YMMV / Oddworld

• Breather Boss: Elboze Freely from Stranger's Wrath has a predictable pattern, is generally easy to bag alive, and doesn't have Outlaws getting in the player's way.
• Broken Base: Debate rages on as to which is the superior version of Oddysee. Some fans prefer the original for its tighter design and grittier atmosphere, while others prefer New 'n' Tasty for its beautiful graphics and incorporation of elements from later games in the series, such as the ability to lead more than one Mudokon at a time.
  • A similar debate is going on with Exoddus and Soulstorm, with some preferring Exoddus due to its improved gameplay mechanics like the expanded gamespeak, exclusive areas and enemies and having more levity, while others prefer Soulstorm due to its greater story emphasis, characterization and new gameplay mechanics.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The Stranger is a Steef. Many saw it coming due to faces of the Steef statue and the Steef heads in Sekto's office looking very similar to the Stranger's.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After being shot at/chased/nearly eaten by various enemies in the Abe games, being able to command Mudokons and Fuzzles to fight back against the enemies in Munch's Oddysee is incredibly satisfying.
  • The Mine Car in Exoddus. In some levels, you can enter a wheel-like vehicle, and you become invincible, crushing everything in your path until you leave. Very satisfying if you get killed by Sligs constantly beforehand.
  • After the Stranger is able to breed his ammo, the player no longer has an incentive to keep enemies alive.
• Complete Monster:
  • Abe's Odyssee/New 'n' Tasty! & Soulstorm: Molluck is a Glukkon who runs RuptureFarms, a massive meat-processing plant that, like the other factories in the Magog Cartel, has hundreds of Mudokon slaves working within. When the animal population dwindles, Molluck decides to start using the flesh of Mudokons in his latest meat-based product. At RuptureFarms, it is common practice to kill all Mudokon workers on a block if even one of them escapes. After Abe escapes RuptureFarms, any Mudokons that the player leaves behind are killed. When Abe returns to the factory and shuts off the power core, Molluck calls an emergency meeting for the Glukkon executives and sets a timer to release poisonous gas throughout the rest of RuptureFarms. After capturing Abe, Molluck attempts to execute him by feeding him into a spinning blade. In Soulstorm, Molluck returns and pursues Abe and the rest of the escaped Mudokons, looking for revenge. When the other three Magog Cartel Glukkons suspect him of betrayal, he actually does betray them by bribing their guards to gun them all down.
  • Soulstorm: The Brewmaster is another Glukkon of the Magog Cartel who runs SoulStorm Brewery. The product his brewery creates is SoulStorm Brew, a highly addictive drink that is given to the many hundreds of Mudokon slaves in the other factories in order to keep them from escaping, as they will die slowly of withdrawal if they go more than a couple dozen hours without the brew. When Abe infiltrates the brewery, he learns that the primary ingredient in the drink is the tears of Mudokons, which are extracted by hooking them up to torture machines which give them electric shocks. Unlike his original incarnation, this version of the Brewmaster is played completely straight and is the sole individual responsible for the production and sale of the brew.
  • Stranger's Wrath: Sekto is an Oktigi who took over the body of the Olden Steef and hunted the rest of the Steef to near-extinction, keeping their heads as trophies. Becoming the head of Sekto Springs Bottled Water Company, Sekto dammed Mongo River to sell the water for a profit, causing the native Grubb population to suffer a deadly drought. If any Grubbs trespassed, Sekto had them killed and strung up as a warning. When protagonist Stranger is outed as the last surviving Steef, Sekto mounts an attack on the remaining Grubb villages, including the city of Last Legs. After Stranger fights his way to Sekto's office, the latter attempts to complete his collection of Steef heads by killing Stranger while taunting him over the death of his people.
• Contested Sequel:
  • While Munch's Oddysee has its fans, some complained about how repetitive it can get and how much easier it is compared to the Abe games.
  • Soulstorm is similarly divisive. Some enjoy the changes it made to Exoddus as well as the beautiful graphics and greater story emphasis, while others dislike the game due to its radical departure from the original game, broken AI and some added Scrappy Mechanics.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus, the player is berated for getting a bad ending. However if they kill every possible Mudokon they can, they're instead given infinite grenades or bullet immunity respectively with a congratulatory message... from the Glukkons.
