I am afraid of the word “innovation.” It usually means taking
the perfect game and “improving” it, such that what you finally get
is so “original” nobody will understand it. If you add to this a game
set in the future (the usual excuse for bringing technology that nobody will ever
use), you will understand why I had my doubts regarding Omikron.

There
are, though, exceptions to my–weak now–theory, and I was glad to see this is
where Omikron fits in. Omikron is a 3D adventure/action/RPG, in
the style of King’s Quest 8: Mask of Eternity and Outcast. This
relatively new genre tries to go for a simple concept: most of the gamers are
interested more in experiencing/living a game than playing it in the classical
sense. With the evolution of PCs, we are able now to create worlds, so the gameplay
must be more complex. We want more interaction with the computer-controlled characters–that’s
what makes the world alive. And we also want to be able to explore–like Tomb
Raider taught us. These are some of the reasons why these games start to become
more and more popular. As seen in the two games I mentioned earlier, the best
way to achieve this goal is by taking the best parts from the three most popular
genres: adventure, action, and RPG. Adventure brought the story, puzzles, and
interaction with characters, action gave us the typical adrenaline pumping, and
RPG meant taking quests and having basic skills that you can improve for your
main character. While KQ8 and Outcast gave us an idea on what the
resources are for this genre, Omikron is all of these and much more.

The
story starts relatively simply: your very own soul is projected inside the computer,
in a parallel world named Omikron. Here, the demons try to get as many
souls as possible, and it will be up to you to save the world and defeat Astaroth,
the final evil. While this sounds very childish, the gameplay and story are not.
You begin the game in the body of a police officer named Kay’l, and as you will
soon learn, you have disappeared a few weeks ago, together with your partner.
Your main task will be to find out more about yourself and investigate what happened
before your disappearance. The story plays like a detective movie–there are many
twists and turns that will keep you in front of the PC for hours. The city where
you start in is huge, and you have full freedom in exploring it. However, in order
to keep you focused on the story, you can travel to specific locations by using
a slider. Like in any typical adventure, these locations become available once
you talk with other characters.

The gameplay consists of three different
parts: adventure, FPS (first person shooting), and hand combat. The adventure
part plays in third person, and you control the character using the keyboard.
Most of the puzzles are inventory-based. You have a computer called SNEAK that
can handle up to 18 objects. When you will gather more, you can transfer the ones
that you don’t need immediately (or at all) onto Multiplan, a fancy term for a
larger computer that can store an unlimited number of items. The access to Multiplan
is made from terminals that you find all over the city, so you won’t carry with
you more than the 18 objects you have in your SNEAK. Objects can be combined,
examined, and used. Your SNEAK also displays a map of the city, your character
stats, and slider directions. The story evolves by character interaction. The
game has full facial capture for all characters, which makes place for incredible
realism.

Omikron brings to light the concept of “virtual reincarnation.”
You can play as almost any of the characters living the cities of Omikron,
and the idea behind this is that each character has his/her own stats: Energy,
Mana, Fight Experience, Attack, Dodge, Body Resistance, and Speed. Some of these
characteristics can be improved by training (the last four), while the first two
can increase only by using potions, medkits, or eating/drinking, but once you
have trained a character, you will want to keep him/her for as long as possible.
Like in the real world, Omikron uses money that you can take from different
places or even win at secret underground tournaments. The level of interactivity
is incredible: you can go eat in a restaurant, drink in a bar, buy something from
the vending machine, go to sorcery and get ingredients for some of the spells
you will use in game, go to a drugstore and get medkits, and even go to secret
David Bowie concerts, buy poetry books from the bookstore (a really nice touch),
or get music CDs for your home hi-fi. The great thing is that you have complete
freedom to do whatever you want–the story waits for you. You can wonder throughout
the city or drive the slider by yourself–if you have those basic skills that
I miss. Even while the story evolves, you can still return in all of the previous
worlds. I thought that the adventure part is amazing, with easy to medium puzzles,
a strong story, and plenty of character interaction. Story gets an A.

