The farther into the game you get, the more it falls apart.

Reviewed by CommanderVideo on or around 31st Dec 1969

This game was an interesting addition to the Oddworld franchise. It had a lot of the same immersive atmosphere, but was much more action-packed. To be honest, it's kind of a nice change of pace from the lemmings-esque puzzle aspects in the other Oddworld games.
 
Even so, however, I hope that the next Oddworld game comes back closer to its roots. What makes the Oddworld games so unique is that there's nothing else like them on the market. But in Stranger's Wrath, I was realizing that you could pretty much put any wrapper on this game and have it be just as good. It didn't need the Oddworld world like the other games in the series do.
 
The story was relatively cool, but I wish it had tied more into the Oddworld storyline like the other games do. Maybe its relationship will be revealed in the next game. The graphics and gameplay were good. The music was forgettable.
 
The entire "live ammo" gimmick was pretty cool. The character design was absolutely top notch, which is to be expected from an Oddwold game.
 
The motivation for the player to progress the story was the bounty system. Essentially, you chose your next goal from a list. Once you finished that goal, back to the list you went to choose another. I hate list-based level progression. It's just so unmotivating. And again, any FPS could have done this. I expect more from Oddworld. There weren't even any non-critical path missions, fer cryin' in the wind. If you're going to do your level progression in a list based manner, at least make some of them non-critical path for variation/replayability.
 
Some of the controls were a bit floaty or unresponsive. At first I didn't mind, but then as the levels got harder, sometimes you just want to switch to/from first person view quickly. The transition takes about a second, which is a lot of time when you're being pummeled by wolvarks at point-blank range. That second of time when you can't attack is frustrating.
 
It also didn't score higher because of some mild spoilers:
 
This game is guilty of one of my biggest pet-peeves in video games: THE MAIN CHARACTER'S HIT REACTION ENDS AT THE EXACT MOMENT THAT THE ENEMY IS PERFORMING THEIR NEXT ATTACK ON YOU DURING THE FINAL BOSS FIGHT! What this means is that if you get hit with the final boss' close range attack once, even if you have full health and even though it only takes off about one sixth of your health per hit, you will die due to the timing of the recovery and the boss' attack cycle. Bad form. The one time that I didn't die while fighting the final boss was when I managed to avoid being hit AT ALL by the boss' close range attack.
 
They also did that whole "you've been captured and have had all of your weapons and armor taken away from you" gimmick that so many FPS games do. Old and tired.
 
The final cutscene seemed rushed and was honestly pretty underwhelming. I didn't get the sense of accomplishment that I wanted and that I felt I deserved. Also, at the end of the short cinematic, the music and movie are cut off abruptly (the music was even cut off mid note) and you're sent back to the title screen. No credits scroll. Now, normally, I would get all pissed off at the game, because I LOVE the credits scroll when I beat a game. It's the way it should be. But since I'm working with EA now, I understand that they probably didn't have a credits scroll in the game because EA wants to remove all credits from their games. So, I wonder if the cutscene was cut short because they had to cut the credits out of it. I don't know. God, I hate EA games.