Time to get physical

In today's contest you can win a retail edition of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD Limited Edition for Switch!

Who's got one head, two thumbs, three nipples, and a bunch of free copies of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD Limited Edition to give away?!

*this guy*

The classic game has finally hit store shelves in a physical retail box, and we're giving away copies of the Amazon-exclusive Lim??ited Edition so you can be strange with ?the best of them.

Read this, then that:

Originally released in 2005, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath offers a potent mix of unique gameplay, engrossing storytelling and universal philosophical ??themes. The HD version for Nintendo Switch offers the same innovative mix of shooter, platformer and puzzl??e genres with a hybrid viewpoint that allows the player to switch between 1st person action with 3rd person exploration.

Complete with new graphical and performance upgrades, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD o??ffers dramatically improved audio and full 1080 HD graphics at 60 fps, super tight gyro-aiming for fin?e adjustments and blazing-fast load times.

A boxed edition is cool, but even ??cool?er is a Limited Edition, complete with:

• Physical box and cartridge for Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD
• Limited edition packaging with exclusive lenticular
• Fuzzle keychain
• Limited edition sticker pack

Viva la physical release!

There are two ways to enter this time around. For starters, hit the widget below and leave your name and email address. Enter dai??ly, if you'd like, and do all the other stuff in there for bonus entries. Next, comment below telling us something odd. It can be anything. You can post something odd, describe it, record an odd song -- I don't care, just let the oddness flow.

We have five copies of the game to give away -- four will be drawn from the widget, and one commenter will win. Winners will be drawn Tuesday, June 16. These are physical prizes, and as such you'll need a US shipping address in order to win. Make sure you comment with a Dtoid account with your current email address on file; if you're new, sign up here to join in.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD is available digitally, and now physically at fine stores near you. The Li?mite?d Edition is an Amazon exclusive, so head there to snag a copy if you don't win!

Dtoid Contest: Win O??ddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD Limited Edition for Switch

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Holster your iron, pardner

Microids has announced a physical edition for the recent Switch release of Xbox actioner Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD. Already available to purchase digitally on the Nintendo platform??, hard-copy fans will be able to pick the boxed release in May.

Stranger's Wrath HD will be available as a standard release and also in Limited Edition form. The latter contains a copy of the game in a lenticular box with exclusive artwork, a set of stickers - which is apparently becoming de riguer for all limited editions these days - and a cute keychain of Oddworld's "Fuzzles."

Stranger's Wrath HD is a remaster of the classic 2005 Xbox release, that blends the bizarre and unmistakable Oddworld universe with a dusty wild west aesthetic. The remaster features upg?raded visuals running a?t 60 FPS, support for gyroscopic aiming, and much-improved load times.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD is available to download on Nintendo Switch right now. The physical release launc??hes ?in North America on May 26 and in Europe on May 28.

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Monster Munch

At the start of the year, developer Oddworld Inhabitants announced that, alongside the recently-released Stranger's Wrath HD, two further classic Oddworld adventures would be making their appearance ??on the Nintendo Switch.

Thanks to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), it seems that we now know the identity of one of these titles. Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD has just ??recently receive?d a fresh "T for Teen" rating, all but confirming the 2016 PS3/PC remaster is headed to the Nintendo console, no doubt with additional features ala Stranger's Wrath HD.

Released back in 2001, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee was the second chapter in the "Oddworld Quintology," following on from 1997 PlayStation release Abe's Oddysee. It tells the story of a small Gabbit named Munch, whose species is being harvested by the brutal Vykkers for their eggs and other organs. E?scaping from a laboratory, Munch teams up with Abe on a mission to take down the Vykkers and destroy their airborne fortress.

While there has been no official confirmation of Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD for Switch from the developer as of yet, this ?new rating, combined with the aforementioned plans of further HD ports, makes the release a sure thing. We will keep you info??rmed when we hear an official announcement.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD rated by ESRB [@Nibellion via @DoesItPlay]

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Help this man pay for his surgery

In today's contest, we're giving away copies of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD for Switch!

I remember trying to play Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey back on PS1. I totally didn't get it lol. I couldn't figure out the gameplay, got frustrated, and wound up going back to Blasto or something. As a result, I never really got into the Oddworld series. Pathetic, ?I know, but look -- I was 10 when it?? came out. I just didn't have the patience for it.

Well, here's my chance to atone for my sins by giving you the chance to check out one of the series' most lauded titles! Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD just hit Sw??itch, so we're? giving some copies away so you don't make the same mistake I did.

