Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath

The Good
A hell of a lot. Stranger's Wrath contains some of the best graphics seen this generation, coupled together with Oddworld Inhabitants' signature polish - great music, great acting, great script.

Despite this though, the game didn't hit me with greatness at the start, but rather built it up to an incredible crescendo. For once a game that builds on its opening and never stops getting better.

A compelling storyline is slowly drawn out of the game, masterfully increasing its scope as it goes along. To explain further would be to spoil its impact, so any readers are going to have to just trust me that things really change as the game goes on.

The gameplay itself is more than worthy - it's hard to believe that Oddworld Inhabitants had never before created an FPS (or, to be more precise, an FPS/Third Person Action Adventure hybrid), as they have created one of the finer titles within the genre. Utilising a relatively small but varied array of weapons, the game leaves the approach to fights up to the gamer - it's perfectly possible to hang back and lure out your enemies, knocking them out one by one, but it's equally possible to charge into their camp, blowing up everything in sight with your heavy weapons. Indeed, even charging into melee and using your fists and head to deal with your enemy is a perfectly viable tactic.

This is combined with something that any previous Oddworld gamers will expect - a good sense of humour. The enemies are an entertaining bunch, notable for their hilarious conversations, exclamations and retorts. The same goes for the neutral characters of the game, all of whom react with your character - Stranger - in a satisfying way.

The Bad
To be quite honest, nothing.

The only criticisms that I could see being leveled at the game are the following:

It has a slow start, taking a few hours of gameplay before things really start to kick off. I do get the feeling however that this was entirely necessary, as the player really needs time to get the hang of the controls, and a feel for Stranger and the universe he inhabits.

The enemy AI is fairly simple - though capable of being tricked, lured and surprised, the enemies never seem particularly intelligent - which makes perfect sense, as they aren't meant to be.

And that's it. I can think of no other flaws, and the two I mentioned barely bothered me - not at all, in the case of the second.

The Bottom Line
A gem of a game, Stranger's world needs to be visited. The most similar title I can think of - in terms of the way it made me feel - would have to be Beyond Good & Evil, another criminally underlooked game. Even though the basic mechanics seem completely dissimilar (BG&E's journalism and puzzling as opposed to Stranger's bounty hunting and action), the way both draw the gamer into a vibrant world - and more importantly their characters - is what makes both of them essential titles.

The Good
O.S.W. is a unique hybird of a 3D platformer and first person shooter. The game graphics/engine looks like a direct evolution from Munch's Oddysee. Unlike the other Oddworld games, this is all about a mysterious figure only known as Stranger, in a land far away from the previous stories/species/characters. The hero is not a defenseless little thing this time: Stranger is a big and strong creature, with a weapon! In the first half of the game, he is a bounty hunter, capturing outlaws for money, in a Wild West type setting. In the middle of the game, there is almost like an Akira level of twist, and the game sheds away its Western-likeness. In the remainder, he fights on the side of natives against the industrialists, in varying settings. This game does away with the alien aesthetic, in favor of a more dramatic storytelling, with places and beings that are slightly less weird. I am not entirely a fan of the story or the setting, but at least I can't say they're milking the same thing over again. All creatures are fully voice acted, we will not hear the familiar one-word talks here (which left much to the imagination and felt appropriately alien), so it was strange to me hearing the goons shout "Yes, lure him out, boys!" or "Aim at his groiiin!"

You can actively switch views between the outside view (with a following "camera"), and the ego view. In the outside view, it is more comfortable to travel around and explore. In this mode, Stranger can jump and double-jump, climb ropes, perform hand-to-hand combat, or run (which gradually becomes speedier as you move forward without interruption, eventually running on all limbs like an animal, causing damage if you collide into destructable/killable things). You can also control the camera around Stranger with your mouse, separately from the movement controls of the character, albeit the camera subtly aligns itself up to your movement.

When you decide to holster your weapon, the game becomes an FPS. But you don't really have a gun: your weapon is a double barreled crossbow, firing live creatures! Yes, your ammo is the local Oddworldian wildlife of small bugs and rodents, and you stock up by capturing them at their habitat, buying them at the store, or from designated crates (Take that, PETA! :D). All ammo types do different things, like making noise to lure enemies to it, knocking them out for a short while, schocking them or activating electric machines, etc. It's your choice, which two you keep loaded for which fight. And you fire with both barrels independently at will. You can carry only a limited amount of each ammo type, and the firing rate is also slow, but both limits are upgradeable in the shops.

