10 Sequels That Are Better Than The Originals (2)

Yep.  It's time for the second part of my 10-part series-a-majig. Where I count down a list of sequels that are a million times better than the games that came before. So, what game will we be looking at this time?

#9: Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus (PC)

That's right, it's none other than the sequel to one of the stranger games to ever exist (but no less entertaining because of it), Abe's Oddysee!



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You know...Abe's Oddysee!



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By Oddworld Inhabitants?

You play a skinny blue alien guy who escapes a meat factory? Get shot at and eaten a lot? Any of that ring a bell?

You sorry excuse for a human being.

In Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, you play as Abe. A Mudokon slave in a gigantic meat processing plant called Rupture Farms. Rupture Farms is run by the evil cigar-smoking Glukkons who are in a panic because of falling profits due to dropping populations of the local wildlife they've been chopping up for their meat products. Molluck the Glukkon is the CEO of Rupture Farms and knows just what to do about that little problem. Chop up the workers!

Abe overhears their plan while working late at the factory, and is understandably a bit freaked out. Thus, the goal for the first part of the game is escaping from Rupture Farms and rescuing your fellow slaves along the way. You do this by utilizing the interesting "Gamespeak" function. Each of the number keys is assigned to a different phrase that you can make Abe say. 1 is "hello," 2 is "follow me," 3 is "wait," etc. When you come across a Mudokon, you alert him by saying "hello," then get him to follow you to a portal where you can free him. In most cases this is easier said than done, as getting them to said portals often requires navigating a multitude of death traps.

Abe also has the ability to chant. Chanting opens the escape portals, and allows Abe to take control of certain enemies, most notably the Sligs. Sligs are the security guards of Rupture Farms. They carry machine guns and will shoot you (and any Mudokons who happen to be following you) on sight. Fortunately, they're extremely vulnerable to each others' bullets. UNfortunately, another part of Rupture Farms' security involves floating orbs that painfully zap Abe whenever he tries chanting. Sometimes they can be destroyed, but other times the lack of chanting is part of the puzzle.

You get infinite lives, so you're free to experiment with each area for as long as you need. But be careful if you've recently rescued some particularly difficult Mudokons. If you die before reaching a checkpoint, they'll get reset and you'll have to do it again.

And again.

And again.

AND AGAIN.

AND AGAIN.

Even when you have a certain puzzle DOWN TO A SCIENCE,  you'll end up getting killed by your own carelessness inches away from finishing it and having to do it all over again five more bloody times. This is a TREMENDOUS pain in the ASS if you're going for all 99 Mudokons. Hell, it's hard enough just FINDING some of the little bastards. There's a secret area with 2 of them HIDDEN ON LITERALLY THE VERY FIRST SCREEN OF THE GAME. I'm talking the MINUTE you get control of Abe for the first time.

I never even beat the game without cheating until a couple years or so ago, and I still got the bad ending for not rescuing enough Mudokons. 

Everybody who's into video games always has that one obscure game that defined their childhood and nobody else had heard of. (Sure, we had Nintendo, SEGA, and all the other big titles, but these are different.)  Abe's Oddysee was mine.

So. We've established that the first game was already amazing to start. How does Abe's Exoddus manage to top it?

Well, it's about 3 times longer, to start. That's right. In Abe's Oddysee, you had to rescue 99 Mudokons. In Exoddus? There's three. Fucking. Hundred. And they're just as deviously hidden.

Abe's Exoddus, takes place minutes after the good ending of Abe's Oddysee. Abe gets a whack on the head following an accident and has a vision of 3 Mudokon ghosts, who warn him that ancient Mudokon burial grounds are being plundered by another Glukkon-owned company, Soulstorm Brewery. One of Soulstorm Brew's main ingredients is Mudokon bones, hence the grave robbing. The objective of the game is to rescue the rest of the Mudokon slaves and send Soulstorm the way of Rupture Farms. To do this, Abe makes use of quite a few new abilities.

You can chant to control nearly every enemy you encounter, barring the presence of an anti-chant orb. The vicious monsters that tried to eat you in the first game? You can use them as weapons now. And you can also control the Glukkons themselves! They even have their own Gamespeak commands. (Abe can also chant to take possession of his own farts.)

The cutscenes are also more character-focused than the previous game. There's a lot more voice-acting, and the dialog puts this game in my Top 3 funniest games to ever exist. (Right up there with Psychonauts and the Portal games.) Oddysee had an overall fairly dark story with a few little jokes here and there. Exoddus is pretty much the reverse of it. Less dark, more dark humor.

Oh, and the Mudokons have feelings now. Sad and angry ones won't follow you unless you give 'em a pat on the shoulder, but slapping them will drive the sad ones to suicide and the angry ones will fight back. Crazy ones need to be slapped or they'll keep running around like idiots and waking up any nearby Sligs. There's also the blind Mudokons, who will keep walking in a direction until you tell them to stop, regardless of any present dangers.

And, of course, they improved a number of game mechanics that made the original game a right pain in the ass. You can now speak to ALL Mudokons on the screen by using the "All o' ya!" command. So instead of painstakingly guiding each Mudokon to the escape portals, you can lead an army of them! If you die shortly after rescuing them, there is no longer any need to worry about doing it all over again, because there is now A QUICK-SAVE FEATURE. This option may easily be the best addition ever.

