Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD Review

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Fast Facts

Title: Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD
Developer: Oddworld Inhabitants
Publisher: Oddworld Inhabitants
Website: http://www.oddworld.com/
Genre: Adventure, Action, First-Person Shooter
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Age Rating: PEGI 12
Release Date: 23/01/2020
Price: £26.99 – Rapid Reviews UK were very kindly provided with a review code for this game.

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD is a re-release of what was originally a 2005 Xbox exclusive. So how does it hold up 15 years later?

Fans of the Oddworld series of games will know that this entry is a significant departure from the usual platform-puzzler type of games which Developer Oddworld Inhabitants had previously released.

Instead, Stranger’s Wrath provides an exciting mix of third-person open-world exploration and platforming blended with first-person shooter combat.

The game is set in Oddworld’s alien version of the Wild West and sees you the player assume the role of a grizzly lion-faced bounty hunter known only as Stranger. Your goal is to capture the many Outlaws who inhabit the land so that he can afford to pay for a mysterious operation which he needs to survive.

Each level or “bounty” concludes with a unique boss encounter. You can take the bounty target, and every other target back to jail dead or alive. The latter of which rewards you with a lot more moolah, the in-game currency which can be spent acquiring new upgrades for Stranger’s arsenal.

But what kind of weapons will you have at your disposal? Being an Oddworld game, players can expect something more creative than a bunch of different guns. Instead, you have an arm-mounted crossbow which fires live ammo, and by live ammo, I mean actual living creatures! From hard-shelled thudslugs which knock enemies clean out, to giant spiders known as bolamites which wrap enemies in a web, each creature provides a different but equally entertaining way to deal with the outlaws.

While the shooting itself was perfectly fine in the original game, a great addition in the Nintendo Switch version of the game is the gyroscopic aiming which allows you to fine-tune your shots by tilting the Joy-Cons. Let me tell you; it’s so satisfying to land the perfect shot this way.

In conclusion, the games creative blend of 3rd person platforming and first-person shooting coupled with boss encounters which give players plenty of choice in how to defeat them, create a standout game which is still just as fantastic as it was 15 years ago.

As a lifelong fan of the Oddworld series, I may be a little biased. However, I would recommend this game to fans of action-adventure games everywhere, and if you are a Switch owner, you cannot pass up this masterpiece from yesteryear.

For those of you who decide to pick it up, I hope you have just as much fun as I did!

Rapid Reviews Rating

You can purchase Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD from the Nintendo eShop on the following link, https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Oddworld-Stranger-s-Wrath-1695267.html#Overview