  Whacking all those Mudokons was no accident. You twisted creep. Molluck commends you. Enjoy your bonus...!
• Demonic Spiders:
  • In Exoddus, the Fleeches are these leech-like creatures that will kill you with five hits. They're asleep, but wake up if you make anything resembling a sound (unless you're invisible). Problem is, the stage setup is such that if you don't perfectly time when you turn invisibility on, you're dead. When you have invisibility. They are very adept climbers and VERY fast movers in tight places. It is possible to outrun them if you have a lot of space to run, but that is not often the case.
  • During the first game, you will come across bats flittering about now and then. There is no indication that they are anything more than harmless background scenery - until you touch one and die instantly. They cannot be killed, and sometimes enjoy flittering around timing-based jumping puzzles. Thankfully, New N' Tasty undoes this by making bats vulnerable to the bottle caps Abe can now throw at any time.
  • Stranger's Wrath has Outlaw Bombers, who take out about 3/4 of your health if they hit you, are fast, and are a pain to capture (And are worth a lot when captured alive) because if you try to knock them out when their bombs are active, they explode and die.
  • In Munch's Oddysee, Vykker Sawbones. They kill you in 3 hits, are fast, have a lot of health, and usually come in groups.
  • Soulstorm turns Greeters into these thanks to changes to their mechanics. For one, they notice you if you just happen to be in their scanning field, unlike in Exoddus where standing idle in it was enough to not being noticed. Second, while in that game they started chasing you if they noticed you and killed you only if they get close, here they kill you outright a split of second after noticing you, even from full health. Your only real defense against them is smoke-screen, but craftable version is only temporary, so you still need to move quick around them.
• Disappointing Last Level: In Abe's Oddysee, the return to Rupture Farms is much easier than the first half of the game. The game is pretty generous with grenades and possessable Sligs, and the hidden areas aren't as frequent. Most of the hidden areas were from the return to Zulag 1, but a lot of the traps that made them difficult in the first run are gone.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Or in this game's case, "Do Not Do This Funny Thing". Some have had a lot more fun watching their fellow Mudokons die in creative ways just for the sheer hilarity. It helps that Abe's infinite lives allow you to easily die so the Mudokons respawn, meaning that you can still get the good ending while watching the Mudokons die a lot.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Alf. He was popular enough to have his own Character Blog on the official Oddworld site and a DLC campaign in New 'N Tasty where Abe has to save him.
• Even Better Sequel: Abe's Exoddus fixes some of the frustrating issues Abe's Oddysee had, like being able to call more than one Mudokon to follow you and quick saving.
• Game-Breaker: Possession just might be a tad overpowered in Munch's Oddysee, as the Security Orbs aren't as frequent of a nuisance, and the player rarely ends up in a situation where he doesn't have the Spooce needed to make Possesion Orbs.
• Goddamned Bats: Slurgs in Exoddus. If you step on them without sneaking, they scream, alerting nearby Fleeches and waking them up. Due to how abundant they are, it's very hard to go around without scaring one of them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Starlord from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) referred to a Kyln guard as a "big blue bastard".
  • Abe and Stranger have similar designs to the possible Unintentional Uncanny Valley victims of Genie and Beast.
  • Over two decades later, none other than Mario himself would star in a game with "Odyssey" in the title and a core gameplay mechanic centered around possessing enemies.
• Memetic Badass: Stranger for obvious reasons.
• Memetic Mutation: Director Phleg talking about Abe.
  Phleg: It ain't my fault! It's that Abe guy! First, Rupture Farms, now, Necrum Mines! There ain't no bones anywhere! No bones, no brew, I am totally screwed! My career is over, ohohohoh, and it's all that BLUE BASTARD'S FAULT!!!
  • Phleg screwed everything.^ExplanationIt's become somewhat common in YouTube Poop videos to take the "I am totally screwed!" line from above, cut out the "am totally" part, and then put a random clip afterwards.
