the ramble dump
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
About a week ago, I bought the game Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. It is now one of my favourite games ever, possibly even beating Halo and Halo 2. Those of you who know me and know how much I like those game will probably be quite astonished to hear that. I've decided to share just exactly why I enjoyed this game so much. This is my first full review of a game, and this blog seems the perfect place to post it.
To start with: some slightly sentimental background. Feel free to skip it.
In 1998, my brother and I got a PlayStation. I got two games, one of which was Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, a 2D platform game, the main aim of which was to save as many Mudokons from the greedy corporate cluthes of the Glukkons as possible, with 300 in total, a million secret areas making this task especially difficult, and you being a Mudoken yourself. If these names make no sense to you at all, go look them up. You, Abe, had to do all this by getting through various situations by jumping, rolling, creeping, running away from and generally avoiding things like mines, drills, Slig gunfire (Sligs being one of the best video game characters EVER), and getting eaten alive by the world's various inhabitants. You could also chant, to open portals so that Mudokons could escape, and to allow you to possess nearby enemies, who could kill and sometimes control other enemies.
I didn't get very far in it for a while, what with having no memory card and all, but when I eventually managed to make some progress with it, one of the things I really liked about it was the rich story, with all the various creatures and characters and all the different places you went. It had a perfect balance of darkness and humour, and incredible backdrops everywhere you went.
The next Oddworld game, Munch's Oddysee, was how my brother managed to persuade me that getting an Xbox was a better choice than getting a PS2. He wanted Halo. I didn't know anything about Halo and I didn't care. Oddworld called, now in 3D! It was a good game, but it lacked the same feel to it - it was much more cartoony, and despite its potentially darker storyline, it wasn't all that dark. The breathtaking aspect of the environments was lost in the change to 3D, and a lot of the textures were repeatedly and obviously tiled.
At the start of this year, in a moment of renewed interest what with the imminent release of the new game, I grabbed a copy of Abe's Oddysee, the first Oddworld game, off Ebay. It was the first of the 'Quintology', with Exoddus being a bonus game and Munch being the second. It had all the amazing art of Exoddus, but being an earlier game, was a little more restrictive in the various things you could do, and due to the lack of 'quicksave', it was much harder. The humour wasn't as present, but it was equally as dark.
Now onto the actual Stranger's Wrath review. Stranger's Wrath departed from the Quintology and its characters, but it saw the return of all the qualities that made the previous Oddworld games so good. You start the game off in an Old West-type environment and make your way up the Mongo River as the game progresses. For a while you're a bounty hunter, needing 20,000 Moolah for an operation. As you make your way through the various towns, each one has a list of outlaws that they want you to catch, dead or alive. To make it interesting, it's easier to catch them dead, but they're worth more alive. Each outlaw you go after is a boss of a group of outlaws, and the same applies to every single one of them, making the gameplay much more interesting. The final battle with each outlaw is set up differently, maintaining this interest.
One of the most talked-about feature in all the reviews I read was the ability to switch between third- and first-person views, with the running around and meleeing done in the third-person, and when you switched to first-person, how it became a proper first person shooter. The other strongly-advertised feature was that the ammo you use is literally 'live'. Throughout the places you go, usually just before a battle or confrontation, you are given an area where your ammunition is flying around in the air or bouncing along on the ground, and you have to hunt it: fire at it and take it. You can buy ammo in a general store as well, but it costs. You can get explosive Boombats, hard-hitting Thudslugs or rapid-firing Stingbees, to name a few. As the game advances, upgrades become available. You can load up to two types of ammo at any time onto your special crossbow, which appears in the FP view. It all gives the game character, one which I personally find really appealing.
I was very sceptical about an Oddworld FPS at all, because it was such a departure from the other games, but it really works. The different types of ammo are needed for different situations because of their various functions, perhaps more so than other FPS games. The strategy and having to work out how you're going to go about getting past certain parts is also still present to some extent. Use a Chippunk to draw an enemy to the spot where you want them, fire Fuzzles around around a doorway so as soon as someone steps through it they're ripped apart, fire a Zapfly at switches to activate mechanical devices.
