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Rating: T for Teen
Summary: The basic Oddworld story line with some extras. Of course you have to save the Muddokons but there as some more to save such as Fuzzles, Muddokon eggs, and Gabbiar (cabbiar in our world). I found this game less challenging that the first two Oddworld games but then that might have made it somewhat better for some people.
Graphics: Well, the character look like ghouls but they blick and move there mouth and all that kind of stuff (including farting and burping). 4/5
Smoothness: If you have a whole bunch of Mudokons and Fuzzles following you it makes the game kind of skippy, but (unless you have a crappy CD like I do) it is fairly smooth. 4/5
Camera angles: The camera angles in this game were consitered the best and most flawless in any game up to that point. I did notice some glitches and the camera had a tendency to be uncomfortably low. They were better than Spliter Cell camera angles at least. 4/5
Sound: Yup yup yup 5/5
Voice: Munch and Abe's voice had a tendency to get cut off in game play. Mudokons took a while to answer. 3/5
Music: Nice and odd. 5/5
Characters: Abe could do many more things than Munch could but both of them were still cool even though Munch was toooooooo slow. I liked how you got to play as too Odd people though. That was awesome. 4/5
Controls: Simple except when you wanted Munch to get in his wheel chair but instead pulled the wheelchair lever. This is hard to figure out how to correct. Possibly some type of selection system could be added in the next Munch's Oddysee game. Not the menu type of selection system. That would just be stupid. More like the selection system in Fable where people and object were either highlighted in blue, purple, or green so you knew what you were doing. Still I got to give it a 5/5.
Glitch count: Sliding down mountains is very glitchy. If you run into something before you stop you'll be stuck there and flip out. If you lead Mudokons into cracks in a mountain they'll do freaky stuff and also flip out. These glitches are small and won't effect your gameplay enormously. 4.5/5 (or very few glitches)
Fun: It's fun for a while. The best part is the gamespeak. It's fun to mess around with. If you possess a bad guy you can make him insult his own kind and some of the things you can make him say are pretty funny. Glukkons complexity have greatly decreased but at least they make up for it by the things you can make them say. 3/5
Things liked: Of course that fact that you could play as both Abe and Munch. Next up hopefully will be two player. Where one player's Munch and the other Abe.
Things not liked: Munch and Abe's powers were a little unequal. I miss being able to command Sligs using Glukkons and commanding Slogs with Sligs. The game speak was not as complex as it used to be and that what I really liked about Abe's Exoduse, Oddworld's second game. I also didn't like the bad ending. I just found Munch's death a little too disturbing.
Overall: Most Oddworld fans were not as impressed by this game as Oddworld's other games. The game was not as hard as previous games. The only level that really stumped me on this game was the third to the last. Also players were also pissed that Munch had so many fewer powers than Abe did. As for me I didn't think it was as horrible as some people made it. It was fun and entertaining and hopefully it's sequel will improve it. 4/5
Sequel: I am no longer sure what Lorne Lanning is planning anymore. His most recent talk with gamespy left me with many question about the future of Oddworld Inhabitance. If there is a sequel the name will most likely be Oddworld: Munch's Exoduse.
Rating: T for Teen
Summary: You come to the land of Eden as a god. You get a creature, or an animal (tiger, com, or ape) that walks on two legs and can grow as tall as a mountain. After you get your creature you travel to different lands making a path of destruction or a path of peace. The choice is yours. What do you do? You may ask. Well, you have to defeat a semi evil/good god named Nemisis if you manage to get to the end of the game.
