Oddworld Inhabitants "Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD" Review

I figured I'd try something a little different. See, I quite enjoy writing about music, but I do find that not having other stuff to talk about does mean that it's hard to keep up the enthusiasm, especially when I have half a dozen albums which I keep making vague motions towards reviewing and have to look at my collection of albums to review which is now covering my armchair and bed. But I don't have a large collection of books with me (...well, I do, but not where I currently live!), my knowledge of films is rather poor (which is kind of ironic, when you consider that I'm an unofficially retired actor...although I am still interested in acting and would happily act in something if a request came my way which would require me to, not to mention that I do want to do internet work which requires me to portray a character, so my retirement is more like "I'm not actively looking for acting work, but I will consider doing it if directly requested by someone and, if I come up with a character who I feel would be worth including in one of my projects, I will portray the character unless I have a valid reason not to"...I know, that's not really an effective retirement, hence why I said "unofficially retired"!), I don't watch a lot of TV at the minute and I try to avoid talking about serious topics like politics, religion and various industries because I know that kind of stuff is usually a hot topic for a lot of people and I would prefer to let people live and live on that one without having to read my speculations on this kind of stuff, especially considering I'm not hugely interested in those topics myself.

So, due to having nothing else I can really talk about, here's my first ever video game review!

Oddworld Inhabitants are probably one of the first companies I ever remember seeing a game by. Back when I was a young kid, I vaguely remembered seeing a section of a cutscene from a game that I thought looked interesting. For some reason, I never made a note of what the game was and I went on my merry way. Yet I never forgot that cutscene and it was nearly fifteen years later (specifically, earlier this year) when I finally found out what game the cutscene was from: Abe's Exoddus. I was happy to find that out, but I figured that I'd never see the game again, as I didn't have a PS1 and I didn't have a lot of spare cash at the time to pay what I assumed was going to be a huge amount to get the game, but then PSN came to the rescue and I happily downloaded the Oddboxx, which contains all of the Oddworld games, and started playing the first game in the series, Abe's Oddysse.

And proceeded to get my ass handed to me.

Brutally.

Repeatedly.

After a few hours of playing, however, I got accustomed to the difficulty spike and was fine...up until the next zone, where it felt like I'd gone back to square one.

I've still not finished Abe's Oddysse now, to be honest. I suspect I must be somewhere past the halfway mark, as I've been through both temples and am currently on my way back into the factory, but, at the moment, I just don't know. I was originally going to go through Abe's Exoddus, then go through Munch's Oddysse and finally finish with Stranger's Wrath, but I got so tired of dying that I opted to skip forward to Munch's Oddysse to spare my controller from getting thrown through a window.

And I was kind of bored by it.

It isn't a bad game, but, at the time of writing, I'm about halfway through the game and I can't help feeling like the game is lacking some of the charm that made Abe's Oddysse so good. While the addition of Munch is a good idea on paper and he's not really a bad character in and of himself, his slow movement speed just makes playing him a chore (although, I will be fair, he does get better whenever he gets a wheelchair) and he's not really added a lot to the game so far. Maybe he becomes a much better character later on in the game, but, so far, he just leaves me unimpressed.

By contrast, I've adored Stranger's Wrath since I first started playing it.

Let me start by discussing the flaws of the game first. Firstly, The Oddworld games' habit of setting the difficulty dial up higher than they really should do is more reasonably handled than usual, but there are still a few moments where you will be getting frustrated at the challenge of the game. One bounty in particular (I won't say which one, but those of you who have played the game probably know which one I'm thinking of) will hand your ass to you quite easily if you only have Zappflies with you (although I wasn't in that position: I just didn't want to use them because I was trying to capture the target alive), so you are strongly advised to keep your more interesting types of ammo as full as you can before you get to the actual target and to not be shy about using them when you get to the battle if it will make things easier. This isn't the only instance with really high difficulty, but this is the one which I felt overdid it so much that I really have to bring it up as a warning for potential interested gamers. The difficulty, for the most part, is otherwise fine, if still high enough to challenge you throughout the game and encourage you to heal up whenever you can (which isn't a big problem, thanks to Stranger's ability to recover health by LITERALLY SHAKING IT OFF).

Secondly, while the story is well handled for the most part, I have to say that a lot of the first half of the game will have you wondering where the plot went. You start out delivering an outlaw that you've captured to a town and then you go and do some bounties while the plot basically waits for you to do that. After that, the plot does pick up, but you still spend a lot of time doing bounties up until about the middle part of the game (which, for the benefit of those who have not played the game, I will not spoil for you). After that, the game continues to gather even more momentum, to the extent that you'd be forgiven for wondering why the game opted to wait so long to start bring this story out. Maybe I just took too long to get to that point, I don't know...

The third is the voice acting. While, for the most part, it is very good (which is all the more impressive when you realise that a large amount of the voice acting is done by one man: Lorne Lanning, who is one of the co-founders of Oddworld Inhabitants), I cannot help saying that I find the voice acting on the Grubbs rather grating to listen to. It's not necessarily bad, but I can't help turning up the music I usually have on in the background whenever they start to speak. Luckily, they don't talk a huge amount over the course of the game, so you can call this a nitpick pretty comfortably!

