Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath (Xbox)

Usually, when I mention a game on The Game Hoard that I’m only now getting around to playing after playing a demo or seeing an ad for it, the end result is something underwhelming. However, unlike Area-51 or Lady Sia, when I saw the trailer for Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath on an Xbox demo disc, I was impressed enough by it to buy it. It would still be many years before I finally played it, but at least this time around, it would not disappoint.

 

The main thing that caught my attention about Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath is how it handles its first-person shooting segments. The game’s main character, an cat-like bounty hunter known as The Stranger, relies on a crossbow that uses literal live ammunition. Tiny creatures roam around the game world that The Stranger can snap up and use as weapons against the wanted criminals and their more traditional weaponry. The Zappfly is his most reliable ammo type, the little bug never running out of ammo since you use the electricity it produces instead. A simple zap is good for dealing quick damage, but a burst shot after the Zappfly has had time to charge can be used to knock out weaker enemies or activate machinery, some of it helping with puzzles and other mechanisms like a crane holding a dangling rock that can prove to be a fun way to take out a few enemies at once. It’s reliability also means you’re technically never without an ammo type, and since it is used to stun the living ammo you find in the wild, the Zappfly becomes a constant reliable ally during your adventure across this particular part of Oddworld.

You can collect bounties on enemies of all types whether they’re alive or dead, the dead providing less of the game’s currency Moolah and making the process of upgrading the ammo types take longer. However, you have a few different ammo options that will help with either approach. If you want the enemies dead because they’re either overwhelming you with numbers or they’re positioned where you wouldn’t be able to suck up the body for transfer with your special tool anyway, something like the Stingbee will help you out a lot, the machine-gun like fire of the little wasps simple but effective. Sniper Wasps can eliminate an enemy quietly from a distance, Boombats will attach to whatever they hit and then shortly detonate, and the Fuzzles are little furballs you can place in hiding and lure foes into so they can be torn apart by little creature’s huge fangs. A well used Fuzzle isn’t always lethal though, and a few ammo types can help with either approach. Chippunks are lures that call out taunts to enemies and are useful for getting enemies away from each other so you can take them out quietly, The Stranger even able to do so by hand if you want to hold onto an ammo type. Stunks are little skunks that will cause any creature near them to start vomiting from the smell, leaving them easy pickings for something like a Thudslug that can instantly knockout most weaker criminals. Lastly, the Bolamite spider is purely for wrapping up baddies and is a great tool for incapacitating a character long enough to capture them alive. Most ammo types also have an upgraded version available as well that can crank up their capabilities such as the Stunk sucking enemies in towards it stink when placed and the Bolamite’s expanded version able to web up multiple criminals at once if they’re close enough.

 

This selection of ammo is excellent for supporting the shooting side of the gameplay, almost every ammo type fluidly finding purpose in your kit either because of their distinct traits or because the game limits the available ammunition enough to encourage careful and intelligent use of your better tools. Some things do end up losing their importance as you start finding the new ammo creatures though, Chippunk in particular dropping off as the stealth situations become less common and you can start to hold your own even in a situation where fire is coming from all sides, and the Sniper Wasp doesn’t have many moments where it’s directly designed to be a safe and superior option to something easy and quick like a Zappfly blast. Luckily, the only other cases where your ammo comes up short in the task their designed for are against special enemies or the boss characters. You can’t just web up your main bounties instantly and be done with it after all, but tools like the Thudslug still do incredible damage to a boss to make up for other options not being as effective as usual. Scooping up new ammo isn’t hard or really much of a hunt, but making refill areas a more natural part of the world instead of cases of bullets laying around is appreciated.

 

Even your healing method is made a bit more organic than finding some healing item, The Stranger instead needing to literally shake off any damage he’s taken. This exhausts your stamina though, meaning you still have to be careful since you can’t heal too many times in a row, and that stamina is also useful for platforming segments or when you want to get your hands dirty with physical combat. To run you need that stamina, and falling from too high will take your health if it doesn’t have the expected amount of stamina to drain. Exploring a location by way of platforming can often be incredibly beneficial, either by giving you excellent vantage points on the action, helping you find extra ammo or cash, or just getting you to a place you need to be.