The playable world is impressively big for a game from 2005 (I think, admittedly I don't know much modern games, as in from beyond the year 2000). And you have to travel a lot, between towns or the places where outlaws reside, going through lush wilderness and beautiful deserts. Your method of travel is by foot, the very fast running is the way to travel distances. And all this works mostly seamless, there are no visible loading screens, no levels in the traditional sense. Sandbox would be a massive overstatement though, the gameplay area is always constrained between canyons/cliffsides, and the missions are clear cut. In the towns you can have short conversations with the Clakkerz(sic) that inhabit them, sort of "OG Nintendo RPG" -esque, except fully voice acted. This is not an RPG though, there are no experience points to gain, just earning money from the missions and sometimes buying things that can enhance Stranger's abilities. The sum of money you have is also the indicator of your progress for story reasons, so spending has to be done carefully. Aside from those I kinda felt like, the way that you, as the player, are getting to know the intricacies of your strange weapon, ammo types, and abilities better with each battle, until you can successfully take advantage of them, that is the real leveling up. Anyway, the towns have bounty stores and shops, these are usually the main points of interest there. The towns also act as a hub. You take up a missions in the bounty store of the town, then you have to find your way to the path out of town (usually trough secured gates that get opened for the mission), that leads to the location of the wanted outlaws.

Speaking of missions and battles. Each bad guy you embark on to capture, hides at some place that acts as their fortress. And they command a slew of goons equipped either with guns, rockets, melee weapons, or even doing the "arab terrorist". You have to infiltrate the place and defeat most of the goons, to be able to face off with your main target. The missions then usually escalate into a monumental and tiresome boss fight, to the last man standing. Apart from the instances of total alarm (like in a boss fight), there is an element of stealth in the gameplay mix. Each enemy has a line of sight, which is shown to you in a radar indicator. The music is minimal, but during action, it accentuates what is happening. What I want to highlight here is the creepy, spine chilling music during stealthy affairs: it got seared into my brain! While there is no dedicated stealth takedown, with the webbing ammo type you can incapacitate your prey in relative secrecy. The enemies can be either knocked unconscious for a short while, or killed after a few rounds of punishment. This is indicated by "dizzyness" stars above their head. 3 yellow stars and they faint and get a red star. Once they accumulate 3 red stars they die. Or in case of the bosses, there are dedicated bars on screen. Speaking of indicators, Stranger himself has a health bar and a stamina bar. While raining gunfire can quickly deplete his health, once safe, he can heal himself by the press of a button, which only costs stamina. And the way he does this is very badass: he just shakes off the damage! By the way, all fired bullets remain as visible objects stuck to the characters or in the environment, a neat gimmick. Once the foes are down unconscious or dead, you can capture them in your... Ghostbusters-like suction tank of infinite capacity? (never explained), but you are vulnerable to the others while you are doing so. Captured enemies can be later cashed in back at the bounty store. It should not be a surprise that each one is worth more alive than dead, and killing the bosses is less of a peculiar work than stunning them. One more thing to talk about is the enemy AI, it's deceptively stupid, yet can be pretty clever in times you don't expect it. For an example, I was chasing an enemy, I was on its tail, and it acted cowardly. But once I relaxed a bit, it noticed and got confident, became an agressive nuisance.

The part when the Grubbs (the so called natives) were running in and out of their houses at the sight of you a was funny, especially while wearing a headphone, so you could subtly hear them peeking out :D

The Bad
The game begins with a classic tutorial mission, where message boxes jump up and pause the gameplay. Yeah, its an annoying little necessity, pretty standard stuff, ... wait a minute, Oddworld can do better than this! What did they used to do? Integrating the instructions into the environment in the form of billboards, information terminals, etc. so when you later played the game again, the start was like any other level that didn't interrupt you. Where did that idea go?

I have to nitpick some of the artistic vision. As I mentioned, there is little to none of that Alien aesthetic. Bugs look like bugs (the Zapfly is nice though). Chippunks look like chipmunks. There are now vehicles in Oddworld, that look and work mostly like Earth vehicles. A far cry from the creative trains or the "mine cart" from Exoddus. Worse yet, in one mission you have to recapture a laptop, which is flat out just a 2000s laptop. I would have expected something quirkier, like a chrystal ball attached to a typewriter or something. The phone in a cutscene looked like the part, why not the computer? Aside from these, I often found thinking to myself "hmm, that technology/architecture is a tad bit anachronistic for a Western", then I had to remind myself that this is not really a Western. Whatever.

