Huge, huge amounts of violence, swearing, and general weirdness await in Stranger's Wrath.
User Rating: 8 | Oddworld Stranger's Wrath XBOX
Stranger's Wrath is the next game in the Oddworld series, it is very different from it's predecessors but is still true to the Oddworld name. This game is completely different from the others in the series. In fact, it actually draws inspiration from the Old West...then of course twists it around to make it really, really weird. The actual gameplay consists of switching between the controls of a first person shooter and a platformer. Sound weird enough yet? No, it isn't. You also play as a character who uses a crossbow that shoots various small animals. The earliest ones are man-eating fuzzles, and chip-punks (like chipmunks, except they're punks) that taunt your enemies. Your default weapon is an electric firefly with infinite ammo. It may seem strange that this is your default weapon, but it shows why when you play. The electric firefly is extremely versatile, and is also a tool for activating shock-switches. In the game, you play as a bounty hunter named Stranger who needs to get 20,000$ for a surgical operation. The operation itself remains secret, and may or may not be a big surprise later on in the game. Being a bounty hunter will reflect on the way you play as well. Every enemy you fight (as long as they're an outlaw) has a bounty on their head. You suck them up in a machine to take them in. Living enemies will be worth far more money than dead ones, so it is often better to simply injure your enemies instead of killing them. Of course, when you're in a big battle, you can't afford someone who you just took care of getting back up and shooting at you again. So, for your own survival regardless of profit, it is good to kill enemies sometimes too. If you want a profit, you will also find that stealth finds a way into this game as well. You may often have to hide from your enemies, and use a chippunk to lure them out one by one. The format of the game is simple, you take bounties of different gang leaders and fight through their hoardes of goons to get to them. After you do get to them, you will fight the said gang leader in a boss fight. The boss fights are all original, but the whole dead or alive theme injures how fun they are a little bit. You will often be struggling to get the boss alive and only manage to knock him out, while the boss's stamina only goes down a little slower than his health and recharges very fast. This kind of fight often becomes frustrating, as you will be struggling to shoot him enough to get his stamina to zero before his health while still ducking behind corners occasionally to heal. Yes, you do heal in Stranger's Wrath, you do it at will by pressing the Y button. The impression that this made on me was yet another version of the recharging shield in Halo. However, you are limited to how much you can heal. You have a stamina bar below your health that indicates your energy left for healing and punching your enemies. Even if the general gameplay in Stranger's Wrath starts to get boring, you can find yourself absorbed in how atmospheric, funny, and beautiful it is. The environments are humongous and detailed. Oddword inhabitants has made a world here, with people to talk to, objects to destroy, and ammo...err...creatures to hunt. Stranger's Wrath is that combination of originality and fun that many gamers want. If you love both first person shooters and platformers, you would be an absolute fool to pass up this game. All my 8 R Blong 2 diz. W00T! 
