You can see my Good Ending playthrough of Abe's Oddysee here (I did not go for all 99 Mudokons heh)

Look: 10/10 Some of the backgrounds in this are sooooo beautiful, especially in Scrabania and Paramonia. The statues, the mystical vibes, the layers into the background. And they definitely achieved their industrial, depressing look inside the factory (well, and sorta throughout the game... there's never any happiness to the Look here heh). Adds to the feeling of post-industrial capitalism, the feeling of a land lost to evil Settlers who enslave and abuse the Indigenous, the feeling of a drab dark land, but also an embrace of the dark rocky hard-edged environment and the active combating against the evil overlords back in the factory. In some ways this deserves a 9 since there isn't a variety of looks and, frankly, makes me sad lol--BUT that's the point! And they achieve it so well. And I do get lost in the horizons and backgrounds. And the random signs along the way (the mouth sewn shut saying don't talk to fellow workers, a clear reference to real life there), plus the goriness and brutality of it all. They achieved their goal.. even if it is a depressingly realistic/brutal achievement!

Sound: 9/10 The Mudokons' voices are so cute. "I don't know," "hehehe," "okay," etc. The environmental ambience is spot-on. There isn't much music (is there any?), so it'd be hard for me to give it a Perfect Sound score. But again, as far as trying to achieve a dark, industrial environment, the Sound does very well. The Sound is super useful for the gameplay, too, and the voices are great. This could be a 10, but I think I'll stick with 9 since it's not like there's a soundtrack for me to return to or anything sentimental about this drab, brutal world. (well, except the endearing Mudokon voices)

Play: 9/10 When this came out, I raved about the intentionally brutally hard gameplay, with infinite lives built-in. This was a favorite game of mine as a kid, and I did succeed in getting the Good Ending even as a kid (no clue how I did it. I must've been a better gamer when a kid). When I first started replaying it this time, I thought it was clever how the secret areas were so hard right from the get-go, but it starts off quite simple if you don't know about the secret areas and aren't trying to save the Mudokons: I was thinking, that's really clever--you could play through it a first time and simply survive and it's not brutally hard, tho still hard. But then it encourages you to replay it and try to get all secret areas and Mudokons, but you would have already beat it so you're more ready for the instantly difficult challenges. That sorta proved true... but not really. Just surviving proved to be brutally hard, let alone my goal of the Good Ending heh. The jump mechanic, as others have noted, is awkward and slightly delayed. Now, I'm used to early microcomputer platformesr, and I know brutally hard + clunky mechanics is the name of the game heh. It's all about learning the mechanics' quirks. So that an is what it is type thing. Still, proved frustrating even to the end of the game. Worse though, was as another reviewer noted, the difficulty progression: the Free Fire Zone, Scrabania, and Paramonia were sooooo brutally hard even just to survive. The puzzles were so complex and difficult. Then, you get to endgame, and confusingly, it was pretty straightforward: use a bunch of grenades, bloodbath of the enemies, and save Mudokons. The Mudokons were so much simpler to save even in the secret areas... seemed odd. I suppose the idea was you would replay immediately and so the secret areas at the beginning had the right to be hard? No clue why the main game in Free Fire Zone etc. was so hard tho. No way to justify that sloppy difficulty progression tbh. Oh, and not only was the jump mechanic clunky, but the tedium of only being able to talk to one Mudokon at a time was frustrating/unnecessary (they obv did it on purpose, and used it as a quirk/mechanic in some of the puzzles). I see the remake (New n Tasty) has lots of Quality of Life changes, tho I find it uglier: can say Hey all instead of the tedious one Mudokon at a time factor, and I assume the jump mechanic is better. I can't deny I get addicted to this game every time I play it, but sometimes I quit during Scrabania/Paramonia because the difficulty is so high, and the checkpoints not frequent enough (ironic, cuz as a kid I thought the checkpoints were super frequent... plus Speccy and C64 games... they didn't even have checkpoints ha). And then all of a sudden, endgame is straightforward and fun and just slaughtering in a gory mess--that's what I enjoy!

Feel: 10/10 Again, if the difficulty progression were a bit more logical, and only secret areas were brutally hard, I think this would be a perfect Feel. After all, they achieved their goal: they wanted the game to be brutally hard, so they had frequent (ish) checkpoints and infinite lives. They wanted the game to feel drab, depressing, brutal, and raw. They wanted you to care for the Mudokons, with their cute voices, and otherwise fear everything. All these things were achieved, so it should be a 10. But just due to the frustrations, I don't always finish the game. And let's be honest, I don't always want a depressing brutal game ha. When in the mood, this is perfect. Plus, I noticed when watching playthroughs to help me through some of the tougher parts, this is really fun to watch. It's rare when a game is more fun to watch than to play. Oh, and maybe this should get a 10, because even during my most frustrating parts, I would crack up at the brutal, ridiculous deaths. You'd splat on the ground, or split into a hundred pieces, or finally kill one of the enemies in a brutal way. Hm. Yeaaaaa, I suppose it deserves a 10 since a) it achieved its goal, b) it does have a cute factor amidst the brutality, and c) even in my most frustrated moments, I was laughing at my deaths and ready to try again. How many other games can I say that about?! If I did half points, this would be a 9.5 ha

Attachment: 10/10 Despite the difficulty, I return to this game... over and over and over. As a kid, I felt that Exodus added too many extra layers with the laughing gas etc (tho I loved that game too), plus 200 Mudokons was too many--99 Mudokons was the perfect amount. A dream I've had all my life. I have yet to achieve it. In some ways that's good. Sort of like maxing in OSRS, I like having this goal always before me: "some day," I'll have the patience and time to get all 99 Mudokons. If only the controls were a bit more responsive, and the difficulty progression balanced better, this could have easily been a Perfect Rating game. As it is, tho, still one of the most important games in my life, and a game I will never forget.

Completion: Good Ending, ~71 Mudokons I believe

Playtime: ~8.5 hours (including all deaths, retries, moments of just having to stare and cry from the difficulty, etc etc