Another World

by Piyoz on May 9th, 2014

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Another World is a cult classic adventure platformer created by a French guy named Éric Chahi way back in merry old 1991. Right off the bat I can tell you that Another World deserves all the praise that it received. From its minimalist approach to game play to its use of color and world design, it’s really something special. That’s not my sole purpose here.

Playing through Another World brought back many conversations had in our late and dear Rare Gamer forums about replay value in games. I’m going to funnel those thoughts into an article with Another World as an example.

The premise of Another World is that a young, red-headed scientist named Lester falls victim to a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong. Instead of turning into a spider or blue Jesus, poor Lester is transported to another planet where he must fight for his survival and return home. You control Lester as he jumps left and right and ocasionally shoots a gun. Like I said, the game play is pretty minimal. It’s also pretty unclear.

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Another World is the kind of game that doesn’t tell you a damn thing. In the very first area where Lester arrives, there are menacing slugs that kill you as soon as you touch them. The game doesn’t prompt you not to touch them. You learn this from getting killed again and again, eventually developing a way on your own on how to avoid them. It’s a learning sort of game. The player must make his/her own way through the game instead of being strung along like a dog on a leash.

The problem with this is the Donkey Kong 64 Syndrome. Big worlds whose puzzles require solutions that aren’t clear at all. For example, Another World never explains how the laser pistol works. There’s no command for it on the menu or anything. I couldn’t advance through an alien prison castle because I didn’t know how to create a shield or a charge blast. I didn’t even know that I was supposed to do these things! The player is given no direction or guide at any point.

This works at some points when the goal is to navigate through a watery cave and go into the city all on my own. This DOESN’T work when I encounter an alien dog beast which chases me to the edge of a cliff. What am I supposed to do here? Turns out you have to jump off the cliff. You end up grabbing onto a vine that swings you in the other direction. And how was I supposed to know that any of this was going to happen? I guess the flaw of a game letting me learn without assistance is that it’s so easy to get lost in a world of simple colors and shapes. What’s the difference between a piece of scenery and the solution to a puzzle? It’s impossible to tell sometimes.

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As much as I enjoy traversing the alien caverns and citadels, the shooting also feels strange. I know that I want to shoot the big, brown alien dude at the other end of the hall. I just can’t coordinate my hands with Lester to make that happen as easily as I should. At times, the platforming and the shooting end up being more aggravating and enigmatic than anything.

This brings us to my point about games aging. Today, Another World is considered a classic of early platformer/shooter hybrids. I totally believe the influence that this game had on successive generations of games. But that’s exactly the problem. Shooting games over the years have grown and diversified. Whether they are first-person or third-person, 2D or 3D, shooters have grown up far past what Another World is. Platformers and adventure games have done the same. Everything from Super Mario to indie puzzle platformers have taken Another World’s game play and brought it to such a higher level that coming back to this seems archaic. The quality of Another World hasn’t changed. The quality of game play mechanics that we’ve come to experience has changed.

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Video games are not like wine. Or Asian women. They do not grow greater in quality over years. It’s like the day I played the Wii GoldenEye remake and then switched over to the N64 Rare original. Yeah. It’s a rough transition.

As a concept I love Another World. As a complete piece of software, Another World flawed in a way that later shooters and later platformers have excelled. It certainly deserves its throne as a classic platformer/adventure/shooter. It is, however, a game with some technical flaws with some very interesting ideas and creativity put into it.

4/5

Something Unique

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1 Comment

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  1. Tioel-san @

    An interesting look at a game i’ve been meaning to try out for a while.

    The lack of any tutorials or early signposting has always been something that has bugged me in games like this and “Heart Of Darkness”. In the latter, you can literally die on the first screen of the game if you don’t know to jump off of the spaceship before it explodes! Luckily the game also gives you hints if you fail one too many times, so it’s a little better than Another World then…

    Abe’s Oddysee and Exoddus managed to do it right from what I recall. They signposted new elements but not always in directly obvious ways.