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 Verdict
The Lowdown
Developer: Oddworld Inhabitants Publisher: Electronic Arts Release Date: January 2005
Available for:
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Copyright © Electric Eye Productions. All rights reserved. No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.
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I’ve still not completed this yet so will keep this short but.. I’m absolutely loving Heavy Rain. Not unconditionally.. it’s not without it’s problems (some of the voice acting is literally laugh-out-laughable, and screen tearing has never been this distracting before) but I don’t think a game this flawed has ever had me so gripped before.
It’s abit emotionally draining though.. I keep coming away from it feeling cold and letting out big *sighs*. Absolutely a good thing though in the context of what the game is attempting (successfully) to do!
..although having said that, I have just realised none of that has any relevance to this actual story. Hmm, sorry!
Sales performance? I think it will do modestly. One thing I have noticed however is that alot of my close friends who aren’t “gamers” as such (and who literally buy games consoles for sports games – nothing else – if they even buy consoles at all) are VERY interested in this. As the resident geek in my circle of friends, I’ve been asked all sorts of questions about what this is, what it’s like and whether it’s any good.. by all sorts of different people.
I think it will be interesting to see Sony’s hardware figures around the launch of Heavy Rain, because I can see this being more popular amongst less-traditional gamers and non-gamers than amongst the existing base of Call of Duty, Gears of War loving “core” gamers.
Or something.. *shrugs*
Agreed, Mat. The story, the writing, a lot of the technology and scene blocking, all those things really keep you entranced. The actual gameplay is… I don’t know, I don’t want to say “nothing special,” but it’s certainly minimalist.
One thing I often wonder is how much my button presses are really influencing the game, or if they’re just in there to make me feel like a participant in what’d otherwise be a passively viewed story. A good one, to be sure, but no different from a movie.
I think Heavy Rain could mark the point at which AAA production values meet the sensibilities and tone of certain realistic and mature adventure games, that is, games which don’t emphasise fighting or action and concentrate more on storytelling, characters, dialogue and situational puzzles. I know Heavy Rain has its twitchy QTEs but the production values and mature themes are going to be hard to resist. The general non-gamer consensus with most mainstream ‘mature’ or ‘grown up’ titles at the moment will probably be something like:
Mass Effect is a fighting game for trekkies and sci-fi geeks.
Dragon Age is a fighting game for beardy weirdy fantasy geeks.
GTA IV is a fighting game for sociopaths.
Heavy Rain has the accessibility of something like GTA IV with its modern setting and believable characters but without the controversial Rockstar/GTA stigma attached and without the emphasis on fighting. It will not only appeal to the gamers who have been waiting ages for it or fancy something different, but also to the non-gamers who perhaps want to enjoy something a bit meatier but don’t care for outright fighting like in the above titles. Intriguing.
The things we love mature like HR games for?: http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=1691
The issue around the fighting sections of Heavy Rain is quite interesting in itself I think.
I’ve sunk several hours into this now and have pulled the trigger of a gun once.. and I tell you what, when the time came I actually felt like it meant something. The option to shoot also came with a string of alternative actions, and I went through afew of those before deciding to open fire. For someone who plays alot of FPS games, that Heavy Rain made me think twice about doing it once was quite intriguing..
I agree with you about the aspect of involvement too, Matt. I’m finding there are times when it feels like you’re genuinely playing a part, and others where it’s quite peripheral. Flicking the analogue stick to open a car door for example is nice and all but.. I would neither notice nor care if the AI did that for me. Alot of the more mundane actions do feel a little loose, although at the same time I do think they’re a nice way of building your relationship with the game and your characters personality. To open the fridge door or.. to not open the fridge door?
I haven’t actually played this game and probably won’t anytime soon. I don’t have a PS3, and, even though this is getting rave reviews, it really doesn’t seem like a killer app. Plus I’m terribly poor. Nevertheless I’m intrigued.
But here’s the thing, every time I see a game being lauded for a story, in spite of its lackluster gameplay, I feel very conflicted.
I think, is this a game then? Is this a story that could only be told in this medium? Why? What narratological elements of the game are unique to the medium? If the game was told as a movie, would it be considered anything more than average?
Then I think, does it matter? One thing a game does that no other medium can do is imbue its audience with a real sense of tension. You can fail in even the most simplistic game, which ups the ante. Additionally you can get stuck, which makes the story, even if its only told in cut scenes, more emotionally resonant because you overcame something to get to it.
So… well I don’t know. I feel like games can tell a story, and they can probably do so on the same artistic level as a masterful film… but the heart of the medium is its gameplay and games should be striving for innovation in that AND innovation in story AND integration of the two.
Does Heavy Rain do that?
@Igor: Hello Igor, the Border House is a great website that I’ve been visiting quite often since it was launched. I’ve got to say though, as a white, heterosexual male I feel out of my depth over there sometimes! There are some fantastic reads though. Thanks for the link. I’ll probably steer clear of it however, because of the spoilers!
