ODDWORLD STRANGERS WRATH HD REVIEW UPDATE
ODDWORLD STRANGERS WRATH HD REVIEW SERIES
ODDWORLD STRANGERS WRATH HD REVIEW DOWNLOAD

In many cases, there are even opportunities to make the environment your ally, either encouraging your foes to take a fall or go for a swim, or turn machinery into a lethal deathtrap. Or why not use rapid-firing wasps to take down one foe while you wrap up another with Web ready to be sucked into your handy bag for live bounty.įor any given situation, there’s always more than one approach, and it’s rarely ‘go in with all guns blazing’. Fire a group of snarling furballs at the ground near a group of baddies, then use a springing chipmunk to alert their attention. The onus is on you, therefore, to even the odds by using your critters to best advantage. In most situations you’re up against large numbers of well-armed outlaws, and despite the game’s fantasy setting you’re not nearly as invulnerable to incoming fire as your average military FPS hero. The more you play, the more you realise how ingenious and creative the game’s approach to combat is. Still, isn’t it all a bit of a gimmick in the end? Wouldn’t it be better to just shoot those outlaw varmints than fire a spider at them and imprison them temporarily in a Web, or lay down a hail of furry creatures that attack them until they fall down? Firing skunks to induce immediate vomiting in a crowd of outlaws is all very entertaining, and the same goes for exploding furry bats.

At first, the use of critter ammunition is fun but doesn’t seem to make much sense. Playing it now there are elements that remind you of more recent games, like Rage, Far Cry 2 or even Crysis, but really there’s never been another game that looks and feels like Stranger’s Wrath.Īnd that’s one reason why you really ought to experience it for yourself.

ODDWORLD STRANGERS WRATH HD REVIEW SERIES

When it arrived most FPS games were very linear, but Stranger’s Wrath mixes and matches its approaches, giving you a series of towns that act like hubs from which you can take on various bounty-hunter missions, but often not giving you any real choice over which mission to accept next, and towards the end transforming into a more straightforward, narrative-led adventure. Nor does Stranger’s Wrath have the most orthodox structure. All the Oddworld games were odd, but this one is probably the oddest of the lot. Your only weapon is a sort of double-barrelled crossbow, but you can vary your offensive capabilities by using different types of ammo, each one a peculiar furry or insectoid critter that, when shot at an enemy, will have a particular effect. It’s a game that’s styled like a third-person platformer, but that’s mostly played as a first-person shooter and – strangest of all – it’s a shooter where you only have one gun. Yet it’s also a weird fantasy western, starring an inhuman bounty hunter and a cast of lunatic outlaws. Stranger’s Wrath is very much an Oddworld game, featuring the kind of narrative values, weird creatures and oddball gameplay that built the studio its reputation in its Playstation heyday.

ODDWORLD STRANGERS WRATH HD REVIEW DOWNLOAD

It is a classic, held dear by a slightly cultish fanbase and worthy of its new HD trimmings, yet it’s also a game that was misunderstood (and arguably mismarketed) at its original 2005 launch, where it floundered on the first Xbox and PC.Įven now, playing the game in its new PSN download incarnation, it’s not hard to see why.

In the case of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD you could argue that both reasons hold up. The second is perhaps more compelling: that the original game, for one reason or another, never reached the kind of audience it should have, and that it deserves another shot at the spotlight. One is that the game in question is such a classic, and so beloved of its fans, that it deserves to be recreated with remastered HD visuals and enjoyed by a new generation of gamers.

ODDWORLD STRANGERS WRATH HD REVIEW UPDATE

There are only two good reasons to give a game an HD update – ignoring the cash, of course.

Oddworld strangers wrath hd review