Allow me to paint you a picture to start this journey: the year is 2005. Living in the rural midwest, the only gaming store I had near me was a small Walmart, and you’d be lucky if you could find anything you were searching for there. Movie Gallery, however, was a haven for me in my budding years of gaming, as I could rent a video game for essentially pocket change. Whether I wanted to jump into the world of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory or try something a little different, it was a great way to expand my gaming portfolio.
However, one game immediately caught my eye, thanks in part to its unique cover art. Featuring a creature adorned in a cowboy hat with a crossbow attached to his wrist, staring stoically into the distance while surrounded by various creeps I’d never seen before, I was instantly intrigued. Little did I know that this game would quickly become one of my favorites I’d ever played, even if I never got the chance to finish it.
My First Oddworld Experience
While I considered my gaming history to be full of variety, I had never once touched a game in the Oddworld franchise, even if they seemed to be right up my alley. However, a fresh-faced teen was about to have his whole world turned upside down the first time they popped a rented copy of Strangers Wrath into their Xbox. While plenty of bigger and better shooters and platformers are available on the platform, with the flagship Halo franchise still dominating the genre at the time, it didn’t have the same effect on me at the time.
What makes Strangers Wrath so unique, beyond the visual aspects of the game being unlike anything I had experienced at the time, was the general flow of the gameplay. After taking control of the Stranger, I found that the FPS portions of the game were more than your standard affair, with Live Ammo being the big hook here. Rather than picking up bullets that I could load into a variety of generic guns, I was instead using a variety of critters that could be found in the world as my main form of ammunition. Each different critter has its use, with Fuzzles being great for setting traps and Thudslugs giving me tremendous offensive power to use against the Bounties I was hunting down.
On top of that, I could choose between life or death for those I was hunting, with ammo types that would allow me to stun my foes or eliminate them. No matter which I chose, I could walk up to them and use the wrist-mounted vacuum to put them in an apparently never-filling bag. However, what truly blew my mind at the ripe age of 13 was the fact that the game could seamlessly switch between a first-person shooter and a third-person platformer.
With the press of a button, I could bring out my Crossbow, filled to the brim with terrifyingly adorable creatures that I could use to wipe the floor with my enemies. After taking them down, I could swap into a third-person perspective and explore the stages before me. At the time, they all felt massive, and a variety of towns full of Clakkerz (giant chicken folk who all speak with a pitch-shifted filter for maximum hilarity) made every stop worth my time.
It was, and still is, truly unlike anything I had played before. However, between balancing schoolwork, being a typical teen, and chores around the house, the rental period for Movie Gallery would come up quickly. Even after renting the game more times than I would like to admit, I never had the time to actually finish the game, even if I remember every moment that I had with it fondly. After the final rental, I figured it would never be my time to finish it, especially after my original Xbox met its unfortunate end while playing Destroy All Humans and imploding upon itself, much to my dismay then. I’m so glad that warranties are much better nowadays, as trying to get Microsoft to fix my OG Xbox was a nightmare and a half.
A New Era for High-Definition
Another thing I enjoy just as much as obscure first-person shooters is collecting various games, and even though I have (apparently) two copies of Strangers Wrath, I never got my hands on another original Xbox. This made each copy of the game that I had unplayable since the game was exclusively on Xbox and couldn’t be played on the Xbox 360, either. So, what was someone like me to do in this situation? Why would I want to buy another Xbox after the newest system came out, especially since I had such bad luck with my first console?
So, I had to sit on the regret of never finishing Strangers Wrath, something that has followed me for almost 18 years at this point. However, fate smiled on me when I saw that Oddworld: Strangers Wrath had become available in HD for my PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation Vita. I purchased it on both platforms, alongside the Nintendo Switch and PC, dedicating myself to playing through and finally finishing this game. And guess what? I still haven’t finished Strangers Wrath. I was worried for the longest time that it was just the pangs of nostalgia hitting the walls of my brain and that I wouldn’t enjoy the game as much as I did when I was younger. I was worried that I would find it cringe rather than based, as the kids of today say. But, about a month back, I finally decided to jump back in.
Controls were tight and snappy, just as I remembered. A beautifully orchestrated soundtrack by Michael Bross brought the world to life once again, as the broken speech patterns of the Stranger himself once again took me back into the world that I so loved. It helps that the game still felt great to play, even if some small frustrations may bug me a bit more now than they did back in the day.
I’m happy to report that Strangers Wrath still feels as good to play to me as it did back in the day. The unique world and premise, mixed with the general vibe of a Western set in an unknown world, are still the biggest draw to me, and it’s still just as fun as I remember it being. While some of the comedy hasn’t aged exactly the best, I’m happy to say that I’ll finally have the chance to dive in and fully complete this relic of the past and bring my journey to an end. I can only hope that one day, The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot sees the light of day so I can start it, wait for 15 or more years, and finish it off in the proper fashion.
Published: Dec 25, 2023 07:00 am