I’m not even going to pretend to give you an introductory paragraph. My opinion of this game is sort of like a gangrenous limb that the doctors have given that oh so unpleasant look at just before they leave the room. I either get rid of it, or it will kill me.

I guess I did end up giving an introductory paragraph anyway. See how I care?! On to the game.

I rather like Odyssey, which is very distressing for me because I hate it. Confused? That’s all right, because I am too. I wrote the explanation down somewhere on a piece of paper and had planned on retelling that here. I had also transcribed the message Adam West sent me through my cappuccino maker on the same piece of paper, and strangely, I haven’t been able to find it since. My girlfriend informed me afterwards that it was actually a food processor, which does clear up why I had so much trouble steaming the milk, but at the same time makes Adam’s message all the more strange.

And speaking of steaming, let’s talk about the pile currently mocking me from my hard drive. I’m supposed to call it Odyssey ...The Search For Ulysses, but I refer to it as ‘the evil hunk of code I have to review’ when I talk to my friends. And since I don’t have friends, I usually just call it ‘filth.’

Obviously I have some deep-seeded issues with Odyssey. I do hate it, though not as much as I hate listening to Frank Sinatra, (more on this later) but at the same time there is also this strange pleasantness about the game that drifts in and around it like the stink of a press agent.

Okay, many of them don’t smell. Much.

Back to my original point, What I Like About Odyssey:

- It has attractive pre-rendered backgrounds, making useful items very easy to distinguish.

- The voice actors are campy, but in a good way. They feel like they actually want to do a good job.

- There are very few buttons to deal with, making control very easy.

- The music didn’t sound anything like Frank Sinatra.

Sounds nice so far, right? Now let’s examine the other, disease-ridden side of the coin.

I admit that my first objection to the game is subjective and decidedly personal, but I don’t get paid to be diplomatic. Actually, I don’t get paid at all. Instead, they continually send me games like Professional Bullrider, so the fact that I can form coherent sentences through the insistent fog of my rapidly dwindling sentience should earn me some kind of respect, or at least an ugly plaque of some kind that I could put on the wall and prove to my mother that I never call her because I’m actually doing something. But I am not thusly honored. So I try to create lucid reviews in spite of my increased blood pressure and slow descent into psychosis, and they keep throwing adventure games at me that conspicuously lack features and themes one would expect when examining the definition of ‘adventure’. It would be funny if I hadn’t uninstalled Unreal Tournament to make room for this thing. (To be fair, the Professional Bullrider was quite a while ago...but you never forget an experience like polygonal rodeo.)

And what is my first objection? That would be the feel of the game. And when I use a sensitive, effeminate word like feel, it definitely needs to be prefaced with words like personal and subjective like I used earlier so as not to upset the press agents.

Who smell. But not all of them.

Odyssey feels cheap. I said it. Now, this may be due to the sheer volume of titles I encounter in my life, which give me a wide (though often shallow) pool of experience to draw from. Additionally, publishers may argue that game journalists are spoiled children, experiencing more games and, as a result, developing standards far higher than those of the average gamer. And if the sales of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire are any indication, they’re right. However, they forget the incredible numbers of Rollercoaster Tycoon, Unreal Tournament and Baldur’s Gate 2 purchased, which were phenomenal titles. So what is my point? People will still buy hick-centric deer hunting games, our industry’s version of the Five Boy Band ®, and they will also buy excellent games like The Sims, so it doesn’t really matter what I say. And shouldn’t game developers strive for excellence anyway, instead of whining that they’re being unfairly compared to a better game? Maybe that’s just me.

It feels cheap because of the control, which is forever locked in the default settings. In fact, the only options you have are save/load, BGM, and the resolution. Maybe I’m a child of a different era, but I believe I should be able to map my controls to whatever keys I want, particularly when the default inputs are on opposite sides of the keyboard. Perhaps the developers have an extra arm grafted to their body, or make enough money from pumping out nebulously complete games to purchase their own helper monkeys, but most of us are not that fortunate. As for the multitude of options screens, these are so indistinct that they had to put pictures in the manual with the button locations mapped out for you. I’m not making that up.

It feels cheap because the story is amazingly linear, without any attempts at plot developments and intrigue. You are searching for Ulysses following his disappearance after the fall of Troy. I never got into Greek mythology beyond some of the more fantastic tales that were usually accompanied by pictures, so I will admit that I don’t know if this is an accurate retelling of the story. I had thought I might learn a little while playing it, but this game is essentially a computer-based pop-up book. The puzzles are simply gimmicks to keep the game from being a read-along, so what I learned is that I don’t absorb much when voice actors poorly emote.

It feels cheap because the cut-scenes are pre-rendered and they still show your character as a low-poly construct to maintain continuity. While I applaud the concept, the truth is, they could have spent more time giving him additional surfaces in the game and less time pimping their code-book outside of it. (Again, more on this later)

Finally, the confirmation of cheapness is demonstrated by the, frankly, scary volume of lackluster titles the publisher is dumping on the market.

