Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD

Genre: First-Person Shooter / 3D Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the physical-only Oddworld Collection, along with Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty and Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee.)

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, originally released in 2005 on the original Xbox, is the fourth main game in the Oddworld series, and the last game in the series that isn’t a remake. And while it bears some of the elements the series is notable for – its gritty world, grotesque characters, and offbeat sense of humor, it also featured an entirely new protagonist, The Stranger, and a new style of gameplay for the series – specifically, First-Person Shooter.

Welllll… okay, that’s half-true. Players actually switch back and forth between first-person and third-person perspectives, with the first-person view used for firing the protagonist’s unusual weapons, and the third-person view at least nominally used for platforming, melee combat, and collecting “bounties”.

Here’s the thing though… playing this game in third-person absolutely sucks. Mainly this is due to the camera – in short, the camera here is terrible, stuck low to the ground and barely responding to vertical adjustments. I actually found it easier to do platforming in first-person mode, since there at least the camera wasn’t going to fight me to try to look up or down at what I was trying to jump to.

Things fare a bit better here in first-person mode, with this game’s big claim to fame being its own pun-worthy take on the phrase “live ammunition”. That is, ammunition that comes in the form of various critters that you catch live, with different properties when they’re unloaded on enemies. Fuzzy guys with teeth that jump on anyone who wanders near them, spiders that encase enemies in webs, that sorta’ thing.

It’s a clever idea, though in practice it can feel a bit frustrating to have to stop every now and then to literally hunt down ammo – this adds little to the gameplay outside of the novelty.

There are other problems as well. Downed enemies don’t stay down, and unless you unload into them with excessive amounts of damage enough to actually kill them, you’ll be relying on the game’s “bounty” mechanic to vacuum up the unconscious bodies before they awake, possibly while their buddies are still around to take potshots at you. This slows down the action more and, what’s worse, it forces the game to go into third-person mode, which can be damn frustrating since I found myself quickly hating this game’s third-person mode, and being forced to switch to it for no good reason made no damn sense to me.

As the “HD” in this title may indicate, this game has seen some improvements since its initial release, including improved graphics, although to be honest they still tend to blend together like a big blur. This is in part because this came out during the era where every game had to be painted in tones of muddy brown (because brown equals realism, donchaknow). This version allows you to play around with the color setting some, so I suppose if you prefer muddy green or muddy blue, you can do that, though sadly there’s nothing to change the brightness or contrast levels. I should mention that the Switch version of the game does also add in gyroscopic aiming, though unfortunately you can’t change the sensitivity, which made this addition feel a bit useless.

Honestly, my time with Oddworld: Strangers Wrath HD was just frustrating. I kept seeing flashes of brilliance, but every element of the game feels marred by important options that are missing, and questionable gameplay choices that make things more tedious. There’s still a good game buried underneath all of that here, but you have to put up with a lot of frustrating issues to get to it.

tl;dr – Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath is a port of a 2005 Xbox First-Person Shooter with 3D Action-Platformer elements. While there are some creative ideas at work here, at every turn this game is marred by poor design choices that make the game needlessly tedious, and missing options that really feel like they were needed. The result is a game that still has some fun to offer, but you have to put up with a lot of frustration to actually enjoy it.

Grade: C+

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