Oddworld New 'N' Tasty out on Vita tomorrow

**Becky** Mon Jan 18, 2016 9:20 pm

Oddworld New 'N' Tasty is a HD remake of the original Abe's odyssey and has graced the PS4 and PS3 and tomorrow finishes off the PlayStation family with the Vita, it is cross buy so if you have Oddworld from PS+ you can download the Vita version for free. The developers over at Oddworld Inhabitants have been working hard to make the game as amazing as possible for the handheld, read the all the info below.

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Is it time for you to return to Oddworld?

For starters, we’ve reworked the controls considerably. Heaps of attention has been lavished on the individual buttons and sticks – tweaking the analogue dead zones, doubling up the shoulder buttons and making sure that Abe always goes exactly where you want him to no matter what. Want to play New ‘n’ Tasty on a plane or a train? We’ve got you covered.

So, the two ‘old school’ control settings from the PS4 version have been made the default. This means that X hops you forward, not up; and the left analogue stick is used to walk, not run. For the latter to happen, you hold down the R trigger, and, similarly, the L trigger is used to sneak. Push both triggers to chant. It’s a fluid, intuitive and very ‘digital’ feeling system that takes all of ten seconds to master, and then you’ll wonder why we didn’t do that at first!

Elsewhere, we’ve kept the free aiming and throwing on the right analogue stick, but once aiming, a tap of the R trigger throws whatever Abe’s holding. Want to drop something on the ground instead of whizzing it through the air? Just tap the centre of the front touch screen.

Gamespeak – the revolutionary way to interact with other characters and puzzles in the game that helped make the original PlayStation version such a hit – is on the digital pad. Up’s for “Hello”, Right’s for “Follow me” – you get the idea. Want to whistle, laugh or even perform one of Abe’s hysterical farts? Simply use Triangle as a Gamespeak shift button. Again, once you’ve tried it this way, it makes perfect sense.

Of utmost importance, however, is the fact that we’ve retained the instant QuikSave and QuickLoad from the PlayStation 4 version: tap SELECT to QuikSave wherever you are in the game, and hold the same button to reload. It might not help your speedrunning times if you die and have to reload, but it removes any frustration that a set of three rapidly oscillating meat grinders might otherwise enforce. It also means you can Quiksave, do something else with the Vita and come back to it at exactly the same point in the game.

And speaking of speedrunning, we’ve been humbled by the response to our leaderboards in New ‘n’ Tasty on PS4 and PS3, and we’re delighted to announce that speedrunning on the go is present and correct for PS Vita. But we’ve not stopped there – we’ve been carefully watching how people have been playing the game, and thrown in a few minor revisions here and there to throw you off a little.

We’ve also worked tirelessly to ensure that the visual experience on the PS Vita matches up as closely as it can with the other versions. We’ve made the game look a little grittier – gone is the bloom and glow leaving an aesthetic that closer resembles the 1997 classic – while tweaking every single area in the game to suit the platform.

We’ve also improved the readability of certain items that just wouldn’t have worked on the smaller screen without some attention: mines are now painted bright red so you can’t accidentally stumble into them without blaming yourself; well leaves are bigger so it’s clearer which way you need to go as Abe attempts his temple trials; a few camera angles have been adjusted, and so on.

And of course, everybody loves PlayStation trophies, right? Well, Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty features a full rack of them, including a Platinum for those that possess the skill to save every single Mudokon in under 3 hours…