The most striking thing about the whole game is how spectacular the environments are. The industrial areas are dark and creepy, the mystical natural places are even creepier. The detail is outstanding. Forests feel like forests, snow looks like proper snow, dust clouds blow through the streets of the towns... everywhere you turn you see something visually appealing. At one point early on in the game I remember being in a spot with a few plants and some seeds or something floating around in the air, and Thudslugs buzzing around... and the world felt real. It's an incredible improvement on Munch's Oddysee, and I haven't seen environments like it in any other game.
The gameplay remains interesting throughout the bounty-hunting stage, but gets really interesting, both in gameplay and story, roughly halfway through, after a brilliant twist in the tale. Here you really see some classic Oddworld, with the perfect balance between dark elements and humour that was seen in Abe's Exoddus. But I won't ruin that for you. Go buy it and see for yourself.
To start with: some slightly sentimental background. Feel free to skip it.
In 1998, my brother and I got a PlayStation. I got two games, one of which was Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, a 2D platform game, the main aim of which was to save as many Mudokons from the greedy corporate cluthes of the Glukkons as possible, with 300 in total, a million secret areas making this task especially difficult, and you being a Mudoken yourself. If these names make no sense to you at all, go look them up. You, Abe, had to do all this by getting through various situations by jumping, rolling, creeping, running away from and generally avoiding things like mines, drills, Slig gunfire (Sligs being one of the best video game characters EVER), and getting eaten alive by the world's various inhabitants. You could also chant, to open portals so that Mudokons could escape, and to allow you to possess nearby enemies, who could kill and sometimes control other enemies.
I didn't get very far in it for a while, what with having no memory card and all, but when I eventually managed to make some progress with it, one of the things I really liked about it was the rich story, with all the various creatures and characters and all the different places you went. It had a perfect balance of darkness and humour, and incredible backdrops everywhere you went.
The next Oddworld game, Munch's Oddysee, was how my brother managed to persuade me that getting an Xbox was a better choice than getting a PS2. He wanted Halo. I didn't know anything about Halo and I didn't care. Oddworld called, now in 3D! It was a good game, but it lacked the same feel to it - it was much more cartoony, and despite its potentially darker storyline, it wasn't all that dark. The breathtaking aspect of the environments was lost in the change to 3D, and a lot of the textures were repeatedly and obviously tiled.
At the start of this year, in a moment of renewed interest what with the imminent release of the new game, I grabbed a copy of Abe's Oddysee, the first Oddworld game, off Ebay. It was the first of the 'Quintology', with Exoddus being a bonus game and Munch being the second. It had all the amazing art of Exoddus, but being an earlier game, was a little more restrictive in the various things you could do, and due to the lack of 'quicksave', it was much harder. The humour wasn't as present, but it was equally as dark.
Now onto the actual Stranger's Wrath review. Stranger's Wrath departed from the Quintology and its characters, but it saw the return of all the qualities that made the previous Oddworld games so good. You start the game off in an Old West-type environment and make your way up the Mongo River as the game progresses. For a while you're a bounty hunter, needing 20,000 Moolah for an operation. As you make your way through the various towns, each one has a list of outlaws that they want you to catch, dead or alive. To make it interesting, it's easier to catch them dead, but they're worth more alive. Each outlaw you go after is a boss of a group of outlaws, and the same applies to every single one of them, making the gameplay much more interesting. The final battle with each outlaw is set up differently, maintaining this interest.
One of the most talked-about feature in all the reviews I read was the ability to switch between third- and first-person views, with the running around and meleeing done in the third-person, and when you switched to first-person, how it became a proper first person shooter. The other strongly-advertised feature was that the ammo you use is literally 'live'. Throughout the places you go, usually just before a battle or confrontation, you are given an area where your ammunition is flying around in the air or bouncing along on the ground, and you have to hunt it: fire at it and take it. You can buy ammo in a general store as well, but it costs. You can get explosive Boombats, hard-hitting Thudslugs or rapid-firing Stingbees, to name a few. As the game advances, upgrades become available. You can load up to two types of ammo at any time onto your special crossbow, which appears in the FP view. It all gives the game character, one which I personally find really appealing.
