Release Date: 2014 | Players: Single-player | Genre:
Cinematic platformer, action-adventure |
Console: All Major Consoles | Author: The Old School Game Vault
The Intro:
There’s been a spate of remakes of classic games recently.
Another World is one of the games that has gotten the remake treatment.
However, after playing through Another World, or Out of The World, as it is
called in some places, you might wonder – what exactly constitutes a classic?
Is a game being old enough to classify it as a ‘classic’? Or does the game in
question have to be any good for it to get this kind of a tag? Because if gameplay
is a factor, Another World is by no means a classic.
Not Impressed:
Look, it’s not a completely terrible game. It does have a
few things going for it – a unique art style that is impressive when you
consider what consoles the game originally ran on, and it even has a fairly
interesting story that’s told without any dialogue. But unfortunately, since
it’s a game, it has to be fun to play before you throw around terms like
‘classic’. To put it simply, Another World just isn’t fun to play.
The Game Play:
You play as Lester Chaykin, a scientist who finds himself on
a deserted alien planet when an experiment goes wrong. Not much is made
immediately clear about what is happening on this planet, and the ambiguity
draws you in. You are nudged in the right direction via a series of sounds and
on-screen cues, instead of relying on cutscenes. This is all great, and this
kind of promise is exactly what makes what comes after unbearable.
Once you actually start controlling Lester, you’ll realize
how broken the control scheme is. At various points, Lester seems to act of his
own accord. You may want him to walk or run or jump, and sometimes he just
stands there. Suddenly find yourself in a firefight and frantically press the
fire button? If you’re lucky, Lester will fire. Or maybe he won’t, leading to
yet another demise. When a game is difficult, you expect to die a lot. But in a
game like Another World, you’ll die a lot simply because the controls don’t
work at random times.
The puzzle design In
Another World is decidedly average, but still the puzzles give you a sense of
accomplishment when you manage to figure one out, thanks in no small part to
the controls. You will have plenty of moments when you contemplate throwing the
game away and bashing your controller against your console. This is not to say
that games which don’t have a clear walkthrough are bad. Quite the opposite in
fact – games which put you into an environment and expect you to figure out
things on your own can be quite exciting and challenging, but not when they’re
implemented like this.
If you want to put a player in charge of someone who’s
suddenly been transported to an alien planet and want them to experience the
confusion of the protagonist, it is understandable. But you need to make sure
that at the very least, players find some connection to the game or to the
character. If your character moves around erratically, may or may not jump or
shoot for no particular reason, and isn’t particularly nimble in a game that
involves a significant amount of platforming, you’re doing something wrong.
There is definitely something to be said for a game having a
great story and pleasing art design. When you add those elements onto a
competent gameplay product, you can elevate something average into a product
that is remembered for a long, long time. But in a gameplay medium that
requires the player interaction to tell the story, you need to have good
gameplay. There simply isn’t no substitute. You look at the success of the
Mario series of games, for example. That is an entire franchise that has been
built purely on good gameplay and has little to no story elements to speak of.
That is the reason why the Mario series has made a special place in the hearts
and minds of so many gamers.
The Conclusion:
While you might have played Another World back on the
old-school Amiga and therefore have a nostalgic fondness for it, there is no
way you could defend the same product decades later. Now that we have all of
this great technology, why not go in and fix some of the elements that the
original game lacked? Instead, we have the exact same game with the exact same
control scheme, but this time on the newer generation of consoles. The
developers should’ve gone back to the drawing board and presented Another World
to a new generation of gamers with suitable adaptations, like the team that
worked on the Oddworld remake managed to do. Instead, Another World 20th
Anniversary Edition is the same old world, with the same generic puzzles and
terrible controls.
Game Score: 4.0 Out
of 10
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Game Trailer:
