Top Secret Magazine

The action/adventure genre has been dominated by the Tomb Raider series of games, its main protagonist Lara Croft and her gravity defying physiognomy. That may be about to change. Psygnosis has just released O.D.T., developed by their Paris, France based team and using some of the boys and girls who made "The City of Lost Children."

With that bit of background info, some gamers will immediately understand that this game looks marvelous. They may however, think that despite the visuals, O.D.T isn't much fun to play because that's the stereotype associated with all French-made games since "Alone in the Dark".

Well, they couldn't be farther from the truth. O.D.T has better control than Tomb Raider 3, the levels have more interesting layouts and at the end of the day, O.D.T is more fun to play.

The story-line in this game has a group of adventurers trying to deliver a magic green pearl to a dying community. This mystic object will cure said people of a terrible sickness. En route to their destination, the zeppelin that these adventurers were travelling in, crashed at the foot of an ancient tower and was severely damaged. The crew members must search the tower for hot-air tanks to re-inflate their balloon and the green pearl which has gone missing.

This is where you step in. You choose to play as one of the crew members, three men and one woman, and you set out to search the tower for the objects that you must find.The tower is full of nasty creatures that aren't too thrilled,

Going for a swim.

One of the crew is about to be chomped by a bat.

to have you as a visitor and you have to kill them all before they kill you.

You're armed with a gun that fires different types of energy, your hands and feet for melee combat and there are some pretty cool magic spells that you can learn and add to your repertoire.

As deadly as the ogres and bat-like enemies that attack you are, the environment you play in has to be respected as well. There are pools of acid and pits full of wooden spikes that have to be avoided and bottomless chasms that have to be leapt over.

Moving around is done using the keyboard; as far as I know, there is no option to use the mouse. This forces you to be very precise in your movements. There's a lot of climbing and precision jumping involved in navigating the nooks and crannies of the ancient tower.

O.D.T grabs your attention by constantly presenting new and interesting challenges that have to be passed. Oftentimes, you'll enter a new area of the game and think its impossible to get through it. After some lengthy trial and error sessions you'll discover the solution to your problem and be rewarded by a euphoric sense of satisfaction. The graphics in O.D.T are very nice and have a unique style and the music and audio effects are very well done.

If you're looking for a new action-adventure game to play this Christmas, but are tired of staring at Lara Croft's butt, O.D.T is for you.

Company:
Psygnosis
www.psygnosis.com

Category:
Action/Adventure

NOTES:

Interest: 85%
Control : 80%
Graphics: 90%
Sound : 80%
Originality : 75%

TOTAL : 82%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium 166MHz or better

Memory:
16 MB of RAM

Hard Drive:
185 MB

Sound Card:
Windows compatible sound card

Video:
1MB SVGA video card

Stefan Lister

DEMO