Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee - New 'n' Tasty! (PS Vita) Review

Abe's Oddysee follows the unfortunate and amusing Abe as he ventures forth to save his fellow Mudokons from extinction. One day, while waxing the floors of Rupture Farms meat processing plant, he comes across a secret meeting. His boss, Mullok, has come up with a plan to save the company from a crippling decrease in profits; a plan to make the "New 'n' Tasty" out of the Mudokons.

New 'n' Tasty, aside from being a witty self-reference, is a very polished remake and reimagining of the original Oddworld title which was released on the Playstation, MS-DOS and windows. It takes the series staple puzzle/cinematic platforming, and brings it into the current era of gaming with minor tweaks to the gameplay along with major changes to the visual design.

Overall it runs really well, with hardly any frame drops, even though the graphics are there in an almost untouched form. When the game does slow down it's usually quite a frantic scene with lots of animated characters or traps on screen. Most of the game's elements have been reduced in number to help preserve the performance, yet not so much that it affects the experience, and because key intractable environments are 3D it is still magnificently attractive on the small screen.

Gameplay-wise, everything has been transferred extremely well to the Vita, with most functions having been remapped to the physical buttons, assuring that there isn't any lag between input and output. Unfortunately, the twitchy analogue stick movement is also present, meaning it's possible to fail a puzzle unintentionally. The vita's rear touchscreen has been used for simple little touches; as an example, in the loading screens, and when the screen is black with a quote, if it's touched coloured lights appear on the screen.

Other cool changes were both the additional Mudokons to save in the game and the fact that Abe could interact with multiple NPCs at one time, something that originally came round in the sequel, Abe's Exodus. Their increased numbers actually helped to reinforce the feeling that Mullok had a large workforce, since the original's 99 didn't project the same feeling of scale.

Retaining the quick-save feature was a great move. Quick Save is mapped to the select button (tap to save and hold to load), which makes it easy to drop a player controlled checkpoint in the middle of the level. This is fantastic in the portable version, as quick loading upon making a mistake instantly returns Abe to the Quick Save point, but if he dies and the action starts from a fixed checkpoint, it has to commit to a 10-to-20 second load. Saving that time is crucial to the whole experience being enjoyable during a commute.