Strange action game in the Oddworld universe.
In Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath you play as Stranger who is a bounty hunter with an unknown origin. For some reason you seem to be the only one of your kind and the towns in this Wild West are usually populated with strange chicken men. As a bounty hunter the Stranger hunts down outlaws to gather enough money for a mysterious and extremely important operation. Story starts really slowly and only after for about 5 to 6 hours worth of gameplay you start to realize what’s really going on.
Graphics are great and detailed making this western world much more vivid than what Gun was able to accomplish. Cutscenes are one the best on the Xbox and maybe even better than in Ninja Gaiden. Music brings more western feel and oddness into the mix, but in terms of voice acting there are some problems. Every town people you meet sound exactly the same with one another and every boss talks with a same artificially deep voice. Speech is not always clear which makes it difficult to understand what you’re suppose to do and there are no subtitles either.
Gameplay is where Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath really starts to shine. Mostly you control Stranger in a third person view, but you are able to change into a first person view too. This changes the game into a full first person shooter. Your gun is a “double-barreled” crossbow and you use different kinds of live ammo throughout the game. This means that most of the time you have to hunt down your own ammo. This concept is fun, different and it works just fine.
As a bounty hunter it’s your job to bring back the bad guys alive and for this purpose you have a few stunning and gas grenade types of live ammo to use. Unfortunately towards the end it becomes more and more difficult to catch these bad guys alive, but luckily they are still worth to you dead.
There are no med kits or health packs anywhere. Instead you shake of your wounds like wet dog. This in turn depletes your stamina meter, but since that regenerates it’s possible to pass a level with full health. This still doesn’t mean that the game itself is easy, because some of the enemies can do a lot of damage with just one blow. Fortunately you can save anytime anywhere, so death is never a huge punishment.
Gameplay takes a wholly different direction after about 5 hours and then you lose nearly everything you have gathered until that point. This is really disappointing, because it has been quite a trouble in gathering those things all around the gameworld.
Game’s story takes too long to start going and the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired, but other than that Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath is a game worth playing.