There are many interesting locations for bounty hunting in Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, the enemies placed around Wild West locations like old dusty towns, a barn, or a wooden fort, but the entire game isn’t just the American Old West but with weird creatures. You’ll start of your adventure as The Stranger heads towards a town of quirky chicken people to earn the cash for an operation he needs, but as you need to find new places with new bounties, you head off to more modern areas, the player working through forests and riverside areas until they start finding the industrial shipyards and an enormous technologically advanced dam. Oddworld keeps its locations strange in regards to the silly characters populating it and alien in the weird mixture of species and tech you encounter, but it all comes together into a plot that evolves from that initially mysterious operation The Stranger needs into something with a bit of a bigger scope and higher stakes.

 

There is a bit of a problem with the story-focused segments of the game though. Incentivizing you to stand and fight becomes an issue when the game isn’t providing a cash reward for successfully sucking up the bodies of the captured or dead. To try and still give you a reason for doing so, you can regain ammo by capturing them with your device instead, but the ammo drain isn’t going to be that bad if you simply run past that area’s skirmish. There are definitely moments where the way ahead is closed off until you’ve killed all the bad guys in the area or it might be hard to slip past the amount of incoming fire safely, but when you aren’t hunting a bounty, sometimes the best option is to just skip swathes of intended combat sections.

 

When you do have to stand and fight though, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath has some fun fights even if they can’t match the excitement pictured in the fortune teller’s trailer-like video predictions of your future. Most battles are about being careful while under fire, using cover and clever ammo usage to pick off foes slowly, but it lands in a spot between action-packed and slow but strategic that still has its appeal even though it doesn’t benefit from the focus of either of those gameplay directions. Bosses usually bring something fairly unique to the fight, such as an engineer named Packrat Palooka who has backup from cyborgs, turrets, and a forcefield during his battle. Flint “Explosives” McGee has a mine full of explosives and the player and boss both use minecarts to fight during different parts of the stage, and Meagly McGraw rides around a hulking minion who must be dealt with first to actually get to your bounty. Some have simple gimmicks admittedly, but regular baddies can have different traits too to make the regular fire fights more interesting. Mostly it comes down to them wielding different weapons or having them in turrets or tanks. There are unfortunately some foes like the giant squid monsters who can get you stuck in a loop of taking damage you can’t escape, but when the game can get you to participate in a fight, it’s usually going to be an entertaining one because you’ll be asked to mix up your ammo types to properly handle the diverse foes in your way.

THE VERDICT: The literal live ammo in Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath and the unique abilities that each creature you fire adds to your arsenal makes the bounty hunting and battles a lot more interesting than a regular gun fight. Mixing up your options is both encouraged by amount the ammo provided and a natural response to the way the skirmishes and boss characters are designed. The stylish world is a little let down by odd voice acting and the fact platforming can sometimes undermine battle as often as it helps it, but for most of your adventure in this Oddworld, the interesting environments and approach to combat hit a sweet spot between action and strategy that ensures the experience is enjoyable.

 

And so, I give Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath for Xbox…

A GOOD rating. Save for the small failings of things like Chippunk and Sniper Wasps, the abilities of your ammo and the need to properly use them are definitely what makes the gun fights of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath engaging. The early parts of the game definitely encourage curiosity and creativity, but story segments can sometimes fail to draw out that careful need to select your ammo properly and lead to it falling short of greatness. Thankfully you’ll still end up in many fights throughout where you can try to figure out how your tools can best overcome a strong firefight concept, and the game knows how to keep the bounty hunting varied enough that hunting down these wanted criminals won’t feel too samey. Living ammo is already pretty gimmicky but effective so its not too surprising that Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath keeps bringing in new area and enemy gimmicks that mix world design and ammo use together well, and while it’s hard to identify this purely as some sort of alien bounty hunting game, its oddities give the game character where its needed and make the little flaws easier to overlook.

 

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath would eventually get many HD rereleases that certainly polish up the experience quite a bit, but the original experience on the Xbox is still enjoyable because it had a concept for how it wanted to handle its shooting and action and that came through often enough. There is certainly more room to explore the ideas of its ammunition system more thoroughly, but Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath still delivers well on the potential that caught my attention way back when I first got my Xbox.