Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath Review

|Tap-Repeatedly|FFC Archives

           

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath

Review by DavoApril 2005

It’s an Oddworld After All

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath for the Xbox is not your typical first-person shooter. Rather than emulate the military (Medal of Honor), science fiction (Halo 2) or hellish (Doom 3) settings common to most first-person shooters, Oddworld Inhabitants, the developer of Stranger’s Wrath, chose to set the game in an environment that invokes images of the Old West as filtered through Alice in Wonderland. Stranger’s Wrath embraces its unusual nature and delivers an exhilarating, story-driven, action-oriented game experience that kept me enthralled throughout the approximately 22 hours it took me to reach the end. There was always something refreshing and compelling to do, whether it was exploring a new town, admiring a new vista or experiencing a new story twist. The game has a few flaws, especially during some brutally difficult and repetitive boss battles in the middle of the game. Its numerous strengths, however, easily outweigh its few weaknesses. This is a great game that should appeal to anyone who loves a well-presented story.

You Got Your Third-Person Platformer in My First-Person Shooter

Stranger’s Wrath is a hybrid first-person shooter/third-person action platformer with most of the emphasis on the FPS side. You can switch between third- and first-person mode at any time, but there are clearly moments when one mode is better than the other.

Third-person mode is ideal for traveling between towns or boss encounters and traversing the game’s occasional forays into platform play. Fortunately, the third-person controls are smooth and responsive.  The Stranger can turn on the proverbial dime while running and perform jumps at the touch of a button. The Stranger always did what I wanted when I wanted. If I got killed or injured, it was usually because of my own sloppiness. There is also an easily executed third-person spin attack, but it becomes mostly ineffective a few hours into the game when stronger enemies appear.

Third-person mode is also useful when the Stranger encounters one of the game’s rare jumping puzzles. Mercifully, they’re fairly easy and rarely end in death. If you fall, you usually deplete your endurance bar, which allows you to heal, but not your life bar. You can just get up and try again, which I found to be an enormous improvement over the frustrating fall-to-your-death-and-restart-the-level approach used in most platform games’ levels. I only died once from falling, and that was because of an intentional leap into the void to see if I would survive.

Most of the game is spent in first-person mode with the player viewing events over the top of the Stranger’s wrist-mounted crossbow.  In addition to his crossbow, the Stranger has a device that he uses to shrink and suck enemies into a holding pouch that he wears. The device will remind players quite a bit of the ghost-sucking vacuum cleaners used in the movie Ghostbusters.

Like the third-person controls, the first-person controls are excellent.  The left stick controls the Stranger’s movement, and the right stick controls his aiming. The controls are intuitive and responsive.  I was never confused about how to aim the Stranger’s crossbow or control his movement. If you’ve played Halo, then you’ll be instantly comfortable with the control scheme.

Howdy, Stranger!

The game tells the story of the Stranger, a lean and mean loner obviously meant to evoke images of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name. The Stranger stands a little crooked, clothed in a poncho, thick cowboy boots and a hat that covers most of his face in shadow; occasionally he peers out from under the brim of his hat through slit green eyes. The Stranger was so innately menacing that I felt like I was role-playing the Man with No Name. I sat in front of the television playing through squinted eyelids like I was Clint Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly until my wife asked me if there was something wrong with my eyes.

You spend the initial stages of the game hunting for outlaws and collecting bounties as your reward. About 90 minutes into the game, however, you learn that the Stranger is collecting all of those bounties to fund an expensive operation that he needs “to survive.”  The nature of his medical condition remains a mystery for the first half of the game. At about the halfway point, the Stranger’s medical condition is revealed in a rather surprising and poignant turn of events. I won’t spoil the story, but there are enough subtle clues for sharp players to get an idea for what ails the Stranger. This is a reserved and personal story that, thankfully, doesn’t trot out that old console warhorse about saving the world. After the Stranger’s medical condition is revealed, the game shifts focus and casts things in a more heroic light. It’s almost like you’re playing a different game or a sequel after the story shift.

The story is revealed primarily through some of the best CG movies I’ve seen in any game, on consoles or computers. The characters look compellingly alive in the movies. The dialogue is excellent, with nary a word wasted.

