Oddworld Stranger's Wrath - By Gunhero

I remember many years ago one of my best friends always tried to convince me into playing the Oddworld games on Playstation, Although i did like the artistic style of the game and its weird sense of humor i could never really get into its trial and error like gameplay.
So fearing this new oddworld game would be somewhat of the same as the old ones and only Have seen a lot of pre rendered clips and pictures i did not really know what to expect out of this game.

The game greets you by a very nice intro introducing the character you are about to play namely “The Stranger”.
The intro is of very high quality almost something that Pixar studios would produce, the intro is just there for show though and does not really give you any certain plot or idea of what the whole thing is about.
The game starts of with a tutorial of the games main features and mechanics, i feel that the tutorial almost gave away a little to much because one thing that is fun in games is to be able to learn while you play, the tutorial simply goes to much into detail into how everything works.
The GFX look for the most parts very nice, the environments specially are extremely well done, the draw distance is really long, and frame rates never drop anything noticeable.

There are some really sweet looking things in the game like watching pollen from dried up dandelions float around, if you use explosives and your standing to close your hat will catch fire while you run around the fire will give you a really nice heat blur effect. There are a lot of small details like this in the game making the immersion really good. The animations for the most part are nice as well but some are flawed for example the jumping and double jump animation feel a bit to slow and sluggish as well as the climbing rope animation looks a bit crap with its choppy animation. There are some graphical bugs present as well mostly in the shadow department, the shadows often clip right though different surfaces and appear right through walls, example if your standing behind a wall a enemy might be on the other side and you can clearly see his shadow on the wall from your side, Although this is pretty minor and does not hurt the game play at all but a “huh?” When it happens is still eminent.

The sound of the game is pretty good, the voice acting is often hilarious and a joy to hear, the music on the other hand is decent but you don't really notice it that often, its just there and almost works like ambiance, while walking around its mostly dark moody synthesizer sounds and classical guitar chords plunking out, and in action its mostly some kind of simple drumbeats.
It does work well but some music with a little more warmth and heart would not have hurt.

The gameplay is first/third person shooter with platform elements, the stranger can walk, run on 4 legs, jump, double jump, punch, kick etc
the game is mainly played from third person perspective while exploring and first person in action, you have a gun that you load with different types of ammo that are made out of different animals, a bat that fires electricity is your main weapon, others include a raccoon gun that lures enemies to its location and a small hairy ball with razor sharp teeth that makes enemies panic and run around making them easy targets for you, the strangers occupation is a bounty hunter so you also carry some kind of vacuum cleaner to suck in both knocked out and dead enemies, if you capture the baddies alive you make more cash for your bounty, the point of the game is to walk from town to town and do the quests that you are given, almost always consisting of going out and finding the leader of a gang of bandits. You are not given much freedom in the game, a good comparement would be to Rockstars Red dead revolver, you can go into town, go into stores to buy upgrades, talk a little to the villagers but thats basically it. Missions are often about shooting your way through levels until you reach the boss. The game starts of pretty easy but after the third mission the difficulty increases drastically challenging even the most die hard shooter fans, i myself had a hard time keeping myself alive on the fourth boss battle. Thing is you cant really just go in with guns blazing, you have to be smart and trick your enemies in the best possible way. Using the right weapon at the right time is also a life saver.

The game does not have any health pickups but instead relies on a stamina system so that you can load up your health again using your stamina. Your stamina loads up slowly and is only consumed by either using melee combat or recharging your health. This simple mechanic puts some strategy into the game because you have to run around and hide from the enemies so you can regain your strength and then go into a fight again with full health.
The game also uses some stealth elements adding a radar so you can see in what direction the enemies are facing, also you can hide in bushes giving you a “hidden” status so the enemies cannot find you.

The story of the game is nothing really to cheer about because its barely existent, you are a bounty hunter that needs money to buy some kind of papers so you have to go and make money and thats basically it. What keeps the game fresh and interesting though is all the funny dialogs that is going on most of the time, example these 2 chickens where talking about some broad in town and the other chicken said “i would sure like to pluck her feathers”. Overall the game has a pretty mature feel to the jokes, also it contains some blood and gore if i am not mistaken, i pushed down a enemy into a big spinning fan and a bunch of gore and gibs flew out, the game is far from being violent though, blood is actually almost none existent.

The game also features some physics that are somewhat sloppy implanted, you can knock around boxes and some objects Although nice that its there it does not look nowhere realistic or on par with other titles.
Another complaint would be that the camera system sometimes gets in the way and gets stuck, really annoying while your in the middle of a boss fight and suddenly the camera is filming right into a wall or something.

Overall i feel that this is a pretty solid game. Action fans will defiantly enjoy this game. If your looking something like the old oddworld games it might be wise to give this game a rent because its nothing like that, if your instead looking for a fun and pretty action/first person shooter then this is probably a game for you.
despite somewhat flawed and repetitive gameplay its a good game to blast away on for one-two hours a day.
It would be wise to maybe give the game a rent first though because the games odd setting might not be for everyone.
Also i am uncertain of the games length, having beat the first chapter out of six in about 2 hours makes this game approx 12 hours long.

I give this game a 8-/10
a cool game that goes more for style over substance but still manages to be fun, interesting and above all mostly solid game mechanics and challenging gameplay.

We are still here :) - by gunhero
Hey people, there has not been much to do for the last three days in terms of writing reviews but i just thought it post a little anyway, i have been really into tiger woods 2004 and halo 2 multiplayer with 3 friends, it really is great fun to play those games with friends, specially tiger woods i never thought i would like a golf game but it really is a blast.

Another cool thing is that my review for shadow vault got picked up by no mutants allowed
www.nma-fallout.com
how cool is that? :)

# posted by gunhero @ 07:35 0 comments