Odama
Odama is Japanese for “frustrating”
Tags: Odama Categories: Game Cube Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on May 2nd, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Odama (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Back when Odama was unveiled at an E3 a few years back, it seemed like a bizarre streak of brilliance that could have only come from Japan. Mixing a pinball game with an RTS? Wow! That’s pretty crazy, man! But I dig it! … If only it wasn’t so complicated and ridiculously difficult to play…
So it’s been a few years, and Odama has gained support for the GameCube microphone, ditched the ever-amusing “Rally the troops with the GameCube bongos” feature, and has become slightly, slightly more user-friendly.
And you know what? It’s still complicated and ridiculously difficult to play.
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There’s quite a lot going on at any given time, and there’s quite a few commands and options at your disposal, to the point where this game really needed a full-on tutorial. Unfortunately, all you get are a few sparse hints here and there that often don’t explain well enough what you need to be doing. The ladder towers need to be knocked over? Great! How do I do it? No help there? Well, then tell me what good it does to unlock that gate over there that doesn’t go anywhere. And why aren’t my troops obeying my commands? Thumbing through the instruction manual gives a few answers to these questions, but not many, and even if they had, it’s generally a bad sign when your game is so incomprehensible players have to rifle through the instructions to find answers to such integral questions.
Also, because the screen tries to catch all of the action at once, everything is very tiny and hard to distinguish. There’s a zoom feature, but it’s awkward to use and doesn’t really fix the problem. Things only get worse as the battle rages on and day turns to night, which makes it extremely difficult to see what’s going on.
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That’s possibly the worst part of all this, too. Right from the beginning, you’re given very little time to clear each board (Map? Battlefield? Whatever) before you automatically lose. Considering how much of the game hinges on you trying to figure out just what to do (and sometimes even figure out the reason why what you’re doing isn’t working), to be rushed and hurried in this way just makes the game’s frustration level leap exponentially.
The game’s controls are also at fault. While commanding troops via the microphone certainly helps a great deal, you still have to contend with three different controls for movement (One for the Odama ball, one for the mostly useless camera, and one for the targeting reticule), and even more damning is the fact the L and R triggers for the pinball flippers react sluggishly and aren’t pressure-sensitive.
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Of course, it’s also worth mentioning that the game really fails both as a strategy game and as a pinball game. For the strategy element, you’re simply not given enough control over your troops, and there’s little strategy to their deployment other than “get them from point A to point B while killing as few of them as possible with the Odama”. For the pinball part, the ball acts extremely sluggish and the poor flipper controls make aiming outright laughable.
The game’s graphics don’t do this game any favors either. While the overall Japanesey style is quite nice, the poorly-detailed battlefields and ugly sprites for the troops all fail to impress. Add in the aforementioned problems with making out anything on the battlefield, especially later in the evening, and this game is not a pretty one to look at.
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If there’s one thing the game does right, it’s the incredibly authentic sound throughout. War drums pound throughout the game, your troops scream out battle cries as you issue commands, and the entire game is accompanied by the Japanese ramblings of a war advisor (translated via subtitles). It’s just such a pity that such a great audio presentation had to be attached to such a mess of a game.
Ultimately, while Odama scores massive points for a fantastic original premise, it loses them all with an execution that fails to deliver a playable game. All but the most devoted to quirky Japanese games will quickly lose their interest in this title after a few insanely frustrating battles.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Pinball plus RTS equals wacky! + Fantastic sound design |
4.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- The game is a confusing mess - Poor controls - Way too difficult - Poor graphics actually make it hard to see what's going on |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you want Japanese oddities on the GameCube, stick to Pikmin and Super Monkey Ball. This game is just a frustrating mess. | |
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Tags: Odama
Posted by Jake McNeill on May 2nd, 2006 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
