Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath Review
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is a first/third person action game from the no-longer-with-us studio, Oddworld Inhabitants. Typical of an Oddworld game, Stranger is a solid, beautiful and mold-breaking commercial flop. And as bitter as the developers' exit from the games industry was, Stranger's not a bad way to go out.
You play as the Stranger, a beast-like bounty hunter in a world of chicken-like citizens, and dinosaur-goblin thugs. You begin the game by taking bounties, and you soon learn you'll be using the money to get an operation. The nature of the operation is a mystery, but it seems damn important. You capture all the bounties in a town, and then move on to the next one.
Your tools are your animal strength (you can spin attack, head-butt and gallop into enemies in third person) and your crossbow with its live ammo for the first person view. Finally, you can suck up incapacitated enemies in order to collect their bounties (live enemies are worth more than dead ones).
This game oozes imagination, from its cooky creature design to the aforementioned live ammo. The ammo for your crossbow is literally alive. You can buy or capture seven different species of tiny creatures (in addition to zapflies, which are unlimited), two of which can be equipped to your crossbow at any given time. Some creatures serve to incapacitate enemies, some distract them, and some just cause damage. The ammo system is quite deep, although in my opinion, its potential wasn't realized until the last third of the game.
Another interesting mechanic is capturing enemies alive to maximize your profit. In general, you can collect at least twice the price on your main bounty if you capture him alive. This is a really interesting device that I feel never reached its potential. While defeating some bosses involved solving some environmental puzzles, finding out how to capture them alive was simply a matter of trial and error to discover which ammo depleted their stamina faster than their health.
Overall, I felt like the boss battles and a lot of the level design didn't live up to the imagination of the rest of the game. The levels leading up to the bosses were completely linear treks through similar (though beautiful) environments. And while some of the boss fights were cool, most involved simply fighting a more powerful dude along with a swarm of lackeys.
In addition, the structure of a lot of the game is simply: take bounty, find bounty, fight bounty, collect reward, repeat. In between bounties, there's nothing to do in town except buy a small selection of items at the general store and take more bounties at the bounty store. It feels a bit like a chore to finish a bounty and have no choice but to take the next one on the list until you can move onto the next town just to do the same thing.
That said, the gameplay really grew on me. I got into picking off enemies that wandered (or were lured) away from the pack, using my beastly speed to strike at groups and escape quickly, and just plain causing havok with my crossbow. Also, the trial and error in boss fights became much more palatable once I discovered the importance of the liberal use of the quick save feature.
Yet just as I was coming to accept the game for what it was, it became something totally different. The plot, which is simple but layered with subtext, picks up big time, and the game goes into overdrive. The environments become varied and imaginative, the encounters, epic. A couple of key gameplay mechanics are introduced, changed or altogether eliminated, and it actually feels like a separate game. As much as it feels different, its play style nicely complements that of the first part of the game. I'm not going to spoil it, but the last third of the game is simply fantastic.
Some people complained that this game was too short. I thought the beginning was possibly too long. But either way, Stranger offers a beautiful, whimsical adventure through a twisted wild west. It's interesting, imaginative, it addresses issues like corporate greed, environmental destruction and the eradication of native peoples, but above all, it's damn fun.
8
-Joule
You play as the Stranger, a beast-like bounty hunter in a world of chicken-like citizens, and dinosaur-goblin thugs. You begin the game by taking bounties, and you soon learn you'll be using the money to get an operation. The nature of the operation is a mystery, but it seems damn important. You capture all the bounties in a town, and then move on to the next one.
Your tools are your animal strength (you can spin attack, head-butt and gallop into enemies in third person) and your crossbow with its live ammo for the first person view. Finally, you can suck up incapacitated enemies in order to collect their bounties (live enemies are worth more than dead ones).
This game oozes imagination, from its cooky creature design to the aforementioned live ammo. The ammo for your crossbow is literally alive. You can buy or capture seven different species of tiny creatures (in addition to zapflies, which are unlimited), two of which can be equipped to your crossbow at any given time. Some creatures serve to incapacitate enemies, some distract them, and some just cause damage. The ammo system is quite deep, although in my opinion, its potential wasn't realized until the last third of the game.
Another interesting mechanic is capturing enemies alive to maximize your profit. In general, you can collect at least twice the price on your main bounty if you capture him alive. This is a really interesting device that I feel never reached its potential. While defeating some bosses involved solving some environmental puzzles, finding out how to capture them alive was simply a matter of trial and error to discover which ammo depleted their stamina faster than their health.
Overall, I felt like the boss battles and a lot of the level design didn't live up to the imagination of the rest of the game. The levels leading up to the bosses were completely linear treks through similar (though beautiful) environments. And while some of the boss fights were cool, most involved simply fighting a more powerful dude along with a swarm of lackeys.
In addition, the structure of a lot of the game is simply: take bounty, find bounty, fight bounty, collect reward, repeat. In between bounties, there's nothing to do in town except buy a small selection of items at the general store and take more bounties at the bounty store. It feels a bit like a chore to finish a bounty and have no choice but to take the next one on the list until you can move onto the next town just to do the same thing.
That said, the gameplay really grew on me. I got into picking off enemies that wandered (or were lured) away from the pack, using my beastly speed to strike at groups and escape quickly, and just plain causing havok with my crossbow. Also, the trial and error in boss fights became much more palatable once I discovered the importance of the liberal use of the quick save feature.
Yet just as I was coming to accept the game for what it was, it became something totally different. The plot, which is simple but layered with subtext, picks up big time, and the game goes into overdrive. The environments become varied and imaginative, the encounters, epic. A couple of key gameplay mechanics are introduced, changed or altogether eliminated, and it actually feels like a separate game. As much as it feels different, its play style nicely complements that of the first part of the game. I'm not going to spoil it, but the last third of the game is simply fantastic.
Some people complained that this game was too short. I thought the beginning was possibly too long. But either way, Stranger offers a beautiful, whimsical adventure through a twisted wild west. It's interesting, imaginative, it addresses issues like corporate greed, environmental destruction and the eradication of native peoples, but above all, it's damn fun.
8
-Joule
posted by Voomp at
7:59 AM
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