Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee

THE BAD:
Not enough head scratcher-type puzzles - The game is not that hard.

SUMMARY:
This game knocked my socks off. The voice acting is spot on, as usual. It plays very, very well, with no noticable slowdown that I've seen, and the graphics are very sharp and vivid. But with all of the graphical wizardry this game commands, it does suprisingly little to throw anything too tough in your path.

I'll grant that it is not a simple game, but after playing through Abe's Exodus I need something tougher than this. Gone are all of the precision puzzles that required careful thought and planning to beat. Gone are the days of victory though stealth and speed, and gone are the days of the passive mudokons. In Munch's installment, the forces of nature have gone on the offensive, and you will find yourself leading a small army in a controlled beat down for much of the game. The majority of the puzzles require nothing more complicated than rounding up a bunch of workers and leading them to a designated location, or throwing a particular switch. Sounds just like the old Oddworld, but this time around it isn't that hard. With the addition of the 3rd dimension, most of the difficulty has been removed. When the game was a 2D platformer, all the mines and sligs and slogs were real roadblocks to your progress, and you had to outwit them to meet your objective. It's too easy to simply sneak by them now, or run past at full tilt - they aren't that good with their aiming when they have to lead their fire. It just doesn't feel like Oddworld - the paradigm has shifted, and my mind doesn't feel all that challenged when I play this one.

For some, this may not matter. I know that I still find it a worthwhile addition to the Odd-volumes, and I don't regret buying it. It just fails to statisfy my nostalgia for the way things used to be.