Hunting has a sort of visceral pleasure does it not? You're running through the woods, gun in hand, chasing down your prey. When you nail it your whole body takes a leap into the stratosphere. If you don't, blame it on the weather. In Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, the immensely entertaining videogame from now almost-defunct studio Oddworld Inhabitants, hunting takes a on a whole new dimension.
You are a nameless bounty hunter who lives in a world that looks as though Steven Spielberg had a fun time screwing with the West. You hunt to make money and (in the game's central twist) to survive. You hop from town to town trapping criminals - dead or alive - and returning them for money which you can use to upgrade your character and your ammo. The tentpole of the entire thing is the live ammo system: you'll use things like chatty chipmunks and agressive bees in order to capture your prey and don't think that the animals are to keen on being abused. The dialogue here is pure mania.
As the game progresses it blooms, turning into a small-scale epic and twisting the entire structure of prey-predator into a double-helix. Though the voice work and camera could use some improvement, my faith in the theory of "innovative gaming" has been restored. A quaint, beautiful, and devilishly amusing action-adventure game hiding under all the "Dance Dance Revolutions" at your local bargain bin? It's waiting, so go buy it.
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