Graphics: If this was a game with small levels the graphics would suck, but since the levels are these giant lands with all these little people and objects they're pretty good. 4/5
Smoothness: It depends on how big your save file it and how much is moving around. For instance if your save file is huge then the game has a tendency to feeze up once in a while. Or if your put a rock on top of a mob of villagers your going to have horrible game play until the villagers pick themselves up again. 4/5
Camera Angles: You'd expect a game where you control almost every aspect of the camera movement to have good camera angles. Well, its a yes and no for this game. Of course you can move the camera almost in any direction but the controls to do it with are horrible especially when using the mouse. Many Black & White fans complained about this except me because I use the keyboard. 3/5
Sound: Very good. Sounds get lounder and softer as you move away from or towards the sorce. 5/5
Voice: The voices are understandable enough. 5/5
Music: Sometimes it's cool sometimes it's not my style. 3/5
Characters: The creature is an awesome character for being a robotic creature made of rods! As for the less importance characters, mostly the villagers or gods, they are stupid looking and don't make up for it by being cool. 3/5
Controls: The controls for movement can be very evil if you use the mouse; however, if you use the keyboard this makes a big difference. As for the other controls, to pick up things or select them, they are much more simple and easy to use. 3/5
Glitch Count: BLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEAACHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Eww!! Terrible horrible! There were so many glitches on this game they had to make a patch to fix them and theres still more! The game isn't very stable in my opinion either. The game doesn't cope well on Windows XP's. I still had problems when I played it on my Windows ME though. The first time you install it on your computer you can easilly get to the last level when you relize your creature hasn't grown tall enough to survive so you deside to start another game and grow your creature to its full height. Bad idea... EVERY TIME it loses its ability to save on the second level the second time around! At least for me anyway. The game also freezes and crashes. 1/5 (or a horrible terrible glitch count)
Fun: It's fun when you have the ability to save and you don't have to start from the beginning of the game a whole bunch of times. 4/5
Things liked: I really liked the creature. I love the idea of raising things weather it be pokemon or something else. The creature was ten times better than any Pokemon though since it had amazing AI (amazing for the year it was made anyway). I also liked that you could punish or reward your creature rather than just keeping it in a pokeball. However even the creature was riddled with glitches. :(
Things not liked: I hated the gliches and instablility of the game! A great game just riddled with all this crap!!!!!!!! *#($&@()*&#$ I would have liked to see a loading bar when you first started the game up. There is a small one while a picture comes up but this one tells me nothing of how far the game has loaded. It mearly spins around. The creators of the game expect too much of this game. They expect it to load quickly but this causes a problem for me. It will either load forever on the splash screen or the black screen. Either way I have no idea wheather my computer has frozen up or the game is loading. If the game was at least doing something during this unexpected place to download (like a loading bar) I would at least know my computer is doing something. The game should be allowed a place to load. You can't load an entire world in one minute.
Overall: If you have a computer other than Windows XP this game would be fun and easy to install... the first time anyway/hopefully. 3/5
Sequel: You can find the Black and White 2 review on the Reviews 3 page. You'll find a link at the bottom of the page. *SPOILER ALERT* Better than the original. I won't say much more than that.
Rating: T for Teen
Summary: You start by creating a family and then you move them into a house or an area of land. The family can be made up of up to eight people. After, you build your house or move your sims in. Then, you take care of your sims. These can be needs like hunger, comfort, hygien, bladder, energy, social, fun, and room. Each of these you can read about in The Sims manual which is this freakin' huge thing! Your sims can also get a variety of different jobs. There really is no story line to the game. Acording to an article I read in GM digital magazine you set your own goals. This game may sound boring but it can be quite addictive. I'm addicted again right now. This game was easy to review since I didn't have to play it a whole bunch to get every side of the game.
Graphics: It depends... Some objects you can see through the other side of then. For example if a sim were to walk on the other side of a lamp you could see the sim in front of the lamp. The objects are detailed enought but when it comes to animating they suck! The sims animation is good it's just the objects! 3/5
Smoothness: The game runs smoothly if you have a computer up to spec. The animations jump around though but that not really the smoothness I'm talking about with this section. 5/5
Camera Angles: You only get four so you can see all sides of things. The controls to get to those camera angles are simple enough. 5/5
Sound: I was having problems with my sound when I played this on my Windows XP. The sounds worked just fine on my Windows ME though so I won't mark off. 5/5
Voices: The sims don't speak in English so this doesn't really matter. No rating.
Music: The shopping music is kind of cool and the music when the game is loading but the rest... I just don't like. 3/5
Characters: You can choose how all your sims look in almost every way. However, all the hair styles and clothing just seems so out of date. I don't really like any of the choices except for a few. 3/5
Controls: Its an icon based program so the controls are very simple. Just click and choose what you want to do. 5/5
Glitch count: There's not that many glitches that I noticed except when your sims don't do what you tell them to do! I don't mean when the refuse to do their work because they're depressed. I mean when you tell them to eat when they're hungry and yet they won't eat! I have the same problem when getting them to have fun. I don't like it... It's very annoying. Also if a neighbor died at your house you could just call them and they would come over again perfectly alive. 4.5/5
Fun: It's pretty fun for me. Once you figure out what goal you want to reach it's fun trying to get there while battling the problems of depresstion and fitting in all the work you want your sims to do. It doesn't stay fun forever however.4/5
Things liked: Just being able to build a career that I knew I would never take myself. Did you know that all the sims are payed the same for the same job regardless of weather they were a female or male? That's awesome!