@ Gregg
Absolutely. There are a couple of moments that remind me a little of GTA in terms of what’s actually going on, but they’re so far removed from that in the way that they’re handled and portrayed. Grand Theft Auto looks so childish in comparison.. and that’s coming from a GTA stallwart who still holds a candle for those games. Essentially of course they’re very different experiences and nobody will ever play one for the same experiences as the other but I still think it’s a fair comparison.
Did you buy the game or have you downloaded the demo, Gregg?
@ Lokimotive
I particularly agree with your point there about the ability to fail being so engrossing. One of the things that impressed me about Uncharted 2 was that Nathan Drake really does take a beating in that game. That’s another area where Heavy Rain does push it quite far. The characters go through some pretty testing times as it is, but if you’re that way inclined you can pile misery onto them even further by your own actions. Although it’s not happened to me yet, apparently they can also die prematurely and the game will continue without them.
Just as an aside too, I could sit and talk about Heavy Rain all day. I could write a list as long as my arm about things I don’t like about it from a technical/gameplay standpoint (but wont, because that would have to include spoilers) but the things it does do well make me so giddy.
For some reason my PSN connection is having none of it. Money’s too tight at the moment as well to buy any games so I’ll have to wait until PSN gets its act together so I can download the demo! I actually can’t wait to give it a whirl.
Is it just today you’re having PSN trouble? You are aware of the absolutely monumental crash/bug with the PS3’s today, right?
http://bangbangtech.com/archives/113267/60gb-ps3s-locked-out-of-psn-error-code-8001050f
Mat, I bet I know the one time you pulled a trigger of a gun, and you’re right, unlike any other game, it’s a very tough decision. I pulled the trigger and wound up regretting it almost immediately.
One interesting thing is that some of the prompts and conversational options are a bit misleading. There are times when I think I’m going to say one thing and wind up saying something else.
One of the impressive aspects of Heavy Rain is that it does a good job of making you realize how all the small decisions impact all the large ones. To open the fridge or not open the fridge… seems innocuous, but it may shape the fates of men one day.
@Gregg I should have explained why I’ve linked to that article. The reason is it makes me doubt if HR should be described as really that mature, or at least if it should be denied that sex and violence are its primary attractions for most buyers. The text discusses the main female character and how she is presented as a victim of male abuse type of character throughout the game above all other characteristics.
This and other things I hear about Heavy Rain make me think about shock value and putting the player in uncomfortable situations – both the subtler ones, as well as those straight from exploitative fiction.
Anyway, too bad Heavy Rain isn’t for the PC, so I could check it out myself. At least there’s the interactive youtube demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjNsqPxO2Ws
Makes you think if the full game would be actually much less of an experience if it was just an interactive movie on Youtube.
There’s a slight focus on violence against women, Igor, but at least so far it hasn’t been as bad as I feared. While Madison is victimized from time to time, she’s also presented as a tough lady who’s capable of taking care of herself (unless I’m the one directing her QTEs, in which case we’re both hosed).
If sex or violence are the primary attractors for most buyers – and I don’t disagree at all with the possibility – then most buyers are going to be disappointed. This game is about sadness, and loss, and not much else.
Of course I’m not far in yet, so my assessment could change.
Ahh, thanks for the clarification Igor. I’m keen to know what the feminists make of Heavy Rain considering what (little) I’ve read about it, so I can’t really comment but will be sure to when I’ve played it. Incidentally, I wonder if PSN has stopped acting the goat…
EDIT: @Mat – Yeah, I briefly heard something about it on the news this morning. Will check it out now.
For Sony’s sake I hope they fix this problem in about five more minutes, or they’ll be facing down one humongous lawsuit. Their official response (“we are looking into it”) is probably not going to cut the mustard.
It’s fixed now, Steerpike 🙂
By the way, after a monster late night session.. I’ve just finished Heavy Rain. All I can say is.. wow. Stunning game on so many levels. Also, now that I’ve finished, I’ve decided to open myself upto the many “what ending did you get” threads across the internet. I don’t think I’ve read any 2 that are the same yet. I have to go through this again to experiment with the differing avenues myself though, of course..
I think I’m about halfway through. It’s a good game.
It’s a great game.
It’s… complicated. We’ve never seen anything quite like this before, have we?
Go to bed!
@ Mat, and to think you’ve booked an entire week off work to play it! You only needed one day! (i’m so lonely at lunch 🙁 )
Must resist buying a PS3. Must….resist….Tap-Repeatedly effect…
Once the price dropped, I’d have picked one up but for the no backwards compatibility for PS2 games issue. That still annoys me as I have a substantial PS2 library left to play.
@Toger: I got my PS2 modded to play US games so in that sense it’s more valuable than a backwards compatible PS3 but in truth the whole thing pissed me off to. I don’t want 12 consoles under my TV. Just one please.
Finally got the demo of Heavy Rain downloaded and installed. Will probably play it tonight with my girlfriend. I’m looking forward to it.