Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath review

I'd better get this out of the way before going any further: I've never played an Oddworld game before, and I've no idea how Stranger's Wrath fits into the grand scheme of Lorne Lanning, Oddworld Inhabitant's head honcho, and his plans for some subtle, multi-game spanning continuity.

Despite that, I loved Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. These two things might be related, but I suspect my unashamed delight probably has more to do with the abundant presence of three things I happen to like very much: excellent design work, humour that's actually funny, and...er...cowboys. Oh, stop laughing.

There aren't any actual yodelling, bean-munching, lasso-twirling cowboys in the game at all, but the aesthetic of Stranger's Wrath is rooted firmly in the arid, cactus-littered soil of the cinema western. The moody guitar twanging, the laconic bounty hunter with a mysterious past, the conflict between spiritual natives and exploitative settlers, the sprawling, sun-baked canyons.

Something odd

But this is a western seen through the eyes of people who are both seriously talented and seriously deranged. The settlers aren't square-jawed pioneers but gossipy, hobbit-sized chickens (Clakkerz), the natives are less proud savages and more a tribe of stoner frogs (Grubbs), the canyons are littered with the ruins of mysterious and ancient machines – and then there's the titular Stranger himself, who turns about to be altogether – ahem - stranger than at first we're led to believe, armed with a crossbow which uses living critters as ammunition.

This grounding of the surreal in the entirely familiar is a trick that's essential in selling the quirky strangeness and charm of the Oddworld to the player. Perhaps paradoxically, the anchor to reality really helps in suspending disbelief, and after a while it all becomes utterly natural and totally engrossing. Until your flatmate wanders into the room, stares thoughtfully at the screen for a while, and asks "Why is that lion bloke in the cowboy hat busy mugging talking chickens?" But perhaps that's just me.

The familiar

At it's most basic level, Stranger's Wrath is a FPS with some minor platforming and exploration elements – handily viewable in a switchable third-person view. Things quickly seem to settle down into a predictable gameplay structure: go to a town (essentially a mission hub), pick a mission, head off to the nearby area this opens up, off the mission boss, get your reward, buy upgrades at the town store, then rinse and repeat until you've finished the current crop of missions and move on to the next hub.

Fortunately, there's enough variety in the mission aims and tactics to stop predicable quickly becoming boring. Sure, there's quite a few of the straightforward kill everyone, and quip while you do affairs, but others involve manipulating the environment to your advantage, protecting townsfolk under siege, or even rescuing ransoms from the clutches of outlaws.

As with the recent Mercenaries: Playgrounds of Destruction, you can choose to take down your enemies dead or alive. Dead is certainly easier, but taking them down alive results in a larger pay-out at the bounty office – and if you want to keep a steady equipment upgrade program going (as well as amass the fortune that the Stranger requires in order to pay for an operation essential to his survival), you're going to want to try and take them alive.

Doing so requires you modifying your tactics on the fly: luring enemies toward you one by one then binding them up or springing out and pummelling them into unconsciousness. This cat and mouse approach works very well, and somehow feels appropriate to the lone bounty-hunter archetype of Stranger – although he can heal himself by shaking off his injuries, he's no tank and can't stand up to more than a few blows in succession.

Getting surrounded by multiple enemies is not an option - especially not during the tough boss encounters which form the centrepiece of the mission. Though reaping maximum reward by taking the bosses down alive requires some thought, the encounters themselves are always entertaining; the rollercoaster of a mine cart ride to one bosses' lair, and his subsequent careering around raised tracks lobbing homing rockets as you scramble about panicking for cover is a personal favourite.

The less familiar

During missions, you'll be switching back and forth between third person and FPS quite a bit; FPS is necessary to use the crossbow, and third person is essential for accurate jumping, climbing, and speedy travelling. In third person, eschews his crossbow for headbutts and the smack of a meaty fist – satisfying, but not really viable in fraught situations. It's best to charge in and get a sense of what's where, smack a few foes around, then leg it to a distance to make best use of your crossbow and the variety of Live Ammo.

The assortment of beasties adds a touch of humour – in first-person view, they're amusingly animated and the babbling of the chippunks is very funny indeed – and hunting for your ammo around nests and hives is a nice way of integrating ammo into the gameworld. Essentially, the different, specialised ammo types simply replace the normal range of different, specialised weapons in any other FPS – the enemy attractant, the stunner, the rapid-fire, the explosive, the slow firing but heavy damage, and so on.

However the crossbow has two barrels which allows for different combinations to be mounted. Finding the most effective of these in any given situation is an important skill to master, particularly if trying to take down bosses alive, when the normally reliable chippunk/bolamite one-two is no use. Working these out proves to be an enjoyable process, though there are one or two instances in which it teeters precariously on the brink of frustration.

Odd looking

The gorgeous visuals help take the sting out of these infrequent moments of frustration. The cut scenes are top notch, and the in-game sympathetic lighting, glorious textures, and draw distance that seems to go on forever combined with the scenery's incidental detail to produce an effect that's frequently breathtaking and never less than beautiful.

This makes journeying between towns and missions something enjoyable in it's own right. Small incidents occur – nothing essential, but they help round out Stranger's character and flesh out the Oddworld into somewhere more than just a series of levels strung together.

Sounds peculiar

The music sets the Western vibe perfectly, the sound effects are convincing – it's a pity, then, that the character dialogue (while very well written) is presented at an inexplicably low sample rate. It should be great – though it's basically just a hint system, Stranger can wander up to characters and hit X to talk, but rather than enjoying what should be very funny dialogue, half the time you're simply trying to work out what the wheezing, scratchy shriekings actually mean.

I can only assume decided to construct their own recording technology from gramophone horns and elastic bands to prove that Oddworld technology could really work. Oh well.

Basil Wrathbone

Fun though it is, the stalking, hunt-em-down-and-bring-em-in approach begins to wear thin – but just as it does, Stranger's Wrath...changes. It's not a twist, per se - it's pure Western convention – but it prompts a re-evaluation of the character and events of the game; a reversal mirrored in the way the dry, arid environments become all ice and liquid. At that point, the realisation hits that the structured hunts have given a thorough grounding in strategy and ammo use that allows you to take successful advantage of a more open playfield.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is a great experience. It's exciting, compelling, and beautiful; it takes place in a well realised fantasy world that for once has nothing to do with sage old elves (yay!), unfeasible swords (yay!), or chainmail bikinis (boo!). So long as you let yourself be drawn into the whimsical Oddworld and the Stranger's dilemma, it's a game that will linger in the mind long after the final scene is over.