Review of Oddworld Stranger's Wrath
Oddworld Stranger's Wrath is the third game in the six part Oddworld story arc, and the fourth game in the series by Oddworld Inhabitants for the XBox. Stranger's Wrath takes a departure from the traditional platform-style puzzles that was a staple in the other three games, and moves more to a first person style shooter with some third person platform elements. Even though Stranger's Wrath takes a departure from its traditional style of game play, it still has the same look and feel of the other Oddworld games.
Stranger's Wrath's environments are styled after the old spaghetti westerns like the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Stranger, the main hero, acts and speaks a lot like Clint Eastwood while channeling a little of the Duke. It contains the traditional stereotypes found in any good spaghetti western. The chickens who live in the towns you visit represent the white settlers. The grubs are the Indians, and the bad guys look and act like the villains found in a good western.
The first part of Stranger's Wrath involves your character going to the Bounty Store to get a bounty on one of the wanted felons in the game. Each bounty is a boss battle where you go to the bad guys hideout and battle current bounty's henchman and the current bad guy you are trying to collect a bounty on. The game gives you a choice to bring the bad guy and his henchman in alive or dead. This element adds a little replay value to the game by allowing you to try to bring them in both alive and dead. Each battle is designed to be won in several ways, by giving you the option of run and gun, stealth, or a combo of both.
In order to bring in the bad guys you must use a combo of different living creatures shot from a crossbow that Stranger uses as his weapon in the first person view. You can also use hand to hand combat in third person view to battle the bad guys. Thankfully the game allows you to switch between first and third person perspective with ease. Control in the first person mode is very tight and as good as is found in Halo. The third person mode was too loose, causing Stranger to slide too much.
You get your ammo, the living creatures, by hunting for them in the game instead of the first person traditional method of picking up ammo cases on the ground. Firing creatures like bugs, bee, spiders, sunks the return fuzzles and slugs add a lot fun and personality to the game over the plan boring bullets fired in most games. The other big break from the old school first person shooters is that there is no medical packs in the game. Instead you must spend stamina to shake off damage. Your stamina does slow recover in the game; but instead of hunting for a medical pack you now must run and hide to recover stamina so you can shake off more damage. As the game advances you will have the chance to upgrade Stranger with clip loaders that extend the numbers of rounds before having to reload, stamina and health extenders, brass knuckles to make you better at hand to hand combat and armor. The creatures in the game can also be upgraded.
In the second part Stranger's Wrath the game moves away from the boss battle formula to a more standard adventure. The Chickens move out of the limelight and the grups move in. The bad guys you have been fighting vanish and are replaced by evil rednecks with guns. The meat of the fairly strong story in Stranger's Wrath takes place in the second part but this also cases the story to feel rushed. It also takes on a darker tone and the overall attitude of Stranger changes to a more caring character.
Graphically, the Stranger's Wrath is a tour de force pushing the XBox to its limits. The frame rate never affects the gameplay and the graphical load times where rarely noticeable. Oddworld Inhabit's use of colors and textures create a very immersive world. It draws you in and makes you feel like you are playing a great Western in a very Oddworld.
The only major flaw in the game was the voice work or the lack thereof. There was very little variety in the voice work when you talked to all the characters, and to make matters worse, all of the voices sound the same. This is very sad because of the superb voice work in the previous Oddworld games. The worst voice work has to be the Grubs, in particular the grub chief. Instead of sounding majestic and prophetic, the voice work for the grubs is shrill and very annoying. The music in the game was okay, but keep cutting out in the middle of battles.
Playtime for Stranger's Wrath is about ten to fifteen hours. There is a small amount of replay value with the bounty hunts in the first part. If the game had come with a level selection feature the replay value would have been a lot more. The skill level is moderate requiring more brain than reflex, thanks to the ability to save at any point in the game.
Odd-world's Stranger's Wrath is another wunderkind of a game created by Oddworld Inhabits that creates a unique and wonderful world to play in. The use of creatures for ammo and mixture of play styles hits all the right notes. If you are looking for an innovative adventure game Stranger's Wrath is well worth the asking price.
For the record there are NO NUKES in the game; but it does have suicide bombers and lots of explosives.