It’s hard not to like the characters in the game, even the ones working against the Stranger. The nonplayer characters follow their own agendas and add life and color to the story. They talk about you behind your back, whisper about how scary you are, make fun of you, attack you, or, in some cases, worship you. The Clakkerz, who are big talking chickens, will help you, but only reluctantly.  They’re mostly wary of you, and they can get downright ugly if you start whacking them around. At one point, after a tough boss battle, a Clakker insulted me just enough to tick me off. I whacked him three times in a row, pleasantly surprised that some much-needed money flew out of his pockets. Imagine my surprise when every Clakker in town ran into their houses and started sniping at me with machine guns. I treated them with a lot more respect after that. It also highlights one of the game’s strengths. Nothing is free in the game, and every action has a consequence.

Unlike the Clakkerz, the Native Grubbs worship you like a hero in the most endearing manner. They follow behind you, giving childlike advice with squeaky voices, forgetting the point of whatever they’re trying to say, and then trailing off in midsentence. I’m amazed at how much fun I had just hanging out with the Native Grubbs, even after I had exhausted all the dialogue choices. You’d have to be inhuman not to love them with their big watery eyes and hero-worshiping tendencies.

Oddly enough, the enemies were the most fun characters in the game.  The character artists list Jim Henson’s movie The Dark Crystal as an inspiration, and the influence of the film is most apparent in the enemy character designs. Many of the enemies, especially the bosses, resemble characters from another Jim Henson creation, “The Land of Nod,” which aired on Saturday Night Live during the first year or two of the show. They’re mostly big, green, fleshy, warty and scaly, yet individually unique.

Enemies only come in three or four types, but within each type there is a wide variety. Outlaws, for example, lope around with hunched backs, Mad Hatter hats and huge rubbery mouths. The basic outlaw variety carries rifles, but other versions wore hand knives or wielded sniper rifles. My favorite was the explosive outlaw, who had a big keg of dynamite strapped to his back. Upon sighting me, the explosive outlaws would race across the terrain, pumping up and down like pistons, moving three times faster than you’d think possible, and screaming, “Oh yeah, we gonna find your guts all over the place, yeeeaaahhh!” Only they would speak so fast that it would come out as one long string of words. I laughed every time I came across an exploding outlaw. I would let them attack me just so I could hear them scream about my flying guts. It was a small pleasure but one that I embraced fully. I also got a hoot out of the obese wrestler boss who kept launching himself into me from across a distant field, arms and legs flailing wildly, like a hippopotamus shot from a cannon.

The game is mostly linear, with the Stranger traveling from one boss encounter to the next and then back to town in conveniently located tunnels. The Gamespeak feature, which allows the Stranger to talk to nonplayer characters or himself, usually provides information about the location of the next encounter. There are opportunities to explore the prairies and plains between encounters. These explorations allow you to find ammunition and money while admiring the beautifully rendered landscapes.

Those Are Real Purdy Pictures

The artwork and graphics in the game are beautiful and do an outstanding job conveying the warped Old West setting. The buildings and landscapes are rendered in washed-out browns, reds, greens and yellows. Everything has the kind of faded look you would imagine in an Old West setting.  Debris and dust blow through the sparsely populated towns.

The artists also put a lot of thought into the look of each town.  Buzzarton is a dusty, wind-swept town with oil derricks and industrial pipes riding over the rooftops of the huge clapboard buildings.  The hulking remains of old steam trains power mysterious machines that serve some unknown purpose. New Yoke City is newer looking, befitting its status as a future location of commerce and population growth. Outside the towns, you encounter long stretches of faded grassland. All of the landscapes look great and feel realistic and organic.

The only noticeable problems with the graphics occurred when the game engine was rendering ground-level vegetation while the Stranger was running; the grass would suddenly pop up in front of the Stranger as he was running. Also, some of the cacti appeared curiously flat, almost like something that belonged in Paper Mario. There were also one or two very brief instances of screen-tearing that occurred only when traveling in heavy brush. These graphical glitches were extremely rare and never detracted from the game. By the time I noticed them, they were gone.

How’zat?

The voice work in the game is uniformly well done. Although only a few actors provided voice work, the characters still feel unique and speak in voices appropriate to their physical appearance. The Clakkerz speak in a nasal Western twang that seems to fit giant chickens. The Native Grubbs speak in a clipped back-of-the throat voice that reminded me of a slightly deeper version of Marvin the Martian. Enemies and bosses roar in deep, guttural voices. The Western music and sound effects are appropriate to the game, although they are a little difficult to hear at times.

