I'm a long time Oddworld fan, who sadly happened to miss out on Stranger's Wrath (often considered the best in the series) despite owning an original Xbox, so the chance to finally get the game and on Steam no less was a dream come true. But as they often do, this dream turned into a nightmare. Released during the first day of Steam's annual holiday sale, the Oddbox and all of its contents was marked down a whopping 50%, an amazing bargain for a 4-pack of games that includes 2 newly released titles. This should have been the first sign that something was wrong, very very wrong.
Not taking the pre-purchase initiative I should have by checking the forums, I bought Stranger's Wrath at what I felt to be a bargain price, installed it...and was greeted with a port so terribly optimized it would make baby Raptor Jesus cry tears of blood.
To begin, let's talk just how barebones a port this is. The game features absolutely nothing over its Xbox counterpart. And by nothing I mean nothing. The extent of graphical adjustments come from the option to choose "Low, Medium, High, or Ultra" resolution settings (not even giving numbers, and no it doesn't natively support 1920x1200 or widescreen, you have to change a text file to get that) and to change from fullscreen to windowed, and these options are available only when launching the game. Oh but don't bother playing full screen and with any resolution above medium (well, I've gotten it to work ok at high), as the game becomes an unplayable mess, with the framerate frequently dipping to 10-15 frames per second at best. Oh and did I mention the visual anomalies and glitches? Just take a look at these screenshots I took while playing:
To quote Red Letter Media: "What's wrong with your faaaace?"
So.Much.Screen.Tearing.
Not pictured: All the "snow" I've had to endure in the game, well..at least that fits the holiday sale theme.
Navigating menus sucks to. There's no mouse support for them, you have to do it all using the keyboard's arrow keys, also you have to input your name with the onscreen keyboard..also using the arrow keys. I have heard that the controller support for it is great though (which from what I understand can't be said of the port of Munch's Oddysee).
Speaking of Munch, while I did not purchase the Steam port of his one and only title, I have read things just as bad if not worse about it. From the game constantly crashing just 5 minutes into the game to not being able to properly control Abe with a gamepad (read: at all), it sounds like a lazy job all around.
But wait, there's more!
Supposedly they are shocked to find so many people having issues with the games, stating that:
We’ve heard there are some technical issues being encountered, specifically within Munch’s Oddysee and Stranger’s Wrath. We had these games extensively tested and they both came back clean, so this has come as quite the shock to us.
I'm sorry, but you CANNOT have issues this widespread and this bad and claim nothing came up during testing. I find it hard to believe the games were tested at all given the poor quality of the ports.
Not only that, but the team all but confirmed that the issues are indeed because they rushed the collection out for the holidays, as stated:
"... the PC version doesn't have the HD models is the PS3 version isn't done yet, and we wanted to get the Oddboxx out this Holiday Season."
Right there, they wanted it out this holiday season. I'd have been more than fine waiting until April and receiving a much more polished title, be it for Steam or the PS3 (which looks to be the far superior version right now) than this mess of a release.
Oh but don't worry, they're planning to fix things up, maybe even add in the enhancements the PS3 release is getting...maybe...for a price:
"Oddworld Inhabitants @Lachlan no idea where you heard that from, but it's untrue. We are considering updating the PC version of Stranger inline with the PS3 version, however there MAY only be a SMALL charge, but that's all still very much undecided."
So in summation: the currently released Oddboxx on Steam is a terribly optimized mess rushed out to make some quick bank during the big holiday sale that will hopefully be fixed later..and likely at a price. But hey...at least it has achievements *rolls eyes*
Sources:
http://www.oddworld.com/?p=327
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=168945249809155&id=1036703830
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=447 (just look at all the complaints)