This one's a little out there, which I really dig. Stranger is an old, wounded bounty hunter who has to take on new gigs to pay for your s?urgery, lest he winds up dead. Also, he doesn't use deadly munitions, because he doesn't believe in guns. Instead, he uses organic matter -- like rodents and eels and stuff -- to take down his enemies. The game also blends third-person exploration with first-person combat, adding yet another unique trait to the already-crowded field.

And it's a??lso super highly rated, so just take my word for it, yeah? It's free, after?? all! [If you win.]

??To enter to win, comment below telling us why Stranger gave up real ammo in favor of rodents in the first place. Did he stumble upon an ancient rune proclaiming him to be the new Beastmaster? Was it just cheaper to squeeze a rat? Let us know, and you could win a copy!

We have seven NA and two EU Switch keys to hand out -- make sure you tell us which region you're in when you comment. Winners will be drawn Tuesday, January 28. Also make sure your Dtoid account has your current email address on file. If you're new to the site, sign up here to get started!

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD is available now on the Switch eShop. Hit up Nintendo Enthusiast for more chances to win!

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Stranger's Wrath HD isn't coming alone

Oddworld Inhabitants, developers of the weird and much-beloved Oddworld series, has revealed that it has signed a deal with publisher Microids to bring more classic Oddworld adventures to Switch, in addition to the upcoming release of Stranger's Wrath HD.

Although no titles where specifically announced, it was noted that two classic Oddworld releases can be expected on the Nintendo platform in 2020 - these projects are in addition to all-new title Oddworld: Soulstorm, currently in development for an undisclosed release da?te.

"We are very happy about this new collaboration with Oddworld Inhabitants regarding the publishing of these three classic titles!" said Microids CEO Stéphane Longeard in a press statement. "We are going to help as much as we can to ensure these masterpieces get the spotlight they deserve... These games captivated an entire generation of gamers and some Microids employees, formerly working with the GT Interactive team, got to work on the original launch of the first Oddworld games more than 20 years ago."

Oddworld Inhabitants co-founder Sherry McKenna added: "Microids champions the Oddworld brand and our goal to create entertainment properties that balance beauty, empathy, creativity, innovation, and craftsmanship. They understand the classic games and indie space. This partnership is a great fit for us, and we are e??xcited ??to have them onboard."

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD launches on Nintendo Switch January 23.

Classic Oddworld titles coming to Switch in 2020 [GoNintendo]

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People are strange when you're a stranger

Fans of the weird and wonderful Oddworld universe will be pleased to hear that the HD remaster of 2005 shooter Stranger's Wrath will be arriving on Nint?endo Switch later this month. Developer Oddworld Inhabitants?? has released a new trailer to celebrate the announcement.

Originally launching on Xbox back in 2005, Stranger's Wrath is a s??hooter/adventure, which sees players don the dusty hat of a dangerous bounty hunter, who wanders into the wastelands of Western Mudos with his sights set on some dangerous outlaws, but ends up getting more than he bargained for.

Stranger's Wrath blends Oddworld's classic character design with a wild west aesthetic, and features bot?h first-and-third-person gameplay, mixing classic platforming action with FPS gameplay. The Nintendo Switch port will feature enhanced visuals running at 60 FPS, and include??s neat new features such as gyroscopic aiming and "turbo-charged" load times.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath l??aunches on January 23 on Nintendo Switch, and is already available on PC and ??mobile devices.

Oddworld: Stra????nger's Wrath HD for Switch launches January 23 [Gematsu]

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Switch is about to get stranger

Oddworld Inc. has announced that a port of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD will be heading to Switch in the near future. While not giving a firm date, the game will be playable at Eurogamer's EGX next week. With the Nintendo Direct happening tomorrow,?? we may possibly see some more information about the game there.

Oddworld [Twitter]

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Mudokon Pops on the house!

Oddworld was the biggest damn thing back in 1997. I still remember being in elementary school and being jealous of kids with a PlayStation. As dark and gruesome as some elements may have been, Oddworld was captivating for its excellently paced gameplay and surprisingly detailed narrative. When eventually getting my own PlayStation, I somehow missed out on Abe's Oddysee, so I've still never managed to exp??erience this game first-han?d.

