as it is, often reflects our own in both ways that one may not wish to admit and ones that, in their relatable struggle and mysterious beauty, could very well inspire one to go on their own odyssey, with a newfound interest, perhaps, in researching the equally surreal creatures, ancient stories, and fascinating cultures of our own world.

To me, that’s an astounding legacy for Abe’s Oddyssey to have and one that will easily overshadow its main design issue in the long run. I can’t stress enough just how perfect of a game it would be without its lone, but significant aspect that is so often a source of frustration. Frustration does not, however, rob Abe’s Oddyssey of its timeless magic and, with what I’ve covered in mind, if you feel that you possess the expectations and patience necessary to face it, I highly recommend that you give it a play and experience the genesis of one of video games’ finest fictional realms and the debut of one of its most unlikely, but most likable heroes.