Another World 20th Anniversary Edition Review

Has a game ever made you so mad that you’ve thrown controllers, broken things, pulled your own hair out and swore you’d murder the developers? I’m sure most of us have experienced this and it’s not fun. Another World 20th Anniversary Edition might just have the same effect on you. While playing through this short, 2-hour game I found myself raging very hard.

This game was not fun at all, and I had a terrible time while playing it. I’m usually pretty good at games like this but Another World 20th Anniversary Edition was different. It was extremely difficult at points. Most game that are hard have enough fun to balance it out but this game didn’t have that. The story was boring, the characters were forgettable, and the overpowered enemies gave me a headache. At the start of the game there is a short opening cut scene in which the main character, who I’m assuming is a scientist, is teleported to another world during a lab experiment gone wrong. You spawn in water and must swim to the top before being grabbed be tentacles. Once out of the water, you have to learn the controls. There is no tutorial and every time you die you have to restart the entire area.

Another World 20th Anniversary Edition did not control very well on the PlayStation 4. While trying to move forwards or backwards my character would sometimes get stuck and attempting to sprint would cause him to freeze in place. Crouching was also very hard to do. It felt as if I needed to push down hard on the thumb stick just to get him to stay crouching or he would stand back up. It seemed as if the only two functions that worked correctly were the jumping and shooting actions. Other than the broken controls, Another World 20th Anniversary Edition featured a button that let you switch between classic and remade graphics. Thank God they included that because it was one of the only cool things about the game.

Even though the game was incredibly hard and the controls were buggy, I thought the art style was very cool. The game was pleasant to look at because of the simple, colorful graphics. The coolest thing about the graphics are the cutscenes. The characters and environments looked as if they were drawn with the pen tool in Photoshop which is an art style I am very fond of. Although it sounds boring, it was a nice change of pace the see simple graphics compared to today’s realistic graphics. The sounds were also very cool in Another World 20th Anniversary Edition. The sound effects in the game were remastered for the 20th anniversary release of Out of This World. My favorite part about the sound, however, were the cutscenes. The music played during the cutscenes were very retro. That with the unique graphics were a perfect combo.

As you probably assumed, there isn’t much replay value to this game at all. There are a total of 13 trophies to be earned in Another World 20th Anniversary Edition. Ten are story based and you’ll earn them simply by playing through the entire game. Three of them are secret, hidden trophies. However, two of them I earned by simply exploring every part of the game. The other you would have to know about beforehand in order to get because it required you to wait at a certain location for about a minute so that a UFO would spawn. Other than that one trophy, there is really no need to replay this game unless you enjoy irritating puzzles and tough combat that make you want to snap the game in half.

Another World 20th Anniversary Edition is not a good game in my opinion. Some might enjoy it if they played the original but for someone who is new to the title, it’s not good at all. I personally found it so hard that it wasn’t even fun to play. More than once I found myself raging because I would be instantly killed by a camping enemy and would have to restart the entire area. The game wasn’t hard because I couldn’t figure puzzles out, it was hard because of the one shot deaths and having to restart every time. On top of the unnecessarily hard difficulty, the broken controls made me want to put down the game and never play again.

The only relief to the terrible gameplay and controls were the cool, unique graphics and retro music. Unfortunately, those two don’t make a video game good. It’s the gameplay and controls that do. If Another World 20th Anniversary Edition would have have been the other way around having good, fun gameplay and controls and okay graphics and sound, I might consider giving it a higher score.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.