That will soon change! Thanks to the Humble Store finally wrapping up their "End-of-Summer" sale, you can now nab Abe's Oddysee for the low, low price of free! They'll even throw in some free Mudokon Pops to sweeten the deal! _{*Mudokon Pops not included*}

You can also grab the psuedo-sequel, Abe's Exodus, for a paltry 74 cents. If you'd rather opt for the HD remake of Oddysee, New 'n' Tasty is currently going for $4.99 (though I've heard its not very good). The rest of the series is also 75% off, bringing Munch's Oddysee to $1.24 and Stranger's Wrath HD to $2.49. I mean, for less than $10, you can have the entirety of the Oddworld games on your PC. That is a hell of a deal.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee® [Humble Store]

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It's been a while

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD for the PlayStation Vita now has, after being delayed several times, a definite release date. Revealed on Just Add Water's Twitter page, Stranger's Wrath HD for the Vita will be launching on December 18 in North America w??ith a price tag of $14.99 -- the same as that of the PS3 version.

As for Europe, the dev team said to "ask us next week." Stranger's Wrath will not, as confirmed by the tweets that followed the announcement, come with cross play nor al?low users to take advantage of cross buy. Some have expressed disappointment over these features being absent, with others saying that it's not really much of a big deal. 

Personally I'm fine with it, but how about you?

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrat??h HD assaults Vita December 18 [Joystiq]

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I picked up Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath long ago during a Steam sale and didn't bother to play more than ten minutes knowing that, one day, the HD visuals of the PlayStatio??n Network re-relea?se would make it to PC as well. Granted, it took much longer than I had anticipated, but it's finally happened.

The upgrade comes by way of a free patch, so if you also own a copy already, you'll be able to play with the high-def upgrades implemented. If not, Stranger's Wrath is currently on sale for $6.99, which comes out to 30% off the regular goin?g ra??te.

I spent a few minutes tinkering with the post-patch gam??e and while the art assets are indeed quite impressive compared to the originals, I had trouble getting to a constant 60 frame?s per second. Bumping the anti-aliasing down to 4x (rather than using the max value of 8x) seemed to do the trick. Weird!

Patch notes:

Stranger's Wrath HD PC - v1.4
(C)Oddworld Inhabitants, Inc. 2005, 2010-2012
(C)Just Add water (Developments), Ltd. 2012

Changes from the original 2010 PC port
======================================

== Characters ==
- All 84 character models have been updated with increased polygon counts and higher resolution textures.
- This includes all three variations of Live Ammo: Those in the environment, those on the Crossbow and those in the General Store.
- Zappflies left in the environment glow.
- Fired Thudslugs left in the environment are now not an older design.
- Wolvark Sloghandlers now release Slogs instead of Slegs.
- Professor Dimble now has glasses and an academic tome.
- Made Blisterz Booty unkillable.

== Environments ==
- All environments have been given higher resolution textures.
- Most vegetation has been updated with increased polygon counts and/or higher resolution textures.
- A lot of environment now reflects in water where it didn’t before.
- Many, many pipes and barrels rounded.
- Floating debris displays on water surfaces correctly.
- Eliminated some methods of escaping levels as pointed out by Brody Taylor (thank you!)
- Added Abe’s Oddysee and Munch’s Oddysee easter eggs to the game.
- Added Blisterz Booty’s broken crud gun to the floor by his bola’d body.
- Sekto’s Office has been chan?ge?d to more closely resemble that seen in the FMV.

== Audio ==
- Sound effects in Bounty Store menu fixed.
- New female v??oices have been recorded? for two characters.

== Display ==
- Fixed shader bugs that were affecting ATI and Intel users.
- Support for 4× and 8× FSAA.
- Anistropic filtering and GPU synchronization togglable in the launcher.
- Instance rendering togglable in the configuration file.
- Vertical synchronization is now checked by default.
- Frame rate has been capped at 100 FPS to lessen the problem of Stranger becoming immobile. This cap can be changed in the configuration file.
- All 16 menus have been updated with a new design based on original unused concepts.
- All menus now support keyboard, mouse and gamepad input.
- Textures added to stamina and bounty bars.
- New posters now occupy the inventory menu when no bounty is accepted.
- Radar fixed to show all enemy vision cones.
- Alt-tabbing is now supported properly.
- Fix to stop movie playback looping.
- Fix to snow effect.