  • Molluck also refers to Abe as "That blue bastard" in Soulstorm.
• Moral Event Horizon: The villains in each game have a defining moment of heinousness.
  • Abe's Oddysee: Molluck crossed it by deciding to harvest his own workers as food. Another potential one is that if you didn't save everybody in your first visit to Zulag 1, he will kill them all if Abe escapes.
  • Abe's Exoddus: The Brewmaster crosses it by strapping Mudokon slaves to torture devices in order to use their tears as an ingredient in SoulStorm Brew.
    • Even before then, the Glukkons had been using the bones of dead Mudokons to make an instantly addictive brew that they then gave away, pretending it was a gesture of goodwill, to lure in and force the now-dependent Mudokons into slavery.
  • Munch's Oddysee: The Vyykers cross it when they perform unethical testing experiments on the Fuzzles. Humphrey in particular ignores Madam Margaret's condition so he can use Munch for his own purposes (unless you get the bad ending).
  • Stranger's Wrath: Sekto is probably the most ruthless villain in the franchise. It's hard to say when exactly he crossed his, but three come to mind: 1. Hunting the Steeves to near-extinction. 2. Taking over the Olden Steef's body. Judging by the Olden Steef asking the Stranger if the water was free, it's possible that he was lucid during all of it too. 3. Driving the Grubs away from the river, killing anybody who trespasses, and has their corpses strung up on display to make a point.
  • The pre-release ARG for Oddworld: Soulstorm revealed that the reboots have taken the entire concept behind Soulstorm Brew and turned its entire existence into this trope writ large for both the Magog Cartel and the Vyykers. It was designed to not only be as addictive as possible, but for the withdrawl to be lethal so the Glukkons could easily keep the Mudokons enslaved with it.
  • Soulstorm's release turns this into the moment where a pre-recorded message of the Brewmaster explains the affects of Soulstorm Brew, with the above-mentioned ARG footage in the background.
• Narm: The ending theme for New 'n' Tasty known as Elodie Adams' "Born To Love You", while an undeniably awesome song from an amazing singer, doesn't exactly fit with the game's tone itself.
• Player Punch: The bad endings for the Abe and Munch games, which essentially all have the beings you are trying to save angry at you for leaving them so many to die and essentially just leave the main characters to die in horrific ways. This is followed by a developer message berating you for doing so terribly.
• Obscure Popularity: Oddworld achieved great critical and financial success on the Playstation, to the point that Abe became an unofficial Playstation mascot alongside Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Despite this, Oddworld remains a relatively obscure video game series, and it isn't quite as publically famous in the mainstream as the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games.
• Porting Disaster: The PC Oddbox version of Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath were this pre-patching. When a fantastic spec computer struggles with broken textures, water that doesn't render right, random crashes, and control problems with a HD re-release of a five-year-old Xbox game, something's horribly wrong...

  • The PS3 version of New N Tasty, while still playable, suffers from longer load times, sound glitches, occasional frame rate issues, and FMVs that can occasionally glitch out.

  • Polished Port: ...as opposed to the PS3 re-releases, which are completely bug free, work like a charm, and have some actual updated graphical quality to boot (like better fur on some of the furry stuff, like the stunks). A lot of these features were thankfully later added onto the PC port of Stranger's Wrath, and as of 2016 HD updates for Munch's Odyssey on PC having been rolling out on Steam (with owners of the original release receiving the full Munch's Odyssey HD for free once it's completed by the porting company).
• Scrappy Mechanic: Abe has no means of "safely" walking to the edge of a drop in the first game (unlike for example, Tomb Raider where Lara's walk stops her at the edge of any drops) which combined with backgrounds often showing a bit more ledge than is actually there, can and will result in you attempting to have Abe stand at the edge of a drop only for Abe to throw himself down it to his death.
• Signature Scene: The Abe's Moon scene and the first Shrykull transformation from Abe's Oddysee.
  • The Stranger's lion-like roar after defeating Sekto in Stranger's Wrath.
• That One Boss:
  • Packrat Palooka, especially if you are trying to capture him alive.