Things not liked: There's only that annoying glitch that really bugged me and when you had to have friends to continue your career track. The sims were also a little of the stupid side. One time I made a pool with two ladders leading into or out of the pool one sims fell asleep so he climbed out of the pool and fell asleep in front of a ladder. The other two sims wanted to get out but they were too stupid to go to the other ladder so they drowned. Luckily they were neighbors. :-)
Overall: The graphics and animations could have been better. The choices for what your sims looked like could have also been more up to date. The game makes up for it by being fun though. Some odd "glitches" that I didn't mention just added to the fun of the game. 4/5
Sequel: The Sims 2 just came out a little bit ago. I don't really have a need to get it so I probably won't have a review on it. I just hope that it was somewhat improved from the first game. There are also many other expansion packs besides The Sims ?Livin' Large.
Rating: T for Teen
Summary: Since this is a new game I won't reveal too much about the storeline. The plot was a lot more deep than any other Oddworld game I've played. I really like deep plots so that made it all the better. You start out as a bounty hunter known as a Stranger and that is who you are refered to by throughout the first half of the game. Your goal is to save up for a mysterious operation. Then, there is a plot twist and it goes back to a normal Oddworld plot which is basically save the such and such. In this case save the Grubbs and "the water." Even though gamespeak is at an all time low it is not that big of a part of this game as the other Oddworld games.
This game is a lot like the Digimon Movie. I only liked the first season of Digimon when I did watch it so I only liked the first half of the movie where it was mostly just Ty and Izzy doing stupid things around a computer (Drinking this brown shitty lookin' stuff :-) ). It's the same with this game. I liked the first half of the game much better than the second half. My big thing in this game was running around like a "banana" and after the plot change you run in a different way that makes you look more like "Dub Dub". I also only like the melley combat and not killing anyone so when I went to bag someone the second half of the game I no longer got money and I had no more room to hold ammo. I miss money...
Also there is no alternate ending. I am acustomed to Oddworld games having alternate endings and this one did not even when I did have the nerve to get 20,000 moola (It's possible) for my "operation."
Graphics: A lot of work went into Stranger's character design and his gun. I'm not so sure about the other characters. The graphics weren't as good as Munch's Oddysee but still better than the other two games (Duh!). The fuzzles bouncing on the ground were no where near the detail in Munch's Oddysee but when they were on the gun they were very detailed (only they looked creepy especially when rabid). 4/5
Smoothness: I never experienced a time when the game froze up or was skippy. 5/5
Camera Angles: They were very similar to the camera angles in Munch's Oddysee only they fixed the problem where the camera would get stuck on an object and not move. Instead they made it so that if the camera got stuck it would snap back behind the character again. The more I messed around the more errors I found with the camera though. Like if I was under a platform, jumped on a rope, then climbed up to the next floor it would take a while for the camera to be back behind the character. There were also times when I got a lovely view of the floor. There is also a place where the camera is uncomfortably low in the cave. 4/5
Sound: Games where the main character has to grunt everytime you jump or something really annoy me. I like to jump on this game but the grunting just makes it so much less enjoyable. As for the rest of the sounds they were ok. 4/5
Voice: The voices are recorded at a slow rate and so they have that horrible kind of BLA! sound to them. All the Oddworld games have been recorded like this I think. This way of recording makes it so that the characters are hard to understand at times. All the characters in this game had no individuality. Each race only had one or two voices and it sounded like Sekto and Stranger were done by the same guy. All the bad guys and the good guys look the same as well. Stranger, Sekto, Doc, and the clawed monster thingys were the most individual characters in the game. 4/5
Music: It was mostly just soft background music but sometimes when you were fighting bosses the Oddworld Team whipped out the guitar and keyboard! I'm going to go a little off the topic but if you ever get a hold of Static X's CD Wisconsin Death Trip it goes really well with this game. I like to listen to music while playing video games. 4/5
Characters: Stranger's character is very detailed and he looks cool, but he especially runs cool. I love the way he runs on all fours! Stranger has been described as a kitty, a lion, a gorrila, a lama, Michael Jackson, a wild banana, and an indian by me and my brother and sister (You know who from the credits page). The bad guys looked kind of crappy in my opinion except in the movies of course. The chicken people and the frog people were a little better than the bad guys. 4/5 (Stranger made up for it)
Controls: I never did get fully used to them. Even at the end of the game when I was beating the last boss I was still trying to press the start button to change ammo. The movement controls were easy but when it came to the gun they were a little more confusing. 4/5
