Recently I saw a music video starring David Bowie. That reminds me!
Today's game is named Omikron: The Nomad Soul. It was released for the Dreamcast.
I would like to add that there are spoilers.
I first saw this game in a store and played it briefly. You were some guy running around a screen with a few elevators that led to some apartments. The place had a cold, futuristic look to it. I forget what else I saw, but something about the game stood out, so when I got a Dreamcast I knew I had to get this game. Luckily Sega had just dumped the console and this game was 9 bucks.
Omikron starts off with a cop asking you, the player, to have your soul jump into his body. From there it seems like the game is an adventure game where you need to solve some crimes. You start off in some city that is heavily influenced by Blade Runner. There are giant fans everywhere. The city seems to be lit up mostly by street lights and ads for "Quanta Cola."
(This is preceded by a Bowie song called "New Angels of Promise", which I always liked.)
In Omikron people seem to have wrist bracelets that can call up cars that'll automatically drive you to your destination. You will usually see flying vehicles in the sky. There are lots of places
At first you seem to just be a cop who is dealing with a suspicious murder. When you go to your apartment, you meet your wife. You have the first conversation where you can pick multiple answers. Unfortunately, the game doesn't branch depending on what you say. Too bad. One of the rooms has a training simulator where you can learn about the games crummy fighting. Omikron, besides the usual adventure mode, also has a first person shooter mode and fighting mode. More on that later. After you talk to your wife, you can climb into bed with her. She climbs on top of you in one of the games racier moments, and... the camera cuts away. T rating, you see.
Anyway, you go to work and meet some suspect. She works for a whiney underground group straight out of The Matrix. They called themselves the Awakened, because those kind of people have to convince themselves that they are superior to the "sheeple." Unfortunately, in the context of this game they're right. You later find out that you are not hunting a person, but demons. And it gets worst, because the chief of police is a demon, feeding souls to some big demon. And even worst, he feeds the souls of dumb players. Like, say, you?
That element of the game always freaked me out a little. Maybe I'm easy to scare, but after I learned that fact I always felt like I had to beat the game one day no matter what. And I felt the same when I replayed it. It wasn't a matter of just beating the game; my soul was stuck in the Dreamcast! (And I went back for seconds.)
More later... I hope to give my full thoughts on this game. And add some pics, but just pics stolen from google image. For now, enjoy New Angels of Promise at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZAAW6Dxue4
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Anyway, after having sex with someone else's wife and checking out the mostly useless stores, you have to go to a grocery store (OF THE FUTURE!) to fight some bad guys. Here the game introduces the first person shooter thing. Unfortunately, it's not that great. Even worst, fps usually give me a headache. Maybe I don't like it because I suck at fpses, but I just don't think it works too well. I prefer the exploration of the dark, cold cities. I'm not a fan of fpses where you have to aim with one thing and move with something else. I prefer games like Goldeneye or Metroid Prime where you stop and aim. Because of this I'm usually a sitting duck. Worst yet, after you get pass the shootings, you are introduced to a fight. The fights in this game are awful. All I do is find out a couple moves and do them and hope I can outlast the opponent. The makers of this game can't be faulted for ambition, but they fell short in these two parts of the game.
So that leaves us with the adventure part, which is fortunately the best part. To me, Omikron was trying something where Grand Theft Auto 3 eventually succeeded. Omikron attempted to give you big cities to explore where you can find all kinds of things to do. Maybe I'm remembering the history of games wrong, but it seemed like a big step forward from the N64/PS generation. There's not too many things that's worth checking out, but this game does have stuff like videos, magazines, and a few interesting places to check out. In keeping with the cold futuristic theme, there's a few strip clubs. One of those places has one of those booths where you put a quarter in the machine and you watch a girl do stuff. Since it's a T rated game, and the graphics are better then previous generation but still primitive, you wonder why they would bother, except for atmosphere, I guess. Again, the game feels like an early try to be what the GTA3 series became.
After spending some time as a cop, you will eventually become a target of the police. As you escape from the first city, you get blown away by a robot. You get rescued as you find out that you have the ability to switch bodies, even after you die. You touch a bald-headed nurse and she's your first switch (unless you figure out how to switch before getting blown away.) I remember playing the game the first time and it seemed like I was a nurse for almost as long as the cop. Her bald head was annoying me for a while. It was around this time that I found this game's version of Zion. I think there was a quest where the whole poin was to hijack a sattelite so the Zion computer leader could broadcast a dumb message to tell everybody to wake up. Yeah, that'll work. What else is on?
As the game goes on, I think the cities grow less interesting. I would have actually liked to play a game where you're just a cop in a Blade Runner world doing things. The ability to morph into other people is an ok gimmick, but it doesn't let you do much. If you could steal a body and then pretend to be that person it would be interesting, but as far as I can tell, the most that changes is your stats (which I never paid attention to) and the apartment key you have. There aren't anymore wives in the game so the most you can do in an apartment is steal stuff and watch a holographic video or two. Seems like a wasted opportunity.
The game itself has some programming problems. There are many, many times where you'll run into some lag problems. I got stuck quite a few times, and buying hints in the game didn't help me. (I have an account at ign.com because of this. Gamefaqs only has a FAQ for people you can jump into.) When you jump into water, there's a very noticible pause as the game switches control schemes. The graphics are ok from a distant, but like I said earlier, too primitive for it's ambitions. People aren't detailed enough, like the David Bowie character. He deserves better as he sings "Survive."
Anyway, I thought I would say more, but my thoughts are jumbled right now and I'm having trouble finding a way to tie them all together. Let's just say that this was an interesting experiment that I wish was better. If there's a sequel, they'll probably release it for a system I don't have or plan to get.
Out of five stars, I give this game a ranking of: Coulda been a contender.
Oh, and say no to this guy: http://youtube.com/watch?v=y9lQX3kAIGI