  • The Dual Boss fight against the two Gloktigi can be really frustrating- if you let them get close, they can spam you to death with their spinning melee attacks.
  • Fatty McBoomBoom is another pain in the ass, as he will often launch towards the player as he tries to aim, his Outlaw Mooks are relentless, and the space is too small to limit your hiding options.
• That One Level:
  • Scrabania and Paramonia in New N' Tasty. Quiksave Summing is mandatory if you want to pass these levels and for one reason: Elum. He moves too fast to see anything coming, the landmines in Scabania blend into the scenery and the timing for the jumps has to be so impeccably precise it's like a quicktime event with no prompts... and sometimes even pressing the jump button won't do anything as Elum often won't jump in time, which is a problem when the timing is so unforgiving even if the controls worked well. Oh and sometimes if you wait until the edge to jump like you have to on every other platform? Sometimes that wakes up a Slig at the wrong timing and you take an unavoidable death. You're at the very limited mercy of the game for these entire areas.
  • The final segment of Bonewerkz in Exoddus when you possess Director Phleg. It pretty much consists of having a Slig follow you through several screens to pull levers that open doors. Said levers also cause slow-moving saws to activate above you and a constant stream of Slogs to attack you. The gist is that you stand behind the Slig and constantly give it the "Kill 'Em!" command so that it keeps shooting the Slogs as they spawn, then move out of the way of the saws once the Slogs stop coming. Problem is, the timing for everything is so impeccably tight that it leaves almost zero room for error. Start moving a half a second too early? You get eaten by that last Slog that hadn't spawned yet. Start moving a fraction of a second too late? You get sawed to death. Give the "Kill 'Em!" command at just the wrong time? A Slog slips past your Slig during the break where he's not shooting and eats you. Try to get sneaky and stand next to the Slig so you can get the jump on the saws? He somehow shoots you. Even with Quiksave Scumming, this segment is still a nightmare to complete. Another word of note is that if you enter the invincibility cheat code, people you possess don't count, so good luck.
  • Escaping Sekto's dam Stranger's Wrath definitely qualifies, because it'll take a dozen tries and a few handfuls of your own hair to get through. You've got mere minutes to dash through a gauntlet of enemies and difficult platforming, where you have to find the perfect balance of fight and flight. Spend too much time fighting the gangs of guards? You'll run out your timer for sure. Try to dash past every skirmish? Enjoy being gunned down from behind!
  • The Loading Dock in Munch's Oddysee. There's a section of the level swarming with Vykker Sawbones, which can kill you in two hits. Munch is the only one with any offensive prowess in that portion of the level, since Abe can't possess enemies without getting caught and attacked.
  • The Blimp level in Soulstorm seems to be an early showstopper for many. Sligs everywhere, ton of snipers while you're also bombarded by titular blimp. The patch released soon after improved the cover in the level, but it still can be frustrating to go through. To top it off, there is a single mudokon in a secret zone that you must reach in a certain time or else the door won't work, not that the game tells you. Therefore, if you want best ending, you must speedrun the first half or so of the level on top of everything else. Enjoy!
  • Necrum is another contender from Soulstorm. The very beginning of the level throws you in heavily monitored section followed by passage with two Greeters, and a lone mudokon you must rescue from all of this. The next passages require an absolutely perfect timing as you lead the groups of mudokons between various saws and drills descending at you at regular intervals. Special mention goes to a lone mudokon you must lead to a portal with an absolute precision through sequences of rapidly descending saws just because he's separated from much closer bird portal by a gap too big to jump over for him. The last stage is dozens and dozens of monkey bars with some truly hard jumps and a segment where you have to rescue mudokons from snipers. Ugh.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: With Abe's Oddysee being such a classic, it was inevitable that New 'N Tasty wouldn't live up to everyone's expectations. But the changes to the controls and the glitches at launch (both of which were partially rectified by patches) were scratching the surface; the entire audio and visual presentation, and even various cutscenes, were significantly overhauled or completely altered outside of the music. RuptureFarms got hit the hardest, going from a grungy and dirty environment to something a lot more brighter, polished and sci-fi looking. Opinions were rather mixed, and the lukewarm reception put the planned remake of Exoddus squarely into Development Hell until Spring 2021.