Of
course, being an adventure fan, my main concern was about the fighting part. Let
me talk first about the hand combat. This has been compared many times with the
well-known Mortal Kombat games. Actually, there is a difference: here you
can improve your skills and learn new moves just by training. There are different
places in Omikron where you can train, such that no matter the character
you have, you can reach certain levels in fighting experience. The bad part is
that it really doesn’t matter if you play as a man or a woman, a soldier or a
scientist–they all will fight the same way, if trained properly. You can also
learn new combo moves (MK style) from flyers you find in different places.
Hand combat is really easy, and I finished the game without being defeated (I
played on “easy” mode, though).

FPS is where the problem starts.
Even experienced players said that this is incredibly hard, so I was concerned
that this may be true. After going through these first-person sequences, I can
say there are some main issues. The first one is that these parts will be extremely
difficult if you have a slow machine, since all you will see will be fog. What
happens is that the baddies–always in large numbers–will shoot you before you
can see them. Even with all video options set on, still there were moments when
the computer was plain cheating, by shooting at me from places in the fog. Otherwise,
these sequences can be done most of the time by using a simple strategy: reincarnate
in one of the baddies, then explore all of the place while being one of them,
then solve the objective. There aren’t too many FPS parts, but the few there are
seemed to me to be out of line. I can’t say they were as hard as I expected, but
I couldn’t finish any of them without restarting them few times.

And this
brings me to the next issue: Omikron uses a console type of saving. What
this means is that you are not allowed to save wherever you want, but only in
specific locations. Moreover, for the hand combat and FPS parts, you cannot save
at all, but if you die, you respawn at some certain location. That means you will
need to play the entire FPS part all in one sitting, since otherwise you will
restart the game at the last place where you saved (usually far from where the
FPS will take place).

This being said, due to these annoying/frustrating
parts, I give the gameplay a B.

Omikron’s graphics are amazing,
but as I said earlier, you need a good machine to take full advantage of that;
otherwise you will see only fog. The engine supports the latest tricks (volumetric
fog, reflective surfaces, dynamic lighting, full facial and body capture, etc.),
and overall I would say it is as good as Unreal’s. The game was advertised
to have weather effects and day/night cycles, but I didn’t see any of the first.
The way the second works is that the sky changes when you exit a building. So
there is no gradually change between daylight and night, but these are already
changed when you leave buildings. Since they are so amazing, I will give the
graphics an A.

Voice acting was pretty good overall, so no Sanitarium
here … The characters are very convincing, especially because of the
facial animation. Music was composed by David Bowie and Gabriel Reeves, and its
techno beats go well with the general atmosphere from the game. You can even go
to secret concerts with Bowie, but this will require you to make use of your detective
skills. You will meet Bowie anyway, since he plays a supreme being named Boz.
This being said, I give sounds and music an A.

My overall opinion
is that Omikron is a wonderful game, probably the most revolutionary of
1999. Even though is not perfect (and I am thinking especially about the FPS sequences),
this is more than your typical game and more of an experience. Being an adventure
fan, I can say that even for an inexperienced action player like me, the fighting
parts were not that hard, and the adventure part is worth playing. I would recommend
Omikron as the most original and ambitious game of 1999. Definitely worth
playing.

Final grade: I give the game an A-.

System
Requirements:

Minimum:

Pentium II 200 MHz processor or equivalent
Windows 95/98
32 MB RAM

350 MB uncompressed hard disk space
8X CD-ROM drive
4 MB SVGA video card

100% DirectX 6.1 or higher compliant sound card
Keyboard and mouse

Recommended:

Pentium II 266 MHz processor or equivalent
64 MB RAM
1.6 GB uncompressed
hard disk space
16X CD-ROM drive
100% DirectX 6.1 3D accelerator card
(8 MB)
100% DirectX 6.1 or higher compatible joypad