Lock and Load

The Stranger uses only one weapon throughout the game: a powerful wrist-mounted crossbow. Most first-person shooters rely heavily on weapon variety. Permitting only one type of firearm seems an unusual choice until you get to use the Stranger’s ammunition. Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath substitutes ammunition variety for weapon choice, and it ends up being one of the best parts of the game.

The Stranger uses “live ammunition” in the truest sense of the phrase. Ammunition comes in the form of living creatures that you capture and load into the Stranger’s crossbow. The creatures sit in your crossbow looking like psychotic Beanie Babies; they’re little balls of fur with sharp teeth and crazed expressions. They growl, writhe, buzz, and chatter. Chippunks, for example, look like fat little squirrels who jive-talk while sitting on your wrist, uttering clever little phrases like, “Hey brother, you got someone who needs some talking to?” or “Do I look fat in this thing?” The Chippunks were so much fun that I would sometimes load them into my crossbow just to see what they had to say to me. Chippunks distract outlaws. If you fire one at the ground, an outlaw will charge over and try to stomp on it, leaving you positioned for a quick takedown.

The Stranger can use eight different types of ammunition. Thudslugs are hard-shelled beetles that act like plastic riot bullets, knocking enemies to the ground or stunning them. Fuzzles are round balls of teeth and hair that latch onto enemies and gnaw off chunks of flesh. Bolomites are spiders that incapacitate enemies by wrapping them in a thick web. Other types of ammunition have functions that range from explosive (Boombats) to rapid fire (Sting Bees) to noxious (Stunkz). A bit later in the game, you get to upgrade all your ammunition and the experience becomes new all over again. Thudslugs, for example, become Riotslugs, causing enemies to explode into pieces after two or three shots.

Experimenting with the ammunition was my favorite part of the game.  There were usually several ways to capture enemies. You could knock down an enemy with a Thudslug or two and wrap him up with a Bolomite.  Alternatively, you could fire 20 or 30 Stingbees at an opponent, stunning him and moving in for an easy capture. I was relieved not to have to spend too much time backtracking because I ran out of the one type of ammunition I needed; there was always an alternative method for taking out enemies that were not bosses.

The Good …

One of the most welcome features of the game is the Stranger’s ability to heal himself as long as his stamina bar is not depleted.  There is nothing I hate more than hunting through a game for scarce health packs while enemies are bearing down on me. The Stranger shakes his body violently to heal himself. It’s a little odd, but it fits the tone of the game. He continues healing until his stamina bar depletes. After depletion, the stamina bar slowly replenishes.  Even during tough battles, there was usually a place to take cover and allow the stamina bar to replenish. It would be nice to see more developers adopt a similar approach to character healing.

Another welcome feature is the aforementioned ability to save anywhere.  I would not have been able to grind my way past several of the game’s bosses without the ability to save every 30 seconds as I fought past overwhelming enemy odds.

The Bad …

You have the option of capturing the enemies dead or alive, although live captures yield much larger bounties than dead ones. Capturing enemies alive, especially bosses, highlights the game’s chief weakness.  It’s just too dang difficult to capture some of the bosses alive.  Capturing an enemy alive requires you to deplete his endurance meter without exhausting his life bar. Easier said than done! Oh, I tried.  I tried until I wanted to snap my controller in half. I tried saving in the middle of boss battles. I tried switching ammunition. I tried varying my tactics. I tried alternating between third- and first-person attacks. I spent more than two hours on one boss, ultimately concluding that I just couldn’t do it, and I wanted to get on with the game anyway. Maybe there’s a way to capture the tougher bosses alive, but I never figured it out. It was frustrating, especially when I learned (by the end of the game) that capturing the bosses alive has little true importance in the outcome of the game. You can do it for bragging rights, I suppose, but I’m way past finding any pleasure in that. Also, it seems silly that you can’t capture the bosses in the middle of the game alive, yet the bosses in the later stages yield easily to a live take-down.

… And the Ugly

A few of the midgame boss battles also descended into the grinding repetitiveness typical of third-person, end-of-level encounters.  As in many platformers, you have to fight some bosses in three forms, each form growing progressively more difficult, before claiming victory. Oddworld Inhabitants clearly made some effort to make these battles more interesting. In one battle, the boss is on a mine cart circling around you on a three-tiered track. You have to hit an electrical switch at just the right moment to drop him to the next level. Unfortunately, each time you hit a switch, a slew of doors would open and a wave of enemies would begin attacking you. The multi-tiered track was clever, but the endless wave of enemies was irritating and surprisingly mundane in such a creative game.

