Oddworld? More like “OCDWorld”
I know I’m monopolizing EMB, but it’s my week off so I feel I should get it all out now…
After beating Oddworld:Stranger’s Wrath, I took another look at Munch’s Oddysee, the first Xbox game I bought. It had started out well with amazing cutscenes, quirky characters, and these cute-ass furballs called Fuzzies that get really hellish when aggravated. I had quit playing it a while back having gotten bored with the increasingly tedious levels, but I recently realized that I was only two levels from the end so being the completist that I am, I decided to finish the game.
Boy would I like to have that time back! Not only were the last two levels some of the most tedious and frustrating gaming I’ve ever endured, but then because I had saved enough Mudokens, Fuzzies and Eggs, I was “treated” to two more “bonus” missions. The word bonus is in quotes because these “bonus” missions were even worse than the previous two! But I had to finish them in order to see the ending!
Why were these levels so bad? Well, how about this for fun? Using a mechanical arm to pick up crates of eggs and drop them into a portal. DOZENS OF CRATES OF EGGS! They did this several times; rooms with 15 to 27 crates of eggs that needed to be loaded one at a time into a transporter. Couple this with some bad platforming and room after room where the puzzle was solved by possessing a bad guy and shooting everybody else and you’ll understand why there are piles of my own hair next to my chair.
Here’s a shot of the most boring time in recent memory that I’ve ever had playing a video game:
The most insidious part of all this is that I meticulously loaded every single crate because I didn’t want to end up with bad “quarma” and get a bad ending. I swear this game (and to a lesser extent the other Oddworld games) was created by and for people with Obsessive Compusive Disorder.
And now I know I have a problem.
The ending was indeed awesome. It was really funny and really touching, but was it worth it? Well considering I got a DVD containing all of the Oddworld movies when I pre-ordered Stranger, no it wasn’t. I’m not left with a sense of satisfaction and closure, I’m left with a befeebled brain and a newly found fear that I have a mental disorder that needs medical attention.
