Originally Posted June 19th 2014 on the Seafoam Gaming Forums

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The game I’m about to review is my biggest game to review yet. A remake of a beloved classic from 1991, Another World (Also known as Out of this World and OUTER WORLD). Considering what I had to do to get this game for review (AKA deal with Mailer Daemon a lot of times), I hope this review does this amazing game justice.

Title: Another World 20th Anniversary Edition

System: Nintendo Wii U, 3DS (Eshop), Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PS Vita, Steam, Android, iOS

System used for review: Wii U

Price: 7.99

Release date: 6/19/2014

The main game/story

The game starts out with a great cutscene. Scientist Lester Knight Chaykin begins to work on a project in his home. Suddenly, as he is working with the particle accelerator, a lightning storm hits, and he is warped into another dimension! Meeting an alien friend who wants to escape the hostile world as well, the two team up and go on an epic quest to escape.

Graphics

Being originally an Amiga game, you may think switching to the original graphics (Done by pressing the Y button to toggle between the two styles) Would make the game look terrible. Actually… It doesn’t. In fact, the original version looks incredibly impressive! The cutscenes are very detailed and there is a lot of color to them, the characters, while on screen look simple, still have a lot of good animations, and a lot of minor details can be seen.

But with the remastered graphics, they get even better! Everything looks much more smooth, the backgrounds get more detail, the cutscenes look very smooth and overall, everything looks gorgeous, even on a standard TV! It even brings new life to the places in the game that previously had bland backgrounds, such as the palace and cave areas, adding lighting effects and extra details hidden within. This game is a joy to look at.

Music and sound effects:

The game lets you choose between three music modes… Original, which is the original soundtrack from the Amiga version, Original + CD Console music, which has the original soundtrack and the extra high quality audio from the Sega CD/3DO versions, and Remastered, with remastered sound.

And they all sound very good! The music is immersive and fits each location very well, and the remastered version even has added background noise to it, making it a great game to listen to with headphones on. I personally like the CD console setting the most, as being a HUGE fan of the PC ENGINE CD, I really liked the sound quality of the CD consoles the most.

The sound effects are standard fare, they do the job well, and they sound rather cool, like they are from a sci-fi movie. (Which shouldn’t be a surprise since this game pretty much IS a sci-fi adventure). Remastered audio makes them sound a little better, but it kinda makes some sound effects sound a bit weird, like the “agh!” sound that plays when Lester gets hit by steam in the city level. No big problems here, however.

Gameplay

The game plays like Prince of Persia, in the sense that you pretty much have to be careful at all times. If you don’t look out, you’ll likely get crushed by a boulder, bit by a worm, or shot by an enemy. The game controls very smoothly, with A being the run button (And the attack button), and B being the jump button. You’ll most likely be holding down the A button most of the time, as Lester walks horribly slow otherwise. However, that isn’t a bad thing, since in some places you NEED to walk slowly to avoid hitting a trap or falling into a pit.

Not long after you start the game, you get a gun that you can use to attack enemies. Pressing the A button fires a normal beam. Holding down the A button for a short time makes a shield, and holding down the A button for a long time makes a big blast that can break enemy shields and destroy certain walls. However, in the harder difficulties using the blast too much will make your gun run out of firepower, and you must use the recharge stations to recharge your gun so it will work again.

Luckily when dying (Which will happen A LOT as this game requires trial and error), you’ll be dropped off at the nearest checkpoint, which there are plenty of. This is a good thing the developers added, as it makes the game not that frustrating since you can continue from where you left off. It autosaves, too so no need to worry about hitting a “SAVE” button!

In terms of content, this game is sadly very short. But if you are playing this for the first time, then it’ll take a while to complete. But once you learn how to beat the game, the game is a blast to replay, trying to see how fast you can complete the whole game. And with three different difficulty modes (Each mode offering different things to make the game change, for example easy mode removes some of the more difficult enemies, Normal mode puts them back, Hard mode makes them faster, ETC), you will certainly get your $8 worth out of this game.

And last, but not least, the Gamepad support. The Wii U gamepad is the only controller you can use for this game. It displays the game on the gamepad screen, and that’s great for off TV play. Sadly, there is not much else it can do. But that’s OK, since it controls just perfectly fine with the Wii U gamepad. The only thing I don’t like is the lack of Pro Controller support for people who want to not use the gamepad, but that’s only a minor complaint.

Conclusion

In the end, this version of Another World delivers in every way, successfully making this a worthy game to pick up on ANY system the 20th anniversary edition is on. For newcomers, and people who remember the game from the days of the Amiga, this is an amazing port of an amazing game, with only a few minor flows. And for that reason, I award Another World- 20th Anniversary edition a 9 out of 10.

Thanks to The Digital Lounge for giving me a review code