Fortunately, the game redeems itself later just prior to the final boss with a creatively brutal battle against two giant octopus-like creatures with knives on the end of their tentacles. These creatures would chase me around a tight room, trapping me in a corner and whirling their knives like blades in a food processor. All I can say is thank the heavens for Riot Slugs and the save-anywhere feature. 

High Noon

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath is an example of what a company can do when it takes an existing genre and reshapes it into something refreshing. I doubt that first-person purists will like the game’s cartoonish graphics. If you don’t like first-person shooters, you probably won’t find anything here that will attract you to the genre.  If you’re primarily into platformers, you’ll likely find the game too heavy on the FPS side. If, however, you want to experience a game with a great story, you like FPS games, and you have an open mind, then I highly recommend this game. Even with its linear design, I find myself longing to revisit the Stranger’s world, load up one of my old saves, and see whether I can capture one of those durn difficult bosses alive. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Oddworld Inhabitants Publisher: Electronic Arts Release Date: January 2005

Available for: Xbox

Four Fat Chicks Links

Player Feedback

Screenshots

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlarge

Where to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

Pages

Top

Category Archives

Top

Blog Posts

Top

17 Responses to First Impressions: Heavy Rain

  • Toger

    I hate QTEs, but Heavy Rain is sitting in my Amazon cart waiting for me to push the button. I don’t even own a PS3, but I plan on buying the game anyway. I do have a good friend who’ll let me play at his house. Of course, I’ll have to drive 100 miles, one way, through the snow to get to his house. His chat-happy birds will cheerfully chirp thereby completely disrupting any atmosphere, but I can play.

  • David

    What!?  Heavy Rain is full of QTEs?  I totally did not see that coming.

    The whole dad experience thing sounds intriguing.  I’m already getting odd looks from my girlfriend for exclaiming over cute kids on the bus or at the mall, something like what you described might send my biological clock over the edge.

  • Lewis B

    My sentiments exactly David!

    Mat has been playing the Heavy Rain demo for a while now, and although he admits he is intrigued by the story, he does constantly complain about the control method.

    R2 + Analogue stick to run? *scoff*

  • Gregg B

    @Lew: DEMO?! PS3 DEMO?! *runs off to PS3*

    That sounds like the Batman: Arkham Asylum controls – Crazy Bonkers Design. The sort of design that puts pull handles on push doors.

    @Steerpike: “I despise children. They are disgusting and annoying. They knock things over. They interfere with everything. They’re not useful until they’re at least 13, when you can get them to mow the lawn and stuff. But you can pay a service to do that for just a few hundred bucks a year and the service won’t vomit on you, shit in its diapers, grow up to resent you, or otherwise suck. Don’t flame me and don’t post comments to the contrary: kids are repulsive. Why anyone would want them is beyond my feeble imaginings.”

    HAHAhahaha- I er, – hahahaha – you’re as outspoken as me about demon spawn children.

  • Lewis B

    Yeah its been on the internet for weeks and weeks Greggi.  I think you have to do a couple of online puzzles etc to get the appropriate code or something.

    Search on Kotaku, they first ran with it IIRC.

  • Mat

    The puzzle code was for early access before it hit the PSN Store. It’s been available to all since last week.

    Regarding the demo, it took me around 3 or 4 attempts at it to appreciate it. First time around I couldn’t have been more dissapointed by it, but after the 3rd or 4th I decided I wanted to stick with it. I don’t think the demo is a particularly great example of what the game supposedly does best either – choice. I also HATE the control scheme and some of the voice acting is so wooden. Creating an immersive, realistic game is fine but having characters stumbling into tables and fridges because of the ham fisted controls, and listening to French voice actors impersonate Americans does remove that realism a little!

    Still, I rushed out to buy it this morning and will rush home from work to play it in about an hour!

