Omikron: The Nomad Soul

Some people don't like David Cage's games because there isn't enough game in them. On the contrary, I don't like Omikron because it has too much game in it. From the awkward third-person controls; to the arbitrary fighting; to the downright awful FPS gameplay, Omikron is not great. The first-person, final boss battle was so poorly constructed I found myself repeatedly asking if the designer had ever played a first-person shooter before. I wasn't surprised to later learn David Cage doesn't play first-person shooters because they make him motion sick. (To be fair, the inclusion of an FPS component in the game was allegedly at the behest of Eidos, the game's publisher.) Still, there's something endearing about Omikron. Perhaps it's that while poorly implemented, the gameplay is never so frustrating as to get completely in the way of an ontherwise unique world. But there is something endearing about the game as an overwrought cyberpunk epic. Or maybe it's just David Bowie having a seizure.

NOT RECOMMENDED. If you want a game that is easy and fun, skip Omicron. The theme is good, the implementation across the board REALLY BAD. The controls are some of the worst I have ever experienced, calling them stiff would be a major praise. The game randomly hangs, showing how the modern systems version is held together with flimsy hacks. But most importantly, the game is actually an adventure game, where your progress can be halted at any point by the vaguest hint not making any sense or not finding the secret compartment inside a secret compartment. This one is a puzzle game of the most arduous variety. And yes, there are recurring places like Jaunpur that are mazes. This game has all the worst crap a 1990s ultra-masochistic player would ever want. They found a way to F up the action button mechanic from Doom (1993) by making the activation range pixel specific and with a range close to zero. The other sections, fighting (w/ super non-responsive controls) and shooting (you bullets go through enemies while enemies never miss and hit you through walls). Despite being an interactive video game, most of the content is communicated through text. It is pretty clear the source material is a book. The devs did not quite understand that you cannot adapt a book into a game by cramming text into it. Oh and do not expect the game to tell you what to do next and how to do basic things like healing. It is as if it on one hand tries to not break the fourth wall by telling players to heal up by buying medikits from a drug store. On the other hand, it tells you that your character is a soul of video game player (subtle, eh). As a result, you have a very cryptic game that refuses to tell you clearly how it works and what you should do. E.g. that you should reincarnate often as every new body has new unique items and apartment keys to add into player's inventory. Or Sneak as the game tries to call it in-game (in the TAB menu it is called 'inventory', how pointless). Skip it.

So, I got maybe 5 minutes into this game before giving up. It's nigh on unplayable, with gamepad or keyboard. 1) Why are there four completely different control schemes? Why? WASD/Mouse control was already well established by the time this game was developed. Was this the devs trying to be "artsy" by reinventing the wheel? Well, they did an awful job. 2) Why can't I bring up the options menu in-game? I wanted to open the config to look at the controls, and there's no way to do it without quitting the game first, to go back to the main menu This leads to the next issue... 3) The game also doesn't let you save (or I couldn't find any way to do so), and there's no autosave feature (again, that I could see). So, quitting the game back to the main menu completely loses your progress. There's no save profile kept, and you have to start from scratch. 4) Trying to use gamepad isn't much better, as again.. the controls are obtuse, and trying to reference them in-game only leads you back to #s 2 and 3 above. People say this game is great, and I'm inclined to believe them... But I gotta wonder how they even got to play it at all with this abomination of a control/save system.

Make up your own mind. Interesting setting and everything, but it really goes up its own rear pretty fast. You end up losing track of what it is you're doing.

After playing "Heavy Rain" and "Beyond: Two Souls", I also checked out "Fahrenheit" because I really liked the style of the other two games from quantic dream and I was kinda disappointed from some parts of the story but mostly because the game had many flaws in camera coordination, its controls and so on... but after playing "Detroit: Become Human", I thought: Well, let's get "Omikron: The Nomad Soul" because you love quantic dream's games so much... Don't do it. The game itself starts promising with an interesting story, a very nice world which really immerses you into it if you let it, but it gets completely destroyed by its controls. Walking? Sucks! (You're not able to use your mouse or a controller) Fighting? SUUUUCKS (doesn't matter whether you're shooting or doing one of the ridiculous beat-em-up-sequences, they both equally suck, mostly because of the controls but also because they're simply very badly designed). The menu coordination sucks as well. I am a little sad because I really wanted to play this game but after saving the game (and about one to 1,5 hours of progress since the save system sucks as well and you go loooong times without saving), going to a boss fight, losing (and wanting to restart the fight by reloading), finding out that my save wasn't saved and I just lost 1,5 hours of (bad!) gameplay, I decided to kick it from my HDD. I love GOG for bringing back old gems, but this one needs a remake from quantic dream to become good, I think with up-to-date-graphics and controls, this game would be awesome!