Graphics and gameplay-wise, Exoddus is actually not too noticeable an improvement over Oddysee, but in this case, all the subtle changes and improvements definitely make it a worthy sequel.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (PC)

 I suppose you remember my Dead Space review, where I had this to say on the subject of what makes something scary:

"Scary is being all alone with no weapons in a dark room hiding from something that is actively trying to murder you. Scary is hearing that thing moving around and having no idea whether or not it is even near you until you step on its toes."

Well, it turns out there is an entire game based on that EXACT concept, called Amnesia: The Dark Descent. That's right. There's a horror game that's ACTUALLY SCARY. And not just for 10 minutes like Silent Hill 2.

Amnesia is played in a first-person perspective, and involves solving puzzles, finding journal pages to regain your memory, and dealing with horrifying monsters while trying not to go batshit crazy. (Think of it as H.P. Lovecraft's MYST.)

The catch? You can't fight. At all. So if you something sees you and starts chasing you, you're pretty much fucked if you turn around. So you hide in the dark. But if you stay in the dark for too long, your sanity drops and makes the controls and screen go all weird (among other things). If you look at the monsters for too long, sanity drops. If you witness paranormal events, sanity drops. If your sanity drops too low while a monster is looking for you, it becomes more likely to find you.

Prior to playing, I had heard a great deal about how terrifying the game is. Of course, given that I've heard a great deal about how terrifying a lot of things are, only to be met with severe disappointment, I can be forgiven for my initial response consisting solely of the word "psh," followed by an explanation of how just about nothing is capable of inducing a legitimate fearful response in me.

A short time later, I downloaded the demo from Steam to see what it was all about. Sure enough, it was pretty much what I expected. Generic horror cliches and jump scares. The atmosphere is very reminiscent of Silent Hill though, very dark with occasional otherworldly sounds.

You are a man named Daniel, who- for some reason- has given himself amnesia, and awoken in a mysterious castle. Luckily, Daniel's former self had the foresight to leave messages explaining the situation, and ordering you to find and kill a man named Alexander. Pages from Daniel's diary are found throughout the castle, and explain more about how Daniel  came to be in this situation. Entering certain areas also triggers flashbacks as Daniel regains more of his memory.

For the most part, as I mentioned, the castle is extremely dark which takes a toll on Daniel's sanity. You can find tinderboxes here and there that allow you to light candles, torches and other sources of light. This has the advantage of keeping your sanity up, but each tinderbox is single-use and may be needed in the future, and turning on lights makes monsters able to see you easier. Additionally, you have a lantern, which provides a portable source of light for areas that have no candles or the like. The lantern runs on oil, though, so you need to use it sparingly or it will run out at the most inopportune moments.

I slowly made my way through the demo, up until a certain point. At this certain point, the game went much darker than normal, and the hallway inexplicably became flooded with about a foot of water.

"Oh, please." I said. "Water? Really?" No sooner had I whipped out my lantern and begun to step toward the nearest flooded room when I heard splashing that was most certainly NOT coming from me. I turned around and saw large splashes in the water....moving...TOWARD ME!?  Yes. I was being chased by water-dwelling monster that was FUCKING INVISIBLE.

Initial reaction: RUN THE FUCK AWAY! RUN! HOLY SHIT! RUN! RUN! RUN! OH GOD, WHY IS THERE A GATE IN THE WAY WHO PUTS A GATE IN THE MIDDLE OF A GODDAMN HALLWAY OH SHIT I'M BEING EATEN BY SOMETHING I CAN'T EVEN SEE! WHAT THE FUCK!?

And then I died. At which point the game's death screen helpfully pointed out, "STAY OUT OF THE WATER." No shit. So there's boxes and stuff you have you jump to in order to not get eaten alive by the invisible water monster. Easy enough. I'm certainly not going to make the same mistake agai-

*Splash*

WHY CAN'T I JUMP ON THE BOX!? SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! IT'S RIGHT FUCKING BEHIND ME AND I CAN'T GET ON THE BOX!

And that was the most heart-stopping moment in the DEMO. Running like hell up to a box and realizing you can't jump onto it. (You have to jump on the smaller one NEXT to it first.) The demo ends shortly after this area.

Realizing that a game had just effectively given me multiple heart attacks without resorting to jump scares and horror cliches, I hurriedly purchased the full version, eager to continue the experience. (On sale on Steam at the time for about $10.)

I was not disappointed. At all. On several occasions I had to take off my headphones to find out if the terrified, heavy breathing was coming from me or Daniel.

As a game in itself, it's actually fairly decent. There's reasonably challenging puzzles and fetch quests, and I needed to consult a guide a few times near the end to figure out just what to do, but the final encounter was severely disappointing. I know it's unreasonable to expect a massive boss fight in a game that has already firmly established itself as a "run and hide" sort, but something involving more than 3 mouse clicks would have been nice.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a surprisingly good game with one or two minor drawbacks. Every bit as terrifying as I had been told, which is certainly a first, and overall very entertaining to play.

9/10