"A masterpiece of design, slavery and laughing gas. Ha ha ha ha ha! *shoot* Darn..."

Oddworld is truly an odd world, as the title would suggest. In a meat processing place, the workers being kept there are about to be turned into the very product they are processing. Oh no! How could this be? Generic emphatic gesture of shock and bewilderment! Oh the humanity! Fortunately, a bright little worker by the name of ''Abe'' (cruel parents!) overhears the plans and decides to go about saving not only himself but also his colleagues in a display of solidarity not seen since the days of the Miners Strike in 1984 or when Spandau Ballet got back together for one last tour.

Your mission, should you choose to purchase it, is to rescue yourself and these slaves and get the heck away from that factory! Unfortunately, you have no weapons with which to achieve this end, so you cannot shoot your way out. However, your captors, being weak-minded oafs, are susceptible to being possessed through Abe coming out with a peculiar-sounding chant. Perhaps they just want him to shut up - this sound is exceptionally irritating. Perhaps it's a swarm of magic bees (that's what it sounds like). Either way, chanting is your only weapon. Abe has no big gun. Perhaps it's already in the meat products... Killing the Sligs which block your way requires ingenuity and *gasp* actual thinking, so if you have a problem with thinking then you might want to steer clear of this, since the whole game is basically one big think-fest, albeit a very pretty one.

The game is divided into huge, sprawling levels, which you must negotiate. It is side-scrolling and has a sort of platform-action type appearance. Picking up the slaves along the way and possessing the Sligs to make them shoot each other and explode is how you need to beat it. The levels have lots of intricate details but can look rather muddy at times, which is certainly in keeping with the atmosphere of the setting but does not always make it easy to see clearly what is happening on-screen. The characters are all very well-designed though and distinguishing between the different types of character is easy at a glance.

There are plenty of executable commands in the game, the most suitable of which you must figure out for yourself according to the circumstances in order to progress. The game starts out easy enough but puzzles gradually become more difficult. Later stages are very difficult to the uninitiated. You can throw objects, speak to the slaves you have rescued (through a variety of different dialogue), perform a variety of standard movement types (running, crouching, jumping and so on) and even fart (yes really). With so many options to choose from, negotiating the levels can be very complex, with a selection of different commands necessary to successfully overcome each obstacle. Hilariously, in certain parts of the game, a laughing gas is released which makes the slaves you have liberated all start laughing manically. This obviously alerts the Sligs to your presence, and getting them to stop can be difficult!

All in all, I would recommend this game highly. It has a large niche following and with good reason. Track it down and get those Slig heads exploding!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/21/04