The decision then to depart from the original style of game play was a brave one. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is very different from the original games but at the same time has very much on common. Set in the Oddworld, the game places you in the shoes of a bounty hunter whose mission in life is to hunt down the world's most wanted criminals. An unlikely bunch they are too; Filthy Hands Floyd, Pack Rat Palooka and Looten Luke to name a few.

The world itself reminds us of a cross between a post apocalyptic era and a cheesy Western setting. In fact your hero has the dusty, rugged, cowboy look you'd expect together with gritty speech of a cow pock who has spent many a night out on the range.

But from here on out things get downright peculiar. The innocent townsfolk are these chicken-like people, the bad guy henchmen are sort of birdlike (in a fatted turkey kind of way). The "wagon train" is a line of impossible looking tractors and the wagons are oversized holiday campers. There's a sort of low tech/high tech feel about the place with your surroundings feeling like the product of an urban renewal programme done with a nuclear warhead.

The oddness does not stop there, as instead of the cowboy six gun you'd expect, you end up packing a cunningly designed double-barrelled crossbow. Now this crossbow does not fire the arrows you would normally expect, but rather "live ammunition". These are "smart" ordinance at a new level. Stunning and picking up bugs you find along the way opens a heap of tactical opportunities to the bounty hunter. To name a few there are:

Zappflies – Your standard bug round that stuns both the bad guys and other bugs (so you can collect them). You can also charge them up to shoot at machinery to start it up.

Stunkz – Read Skunk. Shoot these babies at a bunch of bad guys and watch them wretch and vomit.

Chippunks – Cute, furry and abusive. Fire these to places where you want the baddies to walk. Listen to them taunt and abuse your prey, enticing them to come over and stomp them.

Fuzzles – Furbies with teeth. Fire them at your enemies for immediate effect, or fire them about as mines.

These are but a few of the wonderful array of ammunition at your fingertips. The real trick, though, is in learning to fire them in combinations. Shoot the Fuzzles into one area and then let loose a chippunk to entice them into your living mine field. These combinations can be ever more cunning as you discover more and more of the living ammunition.

Aiming your crossbow takes you into a first person mode. However, most of the moving about is done in third person mode. As you move and pick up speed you drop down onto all fours and charge about like a cat. Control in this mode takes some skill as you can easily bash into things, preferably into your enemies to stun them. When stunned or bound, enemies can be sucked up into your bounty can (the scientific mechanics of this are not explained but you seem to be able to jam a lot of bad guys into one). While in third person mode you can also head butt and twirl punch the bad guys when dropping to into first person shooting mode is not an option in a hectic fight.

The goal of the game is to earn moolah, by capturing and killing for bounty. Bringing them back alive obviously gets you more bounty while at other times dead may be the only way you are going to get them. You can spend your money at the local town store where you purchase upgrades for your gun, bigger bug pouches, armour, et cetera.

As you progress in the game the challenge it to become more adept at using differing combinations of bugs and looking for more inventive methods of using the environment. Some of the machinery can be activated and a really large wrecking ball on your head can achieve a permanent knockout blow. Some levels can be quite hectic and take a few attempts to complete. There is a save feature as well as autosaving at crucial junctures in the game.

The screen layout and control are such that the game takes very little instruction to pick up. There is the usual on-screen radar, left and right triggers for the barrels on the crossbow and a stamina and health bar. To recover your health you have to pull it from your stamina. You shake off your injuries by flapping your arms and beating your chest. A nice feature is how the radar will tell you if you are hidden from the enemy or have been spotted (and from what direction).

The game is linear in its design and although each level is challenging the replayability will revolve mainly around how inventive you can be in achieving the end goal.