Fourth, as much as I enjoy the game, there's not a lot of reasons to replay it once you beat it for the first time. To be fair, this is a problem with a lot of single player games that focus on telling a story and don't have multiple paths to take the story down to encourage replays, but you basically have no reason to play this game again once you beat it unless you really want to experience the story. Which isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself, but, when you know what the twist is and then realise you have to spend about half of the game just to get back to it, you will probably have to fall back on the story of that half to get you there. And...well, you only need to read my second complaint to know that it isn't going to carry you back to the second part.

That's really about the only real issues I have with the game. Apart from that, you get a lot that is good at minimum!

First of all, the art style of the game is just wonderful to behold! If you're ever played an Oddworld game before now, you already know what to expect, but, if you haven't, then let me sum it up for you: highly creative character designs, a somewhat dark industrial look to the city buildings (mixed with a bit of what you might expect to see in a old Western film for this game) and beautiful open landscapes! Oddworld Inhabitants are probably best known for their great art style for their games (which makes it a huge shame that they've only released four original games since they were formed...), and this game certainly does not disappoint on that line!

Secondly, I really like the way the game combines play styles. By default, the game plays like a more typical third person action-adventure game, but, when you want to use Stranger's crossbow, it goes to a first person perspective rather like that of a FPS. Speaking as someone who is rather fond of these two types of games, I have to say that both styles are done very well indeed, to the extent that I'd actually say that it would be possible (if not a good idea: you can't run or punch in FPS mode and you can't shoot in default mode) to play the game in just one style if you really wanted to.

Thirdly, despite my complaint about the story taking more time than it really should to start coming together, I have to say that it's actually a pretty good story! I can't really talk about it much without spoiling some big twists, but I will say that, once the game starts picking, the story is easily one of the best stories I've seen in a game. True, it isn't necessarily an especially original story, but it's very well told and the twists will catch you off guard (which is why I'm not spoiling them in this review).

Fourthly, Stranger, while not the best protagonist the Oddworld series has provided us so far (that would be Abe), is a brilliant main character. He has a great design in general (although you might have a few questions post-first spoiler) and his catchphrase when he meets his bounties ("Dead 'r alive, yer ass is comin' with me") just reeks of the guy being a badass. And that's not covering the fact that he can literally shake off injuries to heal himself. If you want to get a good idea how to do a badass main character well, Stranger would be a good character to look at. It's honestly a shame that this is the only game he has appeared in so far, as I would be interested in seeing more of the character in the future...although, to be fair, his game WAS the last original game Oddworld Inhabitants released before basically bowing out of the gaming industry for a few years, so you can't exactly say he's been written out of canon yet!

They have me surrounded -- the poor bastards!

Moving on to the lesser details that I think really help to make the game, I really like the creative nature of the different ammo types. It would be easy to just make the crossbow fire a bunch of arrows or something which Stranger can buy from shops or something boring like that, but what this game does is makes the ammo be creatures which you can find and hunt for in the wild. While this is probably not a major thing for a lot of people, I really like it, as it shows a creativeness in the development that goes above and beyond the call of duty (pun not intended).

The game also plays wonderfully. The controls respond very well and, although I'm not keen on the fog effect that makes seeing a particularly far distance impossible, I can let that go due to the fact that this was originally an XBOX game and the HD version is basically a slightly spruced up port of it.

So, would I say the game is worth picking up? Well, I'll let Twilight Sparkle say it for me:

For the benefit of those who aren't interested in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and, as such, didn't click on the video: YES! YES! A MILLION TIMES, YES!

Seriously, though, this game is really worth checking out. It isn't a flawless game, but the sheer creativity of the game is impressive and the flaws in it aren't especially serious on your first play through (although they do become more of an issue if you want to play it more than once). If you're been out of gaming for a while now and want a valid reason to get back into it, then this might well be that reason! I would personally recommend getting it along with the rest of the games in the form of the Oddboxx if you can, as you get four games for less than £20 if you do that, but this game is definitely worth picking up on its own if you can get it and you don't especially want to pick up the other games...although you'd be missing out on two brilliant games that are classic video games of the 90's (and Munch's Oddysse) if you go for that option!

Final rating: 8 Out Of 10

A very good game that, had it been the swan song to Oddworld Inhabitants if their departure from the video games industry in 2005 had been permanent, would have ended the whole franchise on a really strong note! Since it isn't, it leaves you a strong starting point to speculate into what the future of the franchise could be...and, if Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty is any indication, it looks like it's going to be absolutely amazing! It might look a bit outdated now, as it's been over nine years since the game originally came out (and over three since it first got a re-release onto relatively modern platforms: on PSN, it took until late December 2011!) and the story isn't really strong enough to justify more than one playthrough, but, if you aren't put off by that and this sounds like your kind of game, then go get a copy now! Trust me, it's worth picking up!