The first half of the game is really fun once you "catch the drift". But then in the second half of the game, the experience becomes very rough. All your learned tactics and ammo types become useless, to deal with the new kind of enemy, that are better equipped and prepared. And the game mechanics doesn't really adjust to this. There is no point in capturing enemies either. While it's a nice thing that in the second half, you become overpowered in close combat, intead of using your weapon. But that's for a short while, as even that becomes just barely eligible.

The second half of the game has some very disjointed scenarios. Hm, let me quickly go trough what happens towards the end of the game. Doing some industrial sabotage? Check. Defending the native Grubbs from industrialist Wolvark troups terrorizing their village? Sure, why not! Wearing Viking-like armor while travelling long distances up on the river with your war galleon? Badass! Then dropping into like, a bleak, long, tortuous session of WWII trench warfare? What the heck!? Am I playing Call of Duty all of the sudden? In this scenario it feels like it would be most appropriate to spread lead and spill the guts of soldiers, but you are stuck to your sophisticated pea shooter and family friendly rating. Whenever you leave your cover, you get gunned down in seconds by the literal army of foes. And the whole setup is ridiculous: you tell me that bad guys are doing an all out war on just a bunch of cute little Grubbs? I really hated this part! Then it kind of tainted the final section of the game, at the dam aswell. The Grubbs are somehow storming the dam and winning the battle, but it's never shown how the heck can they even fight.

In the final cutscene, it is shown that by destroying the dam, you flooded the towns of the Clakkerz aswell. You know what, fck the Grubbs, what about the Clakkerz!? o_O [Yeah-yeah, there is a deep message that the ending cinematic is trying to convey. But pushing trough the last parts of the game with angry determination, this ending becomes like "Who cares!".]

The Bottom Line
Finally! It happened! I had the fortune to be able to play and beat this blasted game! After such a long time of just reading about it! The darn thing was an XBox exclusive back when it originally came out. In 2010 I missed out on the PC release, and then ignored it for some reason.

I am not a fan of the FPS genre. But I can see why Oddworld Inhabitants had to resort to make it into an FPS-kinda thing. Back then, there were a handful of interesting projects at Oddworld hyped on their quaint old website and fansites. All of these projects got nowhere, I guess for finantial reasons. The 2000s were not a happy time for quirky and/or independent studios, even less so than today. Boring big businesses and their typical FPS franchises (even soaked in muddy and yellow palettes) ruled the game industry firmly by this point. I am happy that at least this thing got released at all!

And how would I rate it now? It is surely a great game of its time, but far from perfect, especially the second half. I got some kicks out of it, but I don't think I will come back. [Sorry if I am hard or unfair on this game, I wanted to document what I thought while playing trough it.]

The Good
The game's environment is perhaps one of the most detailed and lush Wild West themed world you'll play in with fitting music to give the feel of the locations. Every part of the game has lots of atmosphere including the Grubb's city which capture's the perfect impression of a D-Day Omaha Beach invasion and Sekto's base which has the likeness to a Red Faction base. There's so much to do and places to go. It's fun to try being stealthy and capture enemies for that extra Moolah and ammunition. And you won't easily get stuck looking for your next objective because all the NPCs will clue you in. And it's amusing to listen to a Chippunk's non-stop commentary.

The Stranger is just the playable hero you want to play as. He has a double barrel crossbow with "live" ammunition, he can double jump, he can self-heal, he can do head butts and punches, he can climb, he can swim, and he can charge. He simply exceeds the abilities of Abe and Munch put together and his maneuvering rivals that of Lara Croft. The dialogue and outfit goes so well with his physique, he's almost like a cross between DC's Jonah Hex and Marvel's Wolverine.

The Bad
While the pacing of the game is smooth and at a steady speed for the most part, it turns to absolute creep when you're in water, so you just have to swim for as little as possible, especially if you don't want to get peppered with projectiles. Unfortunately the wall boundaries make it so that if you're cornered by enemies, you'll never be able to double jump or shoot you way out and they've nailed you, but that doesn't happen very often.

Although its fun to complete missions, this game might have turned out perfect if it were open world and you could explore every place you went to previously. It's a pity that Moolah becomes useless and you never get it in the second half of the game. This game could also have done with an alternate ending triggered by managing to get 20,000 Moolah before meeting Doc a second time.

The Bottom Line
Munch's Oddysee was the greatest letdown in the series, but Stranger's Wrath stuck out like a thumbs up when it reached the spotlight. If you're accustomed to Abe and Mudokons, you should not be disappointed in this title. If Spaghetti Western games were existent, that's what this game would be. Games with first-person and third-person elements heavily used from beginning to end are not something you play everyday. This is the best way you can enjoy the last of the Oddworld series (not counting the HD remakes).