[INDEX PAGE]

Previous rants:

Cliffhangers and Unconfirmed Sequels
Achievements
Rayman
Nintendo Adverts starring Ant & Dec
Nintendo DSi XL
--------------------
Once again, this is a rant heavily focusing on my personal interests but it's something I really want to address. Before we begin, I just want to say that to those who guessed Sonic would be my next rant, as good as that guess was, you were wrong. As a matter of fact, I haven't even thought of writing up a Sonic rant since not only have I not been a big fan of Sonic (I have Mega Collection for Gamecube and that's it), I've stayed far away from modern Sonic but Sonic 4 might make an exception if it's said to be really good. You may never see a Sonic rant from me but there's definitely Sonic rants elsewhere.

Anyway, for those who don't know, the console that truly got me to gaming was the Playstation. This particular console was home to many major titles such as Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Spyro the Dragon, Tekken, Oddworld and of course, Final Fantasy VII. Although some of these games were also available for other consoles, they were well recognised on the Playstation. However, where all of these games lucky in the later years? Sadly not and Oddworld was one of them.

What is it so bad that makes me think Oddworld has had terrible luck in the gaming industry? Let's start with the beginning. In the first game, Oddworld Inhabitants promised the gamers there would be five main games but we only ever had two which were Abe's Oddysee and Munch's Oddysee. No, Abe's Exoddus was NOT part of this planned quintilogy as some would have assumed it to be.

Of course, an explanation is in order as to why these games stand out to me more than the majority including Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and even Mario (no joke). You could argue that I'm being a "nostalgiafag" or even a fanboy when it comes to Oddworld but I love just about everything about the first two games. The visuals, the characters, the plot, the gameplay, the music, the atmosphere, EVERYTHING!

The imaginery this game had along with the character designs and the atmosphere was outstanding. I mean, does a Slig look like anything you've seen before? Can you relate Scrabs to an existing species? Ever heard of a race of green human-like creatures notable for their farting abilities? I can only answer no to them all. What made Oddworld even more original was the gameplay. While there have been many 2D platformers before Oddworld, none of them involved with speaking commands to communicate with NPCs. For these reasons, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was extremely rich in originality and still remains to me as one of the most original games ever made!

As for the sequel, it was a great follow-up and I'd say this was even better than the sequel for its enhanced gameplay, more secrets, more of a challenge and of course, flying sligs. Infact, what truly brought me to the Oddworld games was playing the demo version of this game found in one of Official Playstation Magazines' demo discs. This is another key factor to my gaming interests in the fifth generation but that's another story.

With five paragraphs praising the hell out of Oddworld, you must be wondering where I think things went wrong with the franchise? The first downfall to the series was moving to Microsoft after their first publisher GT Interactive were bought out by Infogrames. While the first two Oddworld games were for PC and PS1, the other two weren't. They were Xbox exclusive and that was a huge kick in the nuts for Oddworld fans who expected to get the games on PS2 as promised. Although I've yet to play these games myself for that very reason, this is one of the main reasons why they sold poorly in comparison to the other two.

As a matter of fact, Stranger's Wrath was so badly promoted that I never even acknowledged the existence of this game until a year after its release. What's really sad about this game are the publishers they got for this game and that's EA. Take note that this was before Guitar Hero was big and corrupted the whole of Activision, so EA was the worst company out there at the time. Yes, EA have improved over the last year or two but they didn't even push themselves to make sure Stranger's Wrath got the exposure it deserved and instead, they were probably too busy with rehashing Madden and FIFA. These games get more than enough promotion and then you see a game where the game makers take the time to make and don't sell as much. Goddamn the gaming industry!

After the release of Stranger's Wrath, Oddworld Inhabitants were more interested in making TV show and movies. The latter was that was what they wanted to all along. So after "shutting down" Oddworld Inhabitants, Lorne Lanning announced Citizen Siege, a sci-fi CGI movie. Whether it's related to Oddworld or not, this is a movie I definitely want to see when it comes out...Well, if it DOES come out, that is. This film was expected to be released in 2009 with two video game tie-ins. Wage Wars was meant to be released BEFORE Citizen Siege came out but here we are in 2010 and still hardly any information about the whole thing.

You might be wondering what's happened to the film? In a recent interview with Lanning, he stated it's on hold. So yeah, "shutting down" Oddworld Inhabitants to make way for films and shows and the only thing that came out from that was Citizen Siege and that's been put on hold.

This isn't to say Lorne Lanning completely gave up Oddworld. Maybe he wasn't happy at one point but in 2008, Maxis (yeah yeah, EA company) confirmed the return of the series but claimed it'll take years for the game to be finished. While it was great to hear another Oddworld game in the works, that's actually all we've heard about it since. Not once after have they told us anything else about the game or even given us additional screenshots of the game. Telling us some minor info once in a while will let everyone know they're still working on it and not completely forgetting about it.

The latest actions by Oddworld Inhabitants is the re-release of the first two games on PSN a few months ago. They claim to be re-releasing Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath on Steam and a few other places but let's not build our hopes just yet. While they said they're on their way, they've had quite a history of cancelled games. Not only that, they were originally going to be released at the end of 2009 so now it's pushed back to Q1 2010. Whenever it's due to be released, we'll just have to see it to believe it. If there's nothing on Steam by the time I get back from the Opeth concert I'm going to on 5th April, then it'll be another deadline failed for these games and more disappointment.

Not only did the other three main titles in the quintilogy not see the light of day but a few other Oddworld titles went down the drain too. Munch's Exoddus, SligStorm, Hand of Odd and The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot were all games Oddworld Inhabitants were to make but never did and have stated that they MIGHT finish them at some point. The keyword being might. If (big huge fucking IF) Maxis go through with the Oddworld game they're supporting, then it could be Hand of Odd we'll see coming out as that game was meant to be an online RTS and that sounds like Maxis' department.

The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot was going to be the next Oddworld game after Stranger's Wrath and it too had a great idea. It was announced in April but guess what happened a week later? It was cancelled due to Oddworld Inhabitants going down. However, there was an interview with Lanning about this game last year and stated they might go back to working on this game but this too is a big might.

I just want to see at least SOMETHING from Oddworld or anything by Lorne Lanning to show that they're still alive and not just all talk. The re-releases are nice but we need to hear more. Of course, these games take time to make but it would be nice if we were given something small like SligStorm which we were meant to have and was said to be only the length of Slig Barracks in Abe's Exoddus (that's shorter than Portal) or even another 2D platformer starring Abe. That would be fantastic! Of course, both of them are just wishful thinking but for another Abe game, a new platformer would be great considering how this particular genre has evolved with community levels.

There are fans who have tried to work on their own Oddworld games due to the misfortunes this franchise had and I'm not even sure if there's a single person out there who succeeded on making their own Oddworld game. If we got something like this, MANY would be so made up.

In conclusion, Oddworld had full potential but things didn't go well when they lost GT Interactive. Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath may not be bad games but for a non-Xbox player, there's no saying how good or bad these games are until they're supposedly re-released on Steam and PSN. However, that's IF they do get ported to them.

There's no guarantee of seeing another Oddworld coming out, despite Lorne Lanning constantly saying he's got something big to announce soon (he even admits to saying that too much) as well as the game Maxis are helping out with. All of this doesn't mean jack shit until they actually release something but I'll more than satisfied if another game is definitely on its way. Right now, they're on their way to becoming the next Duke Nukem Forever and a far bigger joke seeing they have several games to work on as well as a movie.

This rant made me play through Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus again so that's my nostalgia satisfied...For now.