Glitch count: One time I was going to bag a guy and he was trying to climb up a wall that I had him pinned against. It was a lot like one of those horror movies where a person is so scared there trying to climb up the walls. On some objects that your not supposed to get on you levitate on them. It looks kind of funkeh. You don't get stuck on them though so thats ok. Also the creepy things that you see during the second half of the game after you kill them you can move them around and push them off cliffs and into fans and stuff. When you do this they will stand up on their claws before they go to their bloody death. These are just small and funny glitches though. 5/5
Fun: I never liked using the gun but when it came to meley combat and Stranger's movement it was so fun! 4/5
Things liked: The meley combat by far. If I could go through the whole game using nothing but meley combat I would have probably liked it a lot more! I would press the spin button repeatedly and beat all the enemies in an area with just spins while saying "I'm Michael Jackson!" Sure that may sound creepy to you but he does look like MJ when he spins around (minus the alien face). Of course I also liked the Oddworld movies! They're so awesome! I'm glad I got that cool DVD!
Things not liked: I didn't like the gun. Even at the last level (before the timing) I was trying to fight the enemies with meley combat. It didn't work too well. (:-( The only things I liked about the gun was the Stunkz, the Fuzzles, and the Chippunks. The Stunkz because they were so cute! The fuzzles because they were so creepy lookin'. The Chippunks because they were funny and fun to make fun of. I also don't like the saving system very well. Even though it saves almost instantly it saves on a new space almost everytime taking up a whole bunch of memory. I would have much rather had the game auto save on two or three slots like Half-life's saving system. One of the things I would have liked to see is Stranger gaining stamina by using it. Like in RPG games you slowly increase skills by working at something. If the stamina would have done this rather than just you having to buy upgrades the plot switch in the middle of the game would have been a lot less shocking. This would also bring out the RPG side of the story which Lorne claimed was in there.
Overall: Oddworld Inhabitance really showed me that they knew how to use 3D with this game. The level were much more challenging and they even added in an old time "run away before the building explodes" level. I just thought that was so awesome bringing back the old and putting it in the new. In Munch's Oddysee seemed a little confused as to how to make the levels challenging but in this game they really got the hang of it. Even though the second half of the game wasn't as fun as the first it was still a pretty good game. 4/5
Sequel: As far as I know there won't be a sequel to Stranger's Wrath; however, the next Oddworld game will most likely be Munch's Exoddus part of the Oddworld Quintology. I am pretty sure that they can improve Munch's Oddysee after I saw this game. This is only if Oddworld will make more video games.
BONUS DVD!!!: The DVD had all the previous Oddworld movies from Abe's Oddysee, Abe's Exoduse, and Munch's Oddysee pluse a few extras that I found... creepy... They also had an introduction to Stranger's Wrath. They had the beggining movie and some one telling us a few features of the game while showing real game play of the first few levels. I sorry that I didn't see this before I started playing Stranger's Wrath. It had some very helpful hints in there. Now I know that I didn't have to go into the front gates to break into the second boss' hideout. STUPID!!! I was a little disappointed when I didn't see my favorite music video on the DVD (Get Freaky). The DVD only had "Use Yur Imagination" which I mostly just find creepy. This is also where I saw the bad ending of Munch's Oddysee. I will never look at Munch the same way again. :-( I was surprised at how much it disturbed me. I lived through The Texas Chainsaw Massecre but I found this bad ending of a T rated game disturbing! The Chapters were a little out of order but besides those few things I enjoyed the DVD very much and will continue to enjoy it until another one comes out! OH YEAH!
Rating: M for Mature
Summary: You start as a little boy. Your village is over run by bandits and your entire family is "taken" from you. You are found by Maze the wizard. He takes you back to the Hero's Guild where you train to become a hero. After you grow up in about half an hour's worth of gameplay you start going on quest. The object of the game is to destroy Jack the mastermind behind your family's "killing." Throughout the whole game you can choose to be good or evil even as a young boy you have desicions you can make. This game was made by the creator of Black and White (I can't remember how to spell his name right now) so it makes sense. There is just one problem. Who is Briar Rose? I played through the game five times and not once did I find out who she was. At least not until I made my music video for this game. Then I saw a video where Peter showed us where she was which was in the bar in Bowerstone at some time as a side quest. The problem with this is that some players will not ever see her (like me) so when you see her at the end of the game you have absolutly no idea who she is. I'd suggest having characters like this in main quests Damn this was one of the most "stock" summaries I've done. ON WARD!
