Developer: Monolith Distributor: Interplay Minimum System Requirements Windows 95/98 Pentium 200 32 MB Ram 250 MB Hard Drive Space 2 MB Ram Video Direct X 6.0 or higher compatible video card Windows compatible sound card 4xCD-ROM drive Mouse and Keyboard Recommended System Requirements: Windows 95/98 Pentium II 64 MB Ram 250 MB Hard Drive Space 3D Accelerator Card Direct X 6.0 or higher compatible video card PCI Audio card 4x CD-ROM drive Mouse and Keyboard ESRB Rating: Mature Genre: RPG/Adventure Introduction Odium n. def. -hate coupled with disgust. As the opening cutscene reveals the bombing of a Russian city called Gorky 17, you get tossed into the conspiracy theory state of mind. Your team of NATO specialists, Cole Sullivan, Jarek Ovitz, and Thiery Trantigne, are later sent to a small town somewhere in Poland in the year 2009. The opening dialogues between Sullivan, and his team reveals only that they have been dispatched because whatever happened in Gorky 17 is happening in this town. Now it's your job to search for answers to your growing suspicions, and discover who is really pulling the strings on your operation. Installation Odium installed without any complications and in no time I was uncovering a conspiracy that goes right to the government. The install comes up and asks you a few install questions, then your CD-ROM busily goes about installing Odium. Graphics Odium's graphics are slick and look great throughout the game, but unfortunately you can't pump them up to higher resolutions. You see the Odium through a birds-eye view, which leaves little out of the smooth landscapes. The graphics are great for bringing out the darkness, and spookiness of the Odium world. The shadows are nicely subtle and well done, so that they don't detract your attention from the landscape. All the locations in the game have pre-rendered graphics keeping the loading times short. Your NATO specialists, and any other NPC or monster all have polygon counts ranging from 800-2000. Don't fret though, because even with a single voodoo2 the characters' graphics looked sweet. Cutscenes are well crafted, but for some reason, the developers chose to make all the cutscenes interlaced. This wasn't too much of a draw back, but the cutscenes would have been much more eye pleasing if they weren't interlaced. Otherwise every cutscene in the game was a nice relief from the sometime hot tension of a battle's aftermath. Except be wary, because all the cutscenes are showing the entrance of a boss type baddie. Sound First off, the music featured in Odium is wonderfully spooky and complements the feeling that something could attack at any moment. Odium is crafted so you have quicker, more exciting, music when you enter into a battle with one or more mutant humans. As you enter into new areas the music changes style to complement the surroundings. Thankfully the battle track doesn't change throughout your travels through the world of Odium. Gameplay sounds are loud and real when they need to be, and quiet and malicious when they need to be. The variety of sounds found in the Odium world is more than sufficient for bringing the battles, and adventuring to life. The battle sounds, such as flame-throwers spewing a world of hurt down on a hybrid or the cries of your men after taking a hit, are spectacular. The characters' voices are worthy attempts at sounding like "hard-core" action heroes. Sometimes however particularly in long dialogues at key points in the game, the characters' voices sound like static was mixed in. The developer made a good judgement call when they included subtitles in case you couldn't tell what the characters were saying. Gameplay Worthy of its adventure quality Odium has gameplay that will keep pushing you forward as the plot unfolds. Very quickly you get some impression of how severe the trouble you and you men have been tossed into is. At certain points in the game you have clues, and tidbits given to you from dialogues between NPC's and Sullivan's group. Monolith does a superb job at keeping you on the edge of you seat, and coming back for more. Truly the surprise waiting for you at the end will keep you enticed, and guessing until the very end. The characters throughout the game are handled well with a "level" system reminiscent of Diablo where you put points into the character's attributes. The characters all have different agendas, or reasons for being caught in the crisis, and most of them will willingly join your group. The NATO specialists are obviously the best with every weapon, but some NPC's such as Joan McFadden, or Medusa have special abilities. However, be careful not to invest too many good weapons into any of the NPC's because they have a tendency to die. Wandering around the various locations throughout Odium, is a simple point and click interface. Your characters never get stuck behind a building or trap themselves in a corridor, because Odium doesn't let you scroll all over the map. At some points in the game this is a handy tool, but occasionally it becomes frustrating. Picking up items, and interacting with the surroundings is nicely done. Most of the time when you go to use something the game will decide which item you need to use. Other times you simply click on the item and the computer gives you options on how to use the item. While in a battle the movement changes slightly. Instead of freedom of movement, your characters must move from square to square as you might in a game of chess. Also most weapons require you to be lined up with a baddie, and with the chessboard setup it is a little tricky at first. However, with some practice I found that I liked the battle mode, because you can pull of some nicely timed moves on groups of mutants. Later in the game this setup is a savior, especially when you must split up your team in combat. Conclusion If you were to classify Odium it would probably be more of a "light" RPG, because the RPG elements don't play a strong role throughout the game. Odium combines the X-files and X-com into one good game. Throughout my run of Odium there was never a time when the game didn't push me helpfully along the right route. The verdict: 4 out of 5 joysticks Odium was reviewed by GameBoyz contributor David Chapman on his, Celeron 400 64MB RAM Windows 98 64MB RAM 12 GIG hard drive DirectX certified sound card Voodoo2 / 1 MB video card 4X CD-ROM 100% Microsoft Compatible mouse