So what do I have to say about the game itself? Well, if you’ve played Resident Evil, then you should buy this game. Then you should melt it, cast it into a strange hieroglyph gleaned from the murky depths of your own mind, and send it to Capcom as a symbol of your devotion. Or you could just go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book that doesn’t force you to wade through distressingly laborious puzzles. Whatever.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps. But this is for two reasons, the first of which is the puzzles I mentioned. If you took one of their helper monkeys and fed it nothing but medical grade heroine for two weeks, then gave it paper and crayons, it could not come up with less obtuse tasks. Perhaps I am out of practice with adventure games, and haven’t kept my brain finely honed to their particular brand of dementia, but that would mean that I am the ‘lay person’ that these games are supposed to be aimed at, and the earlier possibility that I am a jaded gaming journalist by the odoriferous press persons would then be moot. (Now I’m just trying to make them figure out which reason they hate me for.)

Either way, the fact remains that I was quite painfully stumped (to use the quaint terminology) on more occasions that I feel it is possible to deal with and still maintain a degree of fun. Unless fun can be defined as massive headaches, bleeding from the eyes and possible homicidal psychosis. In which case, bravo! Fun was had.

What elevates my anger from a smoldering ember into a genocidal firestorm (thereby alleviating the pressure of pulling punches) is my second reason. This is the availability of help for this game. Now, as a reviewer, I find it distressing that a walk-through was not provided. There’s no telling who will be reviewing the game, so there’s no way for a publisher to know how long it will take for a reviewer to complete it. Therefore, the review might not be posted before the game is actually on store shelves if aid is not provided. My personal opinion is that this is exactly the scenario Dreamcatcher and Cryo wanted to create, thereby generating some sales of their Odyssey game before people were able to read about it and escape it’s clutches. And these people were pivotal to the realization of Dreamcatcher/Cryo’s real plan. The sale of hint books.

You see, not only is the game hard, it’s difficult in a way that makes you ashamed. Now, many people aren’t going to drop cash on a game just to have it sit on their hard drive, when they could spend another $10-15 and get the companion book with the complete walk-through. (Unless, of course, you’re me, and have had Everquest sitting just to the left of your monitor for over nine months.) And the game is definitely hard enough to warrant a hint-book purchase. So I went to the site looking for help on the game (since they saved some paper and didn’t give me a walk-through, tree-loving fruits) and found a brief excerpt from the strategy guide on the site. Naturally the excerpt they surrender contains events so early in the game that it’s usefulness could only be measured on a molecular scale. But they make it quite clear that what I read had come from an entire tome dedicated to the completion of this game. But they didn’t tell me where to find it. I can buy anything I want from their website, including Nancy Drew games, which no one will ever give up their precious credit card digits in exchange for... trust me, but they fail to provide the slightest hint regarding where I can find the walk-through. Perhaps this is their own little web-based adventure game, making the consumer search desperately for unrelated, pointless items and information on the website to unlock the html gate that leads to the relevant order form.

Or perhaps they’re all insane.

But does it really matter? In the end, Odyssey is a decently crafted game that fell short somewhere between concept and execution (which is a very wide space, allowing much room for error) that will leave most of the people who play it frustrated and wishing they had spent the extra $20 on Monkey Island or The Longest Journey. If you can find Odyssey in the bargain bin, it’s probably worth the ten dollar price tag, but only if you aren’t required to ingest glycerin tablets on a regular basis.

And for those who care, the Sinatra hatred stems from a job I once held, where my fellow employees (all four of them) played only one CD, eight hours a day for two months, until I had to melt the thing. It was a ‘best of’ disc of Sinatra songs...live, no less. How does this relate to games? Well, I consider my hatred of Frank to be the only thing that stops me from sending hate mail and ticking packages to certain development houses. I say to myself... ‘Yeah, it’s bad, but do you hate it more than Frank?’ and so far, the answer has been no.

But I didn’t have to play Ultima IX.

Installation: Easy
For once, I didn’t have a problem. Useless fact: the first disc is only for the installation, while the second is for playing the game.

Gameplay: 5
With only 12 buttons used, it isn’t hard to pick up, but there really isn’t anything to do other than find items and use them somewhere else. The occasional conversation tries (and fails) to spruce things up.

Graphics: 7
It looks nice, but everything you don’t directly interact with is pre-rendered, so the few things that could tax your video card could probably be more complex. The panning camera is interesting, if a bit confusing at times.

Sound: 8
I totally dug the music, and the voices were trying so hard to fit, that it made me want to say ‘awwww, he almost sounds like he wants to find Ulysses.’

Difficulty: 9.5
Just give up, before you have an aneurysm  It’s for the best.

Concept: 4
Not only have we seen this type of game before, but we’ve seen it done far better. The only reason this is higher than two is because I have never played a game set in the aftermath of the Trojan war.