Graphics: They weren't as good as I expected them to be but then pictures can lie. They still looked pretty good though. 5/5
Smoothness: Once, your CD starts to get scratchy and crappy the game freezes up a lot. I had a very strange experience when this happened once. The game still goes pretty smooth if you have a good CD. 5/5
Camera Angles: They were very good. I could see very easily when battling with the sword, bow and arrows, and with magic; however, when it came to first person shooting with the bow and arrows the bow at a tendency to get in your crosshairs. 4/5
Sound: Good, good, good. 5/5
Voices: Unlike other RPG games this game has everyone talking to you all the time. There is no time when you will talk to someone in mute (you know selecting what you want to ask and then someone will write it in text). The voices are understandable. 5/5
Music: The music was sometimes not to my taste but I've just gotta give them full credit for getting a full orcastra and chorus! 5/5
Characters: The character you play as is always a male but you can change his appearance in many different ways and the morphing is really good so you can see the changes. Some things you can change or earn are his weight, scars, tatoos, haircuts, and age. I also heard that if you stayed out at night or in the day your skin would either tan or get pale. I didn't see too much of this in the game however. Your character gets older as time goes on but this can be a problem. Scars also were a problem if you had too many. I will discuss both of these later. Bandits, monsters, villagers, and traders were also well made and detailed. 5/5
Controls: It was easy to get used to them. The quick menu took a little longer but you eventually figure it out. I liked them a lot. 5/5
Glitch Count: First, I will start with the two things I mentioned above. I don't know the rate that you character ages but it was a little bit too fast for me. I went though every quest card that I got at the guild so by the time I rescued my mother I was about 55. It's kind of sad when your son is just as old if not older than you are. Also in old age your scars just make you look discusting if you have a lot of them. The skin looks like it's melted like you've been burned and it's all scars. At that point after all the good I did for people I didn't really feel like I earned them.
Another thing, if you are currently doing a quest you can only change your hero stats such as the amount of money you have, your current apperance, and other things like that. If you were to get off the game after you "Hero saved" during a quest when you come back on you will be at a point where the quest is about to begin. The glitch I noticed is that if you got money while you were on that quest the time you would still have it so you could keep "Hero saving" and quitting you would earn all this extra gold.
By far the most glitchy part of the game was the arena. There was floating gold that would taunt you throughout your battles! When you fight the rock trolls and earth trolls Wisper is of no help whatsoever. She's too busy getting stuck behind the fan. These may sound like small glitches but when you are fighting the rock trolls it makes it a lot harder when they're both attacking you. They both throw four rocks at a time and they defiately don't see Wisper as a threat.
This game isn't as glitchy as I've made it look. The bulk of these paragraphs is me explaining stuff. Most of these glitches were just weird not necessarily annoying except for the ones in the arena. Even though it doesn't look like it this glitch count beat Black and White. 4/5
Fun: This game had me hooked for a long time. I beat it about five or six times. Hardcore RPGer's have complained about this game because you couldn't combind stuff and it was missing some thing normal RPGs have but I'm not complaining. RPGs aren't my favorite genre but this game just blew me away with how fun it was. 5/5
Things liked: I liked how you could give yourself tattoos and haircuts. I like to choose how my character looks in games. I also liked how you could choose weather you wanted to be a wizard, an archer, or a swordsman. I was normally all three. I liked to just get my stats as high as I could. Like all RPGs this one had a good story line and that's one of my favorite parts of video games. Something that I found funny was getting drunk. I would go binge drink because it looked so cool when you got drunk and then had a hangover. Binge drinking doesn't really effect the game so I do it a lot.
Things not liked: I hate the arena! It's so hard and glitchy! Damn you Wisper! Damn you! I also didn't like how half of the Hero's Guild is closed off when you beat the game. Where am I supposed to buy good crap now!
Overall: I like! 5/5
Sequel: See Game Reviews 3 for the review on Fable: Lost Chapters.
Last Update: 2-24-07
Created by: Emily Palmieri