Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition (Xbox ONE)

This one turned out to be a trip down memory lane that I wasn’t even aware of. I have a vague memory from when I was very young of watching my brothers play this one. I remember watching constant deaths coming from the very first worm thing and then when you get past that, getting killed by the gorilla thing because you jumped on the rope first. I remember the cage as well, but that’s about it.

It was obviously before my time so I did a little research into the original. It was released in 1991 for the Atari and Amiga and the 20^th Anniversary Edition was originally released in 2011. This port for Xbox One made its way into our lives in June 2014 – and on to my completion list as of April 2015.

It is about as true to the original game as possible and I think that’s important for a game from the early nineties. There are too many remakes in this day and age, along with all of the carbon copy games coming out at the moment, and Another World serves as a reminder of what computer games used to be – fucking hard.

Now a lot of people would probably disagree with me there. Another World only has the one difficulty setting after all, but imagine playing this when it was out originally without the aid of the internet to support you - it would have been an absolute ballache. I gave it my best go but it is essentially an unforgiving trial and error game where you have to make your way through various life or death situations.

At one point, you get a gun which can not only shoot enemies but also put up a force field to protect you from the other enemies. Using the shield and shooting enemies is a fine art, especially during one point where you have two dudes shooting at you and you have to erect barrier after barrier while trying to kill them. I think I must have died 792 times and that’s just that one bit.

The pacing of the game is a bit weird but works. For the first three quarters of the game it is quite slow-paced as you solve problems and work your way around taking out aliens one at a time. Then, as if from nowhere, it’s all guns blazing for the finale as you shoot your way through bad guys to get to the end...

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 12 Achievements

Now, due to the modern day helping hands, getting all the achievements is actually not too taxing and according to my post-game statistics, my total play time was an hour and thirty-eight minutes.

I also did fuck all else compared to the rest of the gaming population but I did go for a speed completion rather than a nostalgic playthrough. This became especially prevalent after the 792 deaths mentioned above.

I stress this because the majority of the achievements can be obtained from a standard playthrough. There are no collectibles so it’s just a run from ‘a’ to ‘b’. Due to short nature of the game, it’s hard to class any of them as missable however, there are a few that you have to deviate from the standard course of action to get.

The first one comes right near the beginning when you escape from the cage I’ve mentioned at the beginning. If you hang around, which kind of goes against the whole breaking-out-of-prison thing, a UFO will appear giving you the achievement ‘Secret UFO.’

Another one comes slightly after this where you have to go in the wrong direction in a lift (again, slightly against the whole escaping-from-prison thing) and look out of the window.

The final one comes just before the bit where I continually died. You have to fall to your death from the highest possible height. It is technically missable but if you are anything like you me, you will do this just for shits or out of sheer frustration from dying over and over... and over again.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It was great to play a game I witnessed from my childhood but I probably won’t be playing this one again. The problem with trial and error games, especially ones from the 90s, is that they very rarely have different ways to get past the problems you face.