Thursday, December 19, 2013

The Odyssey

No. Not Homer's epic exactly.  Well. there is an epic here. But let me get to that.

This Odyssey is an epic through the generations of video gaming consoles.
You can read more about over the Trollish Delver blog (also home of Trollish Delver Games).

In Odyssey you travel through the history of the gaming consoles, so each level is the next generation. The graphics get better and better and more difficult.


I played it a bit this morning instead of getting my Pathfinder post ready. It is fun and addictive.
But what I really liked was it's sense of history.  Like old RPGs I also like old technology.  One of my side projects is to get this older computer I am calling Son of Frankencomputer up an running and putting on a bunch of old computer and console emulators.

Odyssey is really a bit like a retro-clone.  It emulates earlier modes of play, it just does it one step better than the OSR crowd by progressively getting better/more detailed.  Though one could argue that while computer and console software has demonstrably gotten better over the years, RPGs maybe not as much.  D&D Next for example might become the biggest "retro-clone" on the market.

In any case Odyssey captures the same spirit of the Old-School movement and for me that is enough.
It also happens to be fun. Which is important to me at least.  It is epic in the sense that you have to pass through all the levels of video game generations to get to your goal.

Terrible time though for me to find a new video game. I need to be ready for Spring term by the end of this week!

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