• Troubled Production: New 'N Tasty suffered from terrible bugs on its initial release, and the other console versions were hit with many delays. The Wii-U version was hit especially hard.
  • The same happened with Soulstorm, where a combination of self-funding issues, a large amount of outsourcing and a pandemic ended up with multiple delays and a release that was hampered by bugs, which were fixed within the first 2 months.
• Ugly Cute: This series runs on it.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: For some, the "Interns" from Munch's Oddysee. Although they are antagonists who attempt to attack Abe and Munch, they are notably similar to Abe himself, being slaves with their Mouth Stitched Shut who are kept subservient via an addiction (in this case, the music being pumped through their headphones, according to Word of God). It can be fairly horrible to watch them get torn to shreds by Fuzzles while they desperately attempt to scream.
  • Also, in that game, Lulu, the Dim-witted Glukkon that foolishly started a "charity" to try and con other Glukkons into making him rich. While he is trying to scam people to get ahead in life, he isn't shown doing anything particularly evil with the money he gets with Abe and Munch's help, and is generally so pathetic many can't help but like him. Not helping that the Good Ending depicts him as being homeless and desperate after Abe makes him spend all of his Moolah on the Gabbiar can.
• Values Resonance: The series features a strong anti-corporate message where business is conducted by utterly immoral execs who are butchering entire species into extinction, enslaving and torturing their employees with zero regard for their rights, and polluting and destroying the natural world. With increased concern around creeping corporatism in modern American culture, corrupt practices and sleazy laws that value profit over people, and veganism becoming an increasingly popular lifestyle choice amid concerns about animal welfare and the meat industry's contributions to an impending climate crisis, the game's messages are more relevant in The New '20s than ever before. Furthermore, the game underscores why these big corporations came into power in the first place: the apathy of the people who could have stopped them.
• Villain Decay: In the first game the Glukkons are going to have their slaves chop up their other slaves and sell them all as meat, killing and eating every Mudokon they could get their hands on in what amounts to genocide. In the second game, they have blind Mudokons dig up the bones of already-dead Mudokons as a secret ingredient in a vending machine drink, and use electric shock to make other Mudokons cry as the other ingredient. It's more cruel in some ways, but they're not killing anyone or trying to rebuild Rupture farms. In the third game, the Glukkons do things like trying to cut down a forest to make toothpicks. At this point some of the Mudokons have even willingly joined the Glukkons to make some money!
  • This seems to be intentional. Molluck was an evil bastard who enjoyed the challenge of killing his workforce. His subordinates in Exoddus don't really care about what happens to the Mudokons, so long as the moolah train keeps rolling in, with the exception of the Brewmaster, who is obsessed with torture to make the best brew. In the third, everyone's just happy with the Mudokons being slave labour. It's the Vykkers who are looking for some suffering to inflict on everyone.
  • Averted as of Soulstorm. It's first teaser trailer shows the Vykkers performing horrifying experiments on Mudokon slaves while developing Soulstorm Brew. The whole sequence heavily invokes imagery of Dr. Mengele and The Holocaust. The game itself has the Glukkons treated with a similar level of respect how they were in the first game.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: For a series of platformers (except Stranger's Wrath) that run on Ugly Cute and Black Comedy, this series has a lot of very dark themes and shows a lot of graphic death and dismemberment. The only thing keeping it from being full on horror genre is that it abides by Bloodless Carnage. In fact, some discs of Munch's Oddysee has an E rating on it instead of the original T rating.
• The Woobie: Poor Abe... all of the sympathetic characters in the series are this, really.
  • Munch being the last of his kind hits the player hard in the opening cutscene.
  • The Stranger is implied to have Survivor's Guilt over the Steef genocide, to the point where he renounced his heritage.
  • The player knows what the Olden Steef has been through from just his one scene. He spent years under Sekto's control as he used his body to hunt his own people to extinction. Asking the Stranger if the water was free heavily implies that completely lucid during Sekto's reign too.

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