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Another World Review
Another World is rightfully regarded as a masterpiece, and revisiting it twenty years after the fact reveals a game that hasn't lost one iota of its unusual, bewitching sense of atmosphere. A side-on platformer that doesn't pull a single punch, it remains hellishly difficult at times and absolutely nothing is explained to you. Literally nothing. There are no menus aside from the one at the very beginning, and the game is little more than a brisk series of impenetrable brick walls that force you to think outside the box in order the bust through.
Despite the simplicity of its premise - you're a scientist at work, something goes wrong, you're suddenly teleported to a hostile alien planet - Another World is a marvel of interactive storytelling. Whether it's the slave workers ploughing away in the background or the one-off appearance of a crucial (and friendly) flying beast, the world is quite brilliantly realised, and almost every game screen represents another piece of the narrative puzzle.
To be kind, the controls are still utterly distinctive. Your character has the wettest move set in the history of video games which - the brief ability to fire a ray gun notwithstanding - consists of a dainty little jump and an even daintier little kick. Another World puts you in the shoes of a man who couldn't be any less of an action hero, and during chases and gunfights, you should definitely expect to die; potentially quite a lot. That said, the peerlessly realised world does soften the blow of all that relentless death, should you encounter it.
People who despise brutally hard games may throw the towel in early, and to be fair, this twentieth anniversary redux has been universally overpriced, regardless of which console format you are playing it on. It's a game that can (literally) be completed in less than ten minutes, but that misses the point: this is an adventure that is meant to be savoured. It feels like a legitimate trip to another universe, and it is both a brilliant artefact of gaming history and a fresh-feeling blueprint that most of today's game developers could almost certainly learn a lot from.
9/10
Review By Chet Roivas
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