While I wait for the WoW addicts to get me their addresses, I thought I’d past the time with Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. This marks the first game I’ve ever pre-ordered, but it came with a free DVD of movies from all the past Oddworld games. It was rushed to my floor immediately…

So far the game is great. I’m a little disappointed by the graphics though. The Xbox is starting to look outdated. You can really tell the game is pushing it beyond it’s capabilities. The scenery is beautifully conceived with tons of plants and bugs including dandilions that release floating seeds all over the place. The problem is that there’s a lot of aliasing and visible draw-in so all this “natural clutter” makes it hard to see what’s going on. I hope they port this to PC where the graphics can be suitably rendered.

The gameplay is a riot. As you probably know already, your ammo are living creatures. Chippunks are annoying rodents that attract the enemy becuase it wants to kill it. They’re handy for isolating outlaws from a group and then capturing them with the web of a bolomite. After you incapacitate your enemy, you suck them up into a container (ala Ghostbusters) to be cashed in at the Bounty Store. There are also more projectile type weapons like thudslugs, stingbees, and explosive boombats. My favorite so far are the stunks; skunk-like creatures that release a potent stench, causing the enemy to retch. While they’re puking, you can capture them in your container.

The action shifts seamlessly from 3rd person to 1st by clicking the right controller. In 3rd person, you fight with your fists and by headbutting, in 1st person you use your crossbow. There’s some platforming aspects so far, but nothing annoying. When you run, Stranger goes down on all four and gallops like a lion!

Another bizarre innovation is the health system. You have a health bar and a stamina bar, but there are no medkits or health potions to be found. Instead, you shake your wounds off like a wet dog. When you’re out of stamina (which regenerates with time), you can no longer shake off your wounds.

The quests are moderately non-linear. You go from town to town collecting bounties so you can afford the $20,000 mystery surgery you need to survive. Each town has a general store that gradually gets better upgrades and accoutrement. You get paid more if you capture your prey alive by knocking it out or webbing it instead of killing it. This makes it more lucrative to be stealthy and clever, but there are plenty of times when you have no choice but to gun it out with zapflies.

That’s enough praise for now, more later…