  • xtal

    @ Toger: I don’t own a PS3 either, and it’s not like Heavy Rain seems to be “that” game which makes you run out and buy one– like Bioshock made me run out and get a 360– and it’s also not like this game looks groundbreaking in any way, because it really doesn’t. It’s just got me curious…and people tend to do crazy things the week after they get their yearly bonus. Soooooo yeah, who knows; maybe I’ll own a PS3 soon, but like hell I would admit that it was for Heavy Rain. Psh. I’d tell people it was because I wanted to watch BSG on blu-ray; though anyone who knows me would see right through that lie since I am an avid non-format-upgrader: I’ll switch my BSG collection from DVD to blu-ray the day I upgrade my copy of Jurassic Park from VHS to DVD. (Hint: never)

  • Toger

    @xtal: I’m in no hurry to upgrade my meagre DVD collection to blu-ray either, but I have to say the movies I’ve watched on my friend’s PS3 are absolutely stunning. Blade Runner was simply breath-taking in blu-ray and it made me want a PS3. I don’t think Heavy Rain will be a system seller for me, but I’m betting the game from the Ico team will.

  • xtal

    A game from the Ico team, you say? Hmmm. I’ve been making rounds on Kijiji and Craigslist looking for a copy of Ico (eBay prices are so shudder-inducing) for a few days now. I really need to play that game after my experience with the indescribable Shadow of the Colossus.

    It’s good to know they haven’t died some Interplay-esque death in the meantime.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Nope, they’re a small team that works within Sony. Fumito Ueda is the lead and he’s got like ten or so people who’ve worked with him on all his games. Sony pretty much lets them do what they want.

    The Last Guardian is the game that’s coming up from them. It looks more like Ico and less like Shadow of the Colossus to me, which is to say it appears to be focused on platform elements. If I didn’t already have a PS3, it’d be the game that sells it.

  • Gregg B

    @Toger: Ooh, Blade Runner on Blu-ray, gorgeous in all its gorgeosity. In 5.1 it sounds incredible too.

    I bought my PS3 for Team Ico’s unnamed-at-the-time game, Heavy Rain (back when it was just a teaser), LittleBig Planet (yes, yes, I know), Dead Space and Motor Storm: Pacific Rift which sort of pushed me off the fence.

  • Toger

    Gregg, oh yes. The surround sound was spectacular. Did I mention my friend’s HDTV is 72″ (obscene, isn’t it)? It’s like being at a high-class theatre: better food, pauses for bathroom breaks and no one talking through the movie.

    Is Trine up on PSN, yet? If so, that might be my tipping point: Last Guardian, Heavy Rain and Trine.

  • Gregg B

    *spits tea out, despite not drinking any*

    O_O

    72″?! I’m speechless. I can only imagine how awesome that is. Size does matter.

    Not so sure about Trine… hang on. I think it is.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I think it is too, Toger. I’ll check.

    To be honest, though, I doubt you’d be disappointed with the purchase even if Trine’s not there yet. I’ve been way happier with my PS3 than with my 360. Demon’s Souls, Valkyria Chronicles, Uncharted, Folklore, even little games like Flower – I’ve had more concentrated fun with the PS3 than with Microsoft’s console, which tends to gather dust for months between game releases.

    72″???? I thought size didn’t matter!

  • Toger

    Size doesn’t matter. 😀

    In my friend’s defense, it was a great deal: opened box, itty-bitty scratch on the case, not a dead pixel to be seen and it was less $$ than the 60″ he originally wanted.

    Thanks for checking guys. I’ve played a tiny bit of Uncharted, but I’m horrible at the combat. Flower intrigues me. As does Demon’s Souls, but I know that game will crush my soul.

  • Gregg B

    There were certain moments in Flower where it just totally succeeded in conveying a feeling that I can’t say I’ve had in many other games, usually when rushing across a field through the grass or through a canyon or just skimming a pond, but it was never anything to do with collecting bloody petals or fulfilling some rudimentary puzzle. I think my problem with it was that it felt like it was trying to be this deeply emotional piece but in the end there seemed to be too many concessions to being a game rather than just running with the emotive side of the experience. One thing I am sure about though, is the trophies. Don’t get me started on the fucking trophies…

    One of my favourite little games on the PS3 is Everyday Shooter. It’s got a brilliant soundtrack that suits its raw visual style and I love how each level requires a certain tactic or strategy to survive it. It’s a very satisfying game in small bursts.

  • Hanover

    Unfortunately Cage mucked up the ending yet again.  The problem is that the mechanic of the game forced them to have to cheat in order to prevent spoiling the mystery of the game.

    There is also a red herring that makes no sense and is obviously put there to misdirect the player.

    90% of the game is awesome, the last 10% while not as bad as the indigo prophecy, is still sloppy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.