I was very sceptical about an Oddworld FPS at all, because it was such a departure from the other games, but it really works. The different types of ammo are needed for different situations because of their various functions, perhaps more so than other FPS games. The strategy and having to work out how you're going to go about getting past certain parts is also still present to some extent. Use a Chippunk to draw an enemy to the spot where you want them, fire Fuzzles around around a doorway so as soon as someone steps through it they're ripped apart, fire a Zapfly at switches to activate mechanical devices.
The most striking thing about the whole game is how spectacular the environments are. The industrial areas are dark and creepy, the mystical natural places are even creepier. The detail is outstanding. Forests feel like forests, snow looks like proper snow, dust clouds blow through the streets of the towns... everywhere you turn you see something visually appealing. At one point early on in the game I remember being in a spot with a few plants and some seeds or something floating around in the air, and Thudslugs buzzing around... and the world felt real. It's an incredible improvement on Munch's Oddysee, and I haven't seen environments like it in any other game.
The gameplay remains interesting throughout the bounty-hunting stage, but gets really interesting, both in gameplay and story, roughly halfway through, after a brilliant twist in the tale. Here you really see some classic Oddworld, with the perfect balance between dark elements and humour that was seen in Abe's Exoddus. But I won't ruin that for you. Go buy it and see for yourself.
Labels: oddworld, videogames
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Why, Hello There!
Do you know what I have now, what with all my exams being over? Lots and lots of free time.
I admit, I'll probably be spending a lot of it playing Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, but here's some of the stuff that's coming up...
Starcustard Chapter 4 isn't far from completion. It hasn't been for weeks, but, well, you know... I'm also part way through a Starcustard-related drawing. I'm making my first task finishing this off.
Olli mentioned revising/rewriting the first few chapters of Agaffa in a conversation at school. I don't know if we're still going through with that. We managed to finish Chapter 6 back in April, and we started Chapter 7, but there's most of that still to write.
(See also: Gnome Milk.)
The Aberration is the same as it has been for a while. The first three chapters are being partially rewritten, there are a few minor adjustments to make to Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 has barely been started.
The first part of City of Anarchy, a new project (with the characters based on the members of a message board I'm part of), will be posted online sometime next week. The second of the two drawings I'm currently working on is related to this.
And I want to make some progress with A Room Full of Zombies, my zombie game. I've had some neat ideas for this that I'm going to try and implement.
Nothing except the powers of procrastination and video games are standing in my way now. Time to get things done.
FATMANINTWEED.COM. COMING SOON.
I admit, I'll probably be spending a lot of it playing Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, but here's some of the stuff that's coming up...
Starcustard Chapter 4 isn't far from completion. It hasn't been for weeks, but, well, you know... I'm also part way through a Starcustard-related drawing. I'm making my first task finishing this off.
Olli mentioned revising/rewriting the first few chapters of Agaffa in a conversation at school. I don't know if we're still going through with that. We managed to finish Chapter 6 back in April, and we started Chapter 7, but there's most of that still to write.
(See also: Gnome Milk.)
The Aberration is the same as it has been for a while. The first three chapters are being partially rewritten, there are a few minor adjustments to make to Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 has barely been started.
The first part of City of Anarchy, a new project (with the characters based on the members of a message board I'm part of), will be posted online sometime next week. The second of the two drawings I'm currently working on is related to this.
And I want to make some progress with A Room Full of Zombies, my zombie game. I've had some neat ideas for this that I'm going to try and implement.
Nothing except the powers of procrastination and video games are standing in my way now. Time to get things done.
FATMANINTWEED.COM. COMING SOON.
Labels: agaffa, city of anarchy, starcustard, the aberration, videogames, zombies
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Oh How I Wish I Were A Floaty Wise Thing
Oh wow, look, it's June.
I just thought I'd issue a public whimper before I'm thrown into the final and quite possibly toughest two and a half weeks of my GCSE examinations.
And it is of utmost importance that I also issue this statement:
Thank you.
See you in two and a half weeks.
I just thought I'd issue a public whimper before I'm thrown into the final and quite possibly toughest two and a half weeks of my GCSE examinations.
And it is of utmost importance that I also issue this statement:
Amelia eats small children.
Thank you.
See you in two and a half weeks.
Labels: floaty wise things
