Two years after the release of the groundbreaking survival horror adventure Alone in the Dark and one year after storming out of Infogrames' stuffy offices, Frederic Raynal – here refused pesky diacriticals – went two for two having formed, with old workmates, Adeline Software, still based in the same merry city of Lyon. Their new 1994 action-adventure was called Little Big Adventure, evocative of small beginnings evolving into something epic, which is appropriate enough. Still, Activision felt Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure was better for marketing the game outside of Europe. Some frustration aside, it was a delightful experience that succeeded brilliantly in framing a grand struggle against an omnipresent, hegemonic oppressor, Dr. FunFrock, whose admittedly quite droll name could well be derived from his favored outer garment and the thing he's good at killing. It's not, though, because he wears an evil labcoat instead, and the strange capitalization notwithstanding, Funfrock is an actual Germanic name. The French mind shelters no censors, squeezing every bit of juice out of la liberté d'expression as you can tell.

Of our two LBA runs neither can stand tall next to this newcomer's fresh 0:53:40. 'FreemanQC' avails of many novelties in tricks and routing. Of the four modes of action (similar to how Alone did it), "aggressive" is probably the most descriptive of the run that was recorded on the French floppy version in a single segment but ousts our segmented record as well, by well over 20 minutes. Bon travail!

I'm wondering if the advertised novelty of Oddworld Inhabitants' to-date latest product, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!, is starting to wear out already. Sounds like they improved the recipe (is it being conceded it didn't USE to be tasty?) but so long as it's still slave-flavored, Sam 'Samtastic' Locke will continue putting the stuff away like an amoral suction pipe. I see it is in the Oddworld company's plan to remake the second game next, release slated for this very year. What New and Tasty did to Oddysee, Soulstorm surely will to Exoddus: difficulty settings (the original was felt too trial-and-errory, checkpoints too sparse), an augmented dialog system, and threefold multiplied mudokons to prattle with to boot. To prattle with and to boot. From existence. Leaderboards are another likely addition, but they did increase AI randomness for N 'n' T to work the runners some. Hard to tell if there's an impact on the 0:21:37 being played on the "old and bland" hard difficulty, rife with both deaths and resets: Sam likes to abuse anything and everything, including mudokon compatriots if he can as we've established by now. 39 real-time seconds off with a spatter of new strategies all around.

If you think that's looking nice in your downloads queue, here's that side dish now! Having not one, nor three, but two Oddworld runs in one update means it is all too convenient to see the differences with your own eyes. Yes, Sam's second submission around the same time was for the aforementioned Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. However, you could really only side-by-side them for so long until this one, single-segment but no major skips, is the only one left rolling. 56:42 turns into 0:43:36 in Sam's able hands which have borrowed from TASes [for] this time.

For an extra $15, I'll tell you what game the last run is for. Thanks! It's DLC Quest. No, that doesn't include the run itself. Etc. etc. etc. This minute pastiche was built to mock, among other things, those bottomless corporate pockets behind all the season passes, pre-order exclusives*, and insinuated microtransactions... but perhaps we should counterweight that with a source like The Know illuminating the modern industry and why it's so prone to grinding out extra income through such villainous means. Not that you shouldn't scorn Capcom for selling a game's "true ending" as an afterthought, EA for what they did with Dungeon Keeper, or Squeenix for All the Bravest (a digital toy, not a game, so no italics). It's everyone's loss that games are chopped up in a way that makes even the narrative itself dependent on which DLC you got – this is why you have to appreciate the less cynical efforts at balancing economics with artistic intergrity. And why you shouldn't ignore the indie scene.

Aside from calculated routing, the 0:07:34 run is infused with a compulsive and exhaustive collection of coins. Reminds of the last time the TAXMAN CAME TO VISIT! Yes I live in the Middle Ages. 'StiWii Rage', the model consumer, dishes out the dough to unlock everything starting from leftwards motion, SFX, and the option to save. And do I need to mention the achievements? I want to see the low% for some game defined by getting the least count of them. Could it be yours? It could work if the game only came out on Steam or so... do bring it up first though.

 

*I'm not entirely sure what the difference between these and Kickstarting is except for who's doing it. Which is difference enough.