== Controls ==
- Duplicate controls in the configuration menu now show up in red text (but to permit you maximum customaziation, you can still set duplicates if you like).
- In the controls configuration screen ‘Up’, ‘Down’, ‘Left’, ‘Right’ and ‘Select’ have been renamed ‘Menu Up’, ‘Menu Down’, ‘Menu Left’, ‘Menu Right’ and ‘Menu Select’ respectively.
- Added ammo selection controls separate from menu controls. You can map them to the same keys if you wish.
- You can also now interact with the ammo selection screen using your mouse and fire left/fire right controls as well.
- Added support for tiltwheels.
- The controls you’ve mapped now appear in gameplay dialogue boxes (except for ‘Movement Controls’ and ‘Camera Controls’) and are listed correctly in the layout schematic.
- Non-dynamic gamepad layout image replaced by dynamic list upon user configuration of gamepad control mapping.
- Tutorial dialogues can be closed with Esc and primary mouse click as well as Jump and Menu Select keys.
    - Clicking to close tutorial dialogues while in first person mode will cause the corresponding barrel of your Crossbow to be fired.
- Removed deadzone on camera if mouse-controlled.

== Difficulty ==
- All armour upgrades increase Stranger’s health (they did nothing in the original 2005 Xbox release).
- Added difficulty levels to the game: Easy, Medium and Hard.
    - In easy mode Stranger has twice the health, enemies have half the health and stamina.
    - In ??hard mode Stranger has a third less health and enemies take a bit more to kill.

== Unlockables ==
- Added 12 brand new Steam achievements.
    - “Hideout Seek” renamed “Junkyard Challenge”.
    - “Get to ‘Last Legs’” renamed “Giving a Leg Up”.
- Concept? art and movie extras for completing ?each region of the game.

== Language ==
- French and German audio has been added.
- Togglable subtitles for pre-rendered and realtime cutscenes, and for vital GameSpeak.
- Full text translations f??or French, German, Italian and Spanish.

== Launcher ==
- Only one instance of the launcher can be created at any once.
- Launcher displays a warning message if you’re n??ot running OpenGL 2.0 or greater.

Guide to configuration file
===========================
The configuration file for your installation of Stranger's Wrath HD ??can be found in your Documents directory under Oddworld > Stranger's Wrath HD > config.txt

The majority of the file comprises your control scheme mappings. Other settings can be changed to affect the gam?e's performance on your comp?uter.

- "bbp" stands for 'bits per pixel', describing colour quality. It will only accept 32 or 24 as its value.
- "maxfps" defaults to 100 if unset, but you can lower it yourself. This caps the game's framerate, which can be useful if you have a problem with Stranger getting stuck on the ground.
- "novsync" is present if you have unchecked 'Vsync' in the game's launcher. Vertical synchronization caps your framerate to your monitor's framerate, which can be useful if you have a problem with Stranger getting stuck on the ground.
- "anisotropicon" is present if you have 'Anisotropic filtering' checked in the launcher. Anisotroping filtering makes textures look better when they're at an angle to the camera, but can slow down the game.
- "useinstancerenderer" is present if you have 'Instance rendering' checked in the launcher. Instance rendering draws all like decorators in a level at once. This improves performance but can cause graphical glitches on some graphics cards. Disable if vegetation appears skewed in your game.
- "mipmapbias" controls the distance at which mipping comes into effect. Mipping is a graphical improvement that makes distant textures lower res to reduce visual noise. Making this value more negative pushes away the distance at which mipping occurs, making distant textures sharper. Making the value zero or positive pulls that distance in, making textures blurrier.
- "antialiasing" can be set to 0 for no antialiasing, 1 for 4xF??SAA, or 2 for 8xFSAA. Be aware that antialiasing in Stranger's Wrath HD is more resource-int??ensive than you may be used to in modern games.

Fixes v1.4
==========
Added missing achievement "Slakker Clakker".
Fixed issues with some achievements not getting triggered correctly.
Fixed in launcher audio language selection problem.
Fixed in launcher joypad configuration issues when using dpad controls.
Added into launcher new advanced options. Shadows, Vegetation & Water Reflections can? be disabled to improve frame rate. Mip Map Bias can be adjusted. Max frames per second can be ?set.

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Back in January of '05, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath slipped right past me, along with a multitude of other games I should have played, simply because it came out right after Halo 2. To this day, I still haven't played Stranger's Wrath. Whenever someone talks about just how fantast?ic the game is, I feel extremely guilty inside.

I was so glad to hear that an HD remaster was in the works sometime back in 2010. Ever since then, I've eagerly been looking forward to its release. Word about the port was quiet for awhile, but it is now finally here on PSN with enhanced visuals, upgraded textures, re-mastered audio, trophies, bonus material and the promise of Move and 3D support coming later via a patch. Our review for Stranger's Wrath HD is coming very soon,?? but really the $15 price tag is all you need to convince you to pick this one up.

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