Perhaps their goals were set to high. No every company can produce a Shenmue-esqe quality product (which this game has obviously borrowed a few ideas from; not the storyline, but the multi-genre mixing). Quantic Dream is a relatively small developer in the scheme of things, and they didn’t quite have the Yu Suzuki budget that Shenmue had the honor of having. Because of the grand scale of this game, and a lack of sufficient research and resources, the game suffered tremendously.
Visuals:: Let me start off by saying that the visuals are not bad here. They are pretty good compared to the likes of earlier Dreamcast endeavors, but they pale in comparison to other ventures into the adventure genre (namely Code Veronica and Shenmue). While the game boasts a lot of on-screen action at once, the engine suffers greatly because of it. Fog is prevalent everywhere, including inside some buildings (are you kidding me?). When walking around outside through the city streets, it gets really bad. And no, it cannot be considered "atmospheric fog" since you are in a dome-covered city. It manages to get worse as you travel to other locations in the Omikron world, and proves itself to be an obvious cover up for pop-up.
Frame rate is the next problem that you’ll run into. It’s so temperamental that it becomes an extreme annoyance throughout the game. To sum it up, if there’s a lot on screen, your frame rate just about gets cut in half. For one example near the beginning of the game, stand outside your headquarters (in the midst of the city), and you’ll see noticeable dips in the frame rate. Upon entering the building, it speeds right back up again. Then, upon entering the lobby area, it starts jerking again. What’s worse, there is a three to four second loading time between EVERY room. I used to think CD load times were bad for games, but this is a joke. Every few minutes you get the realization that you are only playing a game with limited capabilities, and you keep getting dumped from the universe that you are supposed to believe is real. Bah! I would have rather had it stay at a consistent slow pace than this mess.
Texture quality and polygon count are also lacking. The game really shows it’s PC roots with the way-too-block character models and washed out textures. Admitted, some of the textures can look very nice, but others are unsightly. Had the developers been given more time to tweak the code for the Dreamcast, these problems could have probably been fixed, but alas, they were not.
On the positive side, the environments are expansive, and there are little details everywhere that can make it a looker at times. Great care was put into the design, only too many shortcuts had to be made along the way that obviously many of the ideas had to be substituted with less complex models or ditched altogether.
Facial expressions and emotion are the biggest thing the game has going for it. Along with the voice acting (more on that below), the emotion that the characters showed was highly impressive. You knew when someone was sad, you could tell when someone was angry, and the details were gorgeous. Even the mouth movement matched the speech (something so many titles these days are lacking).
So could the graphics have been better? Yes, by a lot. Are they the worst on the system? By far, no. I simply wish more care was taken to correct the many wrongs that are here, or at least capitalize on the good points that it does have.
Audio:: Too bad I’m not a big David Bowie fan. He and Reeves Gabrels are responsible for the game’s soundtrack, but I’m not too sure I even heard that much music. The game had a long opening theme that sticks out, but I actually thought it was a rather cheesy theme song. Perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention to the music while playing, but that pretty much means that it wasn’t prevalent enough.
There was some decent music at points of intense action (various fighting and shooting scenes thrown about the game), but once again, I was too busy griping about how I couldn’t control my character instead of listening to the background music.
Sound effects, on the other hand, are pretty good. Everything from engine noises, to sounds off the streets, to guns firing are dead-on. Voice acting is also top notch. Again with the emotion, it’s truly there and in good form. There are some translation problems with the text (and I even noticed what appeared to be typos), but it usually sounds good. From time to time, background noise will be too heavy and you can’t actually hear the speech (bummer!), but it doesn’t last long.
Gameplay/Control:: Ahh, the make-it or break-it category. Unfortunately, despite some very cool aspects, Omikron falls like a skydiver without a parachute (read: painfully). From the very first time you’re allowed to move, there’s awkwardness in the controls. The most disappointing part of it is that the analogue stick serves no useful function at all. The directional pad is used for moving and for viewing (when in first person mode), and why we didn’t get to use the great 3D stick I still don’t know. Button layout is also pretty warped, and I found myself repeatedly pushing the wrong button simply because the layout just wasn’t appropriate for the style. Movement is too funky for my taste, and I could never remember the button mapping. Either I have a poor memory, or something isn’t right.
You have only a few kinds of movement at your disposal (in the regular adventure mode), including walk, run, a very awkward jump, and a first person view (for looking around). You also can call up your Sneak, which holds all the items you pick up, stores data you’ve remembered, and allows you to call a transport to quickly get from one place to another. A pretty handy gizmo, albeit some hard to read text.
Other modes of play include a fighting engine (which sucks, plain and simple) and a shooting mode (also it pretty bad). Fighting switches the button mapping and camera angle (with two available positions). Fighting is composed of puching, kicking, and jumping. That’s it. No blocking. No fancy moves. And no, for the most part, it’s not fun. Shooting is a little better, as you’re thrown into a first person perspective, using the directional pad to move and the analogue stick to look around just doesn’t work in the least. It takes forever to clear a room of baddies, and you usually end up taking a bit of damage. Why include these modes of play if they just aren’t any fun to use?
The main problem is that Omikron tries to incorporate too many different kinds of play into one package. Shenmue is one of the few games that will successfully complete this task, and Omikron comes off as a bad first attempt. It mixes elements of text-based adventures, fighters, shooters, and RPGs, but none of them really work well enough to make the game fun throughout. The conversational part of the game was fun for me, simply because I love the choose-your-own-adventure type of gamplay, where you are presented with multiple answers to each question, but it just isn’t enough to save the game from the other downfalls.
Extras:: The game is looooooong. I seriously doubt you’ll want to play through it a second time, as it’s pretty linear, and some sections of the game are too grueling to ever want to touch again. Sigh...
Overall:: So why the heck did I give the game a 6.5/10? It’s still fun to play through. The graphics are very average, the control seems as if it never should have made it out of beta testing, and the various modes of play just don’t mesh well at all. But, and I mean a big but, the storyline is cool, the characters are interesting, there are some cool architectural locations, the voice acting is top notch, and science fiction games just rule in general. You won’t want to play this more than once, but if you have the patience to see it through, it was a rewarding story and characters that will at least keep you playing to see what happens next. If you’re a fighting fan, skip it; you’ll probably be horrified. If Virtua Cop is your favorite game, ya might want to skip this one too. But if you love adventure games, you love games where actions have real consequences, and you have the patience of Job, give the game a shot. Amazingly, there are enjoyable moments hidden deep inside the city of Omikron.
Score:: 6.5/10
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