Odyssey, by AIM Productions, $14.99
Reviewed September 2002

To a true flight shooter fan, there are never enough spaceship flying and alien shooting genre games; so who cares if many of them are clones. The important thing is the game must stand out from the fray. Odyssey from AIM Productions does it with its eye-catching graphics, smooth high frame rate action and a polished package that offers a good balance between game play and eye-candy.

With no story line involved, you will find that game play is the hotshot in Odyssey, Battle of the Universe. It’s got flying a spaceship, non-stop shooting at alien enemies, and maneuvering through hectic weaves of formations-- all the ingredients of a game in this genre. You’ll also be happy to know that the tricks you’ve learned and accumulated from slaving over other flight shooter games will pay off in this game. The main skills needed to complete your 8 long missions include finding refuge spots and identifying enemy attacking patterns, building up the weapon upgrades from 5 different shooting machines and total annihilation bombs, and survive the bosses. So don’t expect Odyssey to be a no-brain shooting fest. If you can master these skills, you will find Odyssey fun the first time, addictive the second time and thereafter. For those who are new to the flight shooter games, I’ve put together a quick guide on how to beat the bosses without scratch your beloved spaceship (see the Playing Hints and Tips), as for surviving the levels before the bosses, you are on your own, kid!

Odyssey has some great features that make the game fun to play and a couple of things missing as well. With the audio score, Odyssey offers a great rhythm in game play that we have become to expect after great games like Turjah and Blaster. The enemy movements match the music beat, alternating shapes, colors and flight patterns. You will find yourself moving your stylus or the D-pad in the rhythm of the game. The game also has an auto-fire feature, which will save you from carpel tunnel syndrome. The controls in Odyssey belong to minimalism. If you are used to using stylus to control the ship like I am, with auto-fire on, you will have only one button to push (the nuke button), which helps you concentrate on flying and surviving. Another very nice set up in Odyssey is that if you die in a level, you have a chance to replay the level as many times as you wish until completing it; however your high score only counts the first ship’s achievements. This feature allows the pros to make their fame, and gives the newbies a chance to complete the game, or at least die trying. Odyssey does not offer any difficulty settings, the ability to save games or change button settings.

The graphics in this game scream for attention. The alien planet locales are represented in a nice rolling background, and you’ll also see a large number of enemy ships, rockets and things I can’t name that show off some major design talent. I completed the entire game without feeling bored with the ships and formations because the great variety, though ironically the 8 bosses are the somewhat of copycats of each other. The game looks great at a high frame rate, and the AI seems very sharp. When you pick up Speed power-ups, you can really feel the acceleration. If you have some crashes, you’re not alone. I had the game crash on the Toshiba e310 a few times while it didn’t crash on my iPAQ 3835.

The sound tracks seem closer to GBA games than any other game I can think of: fun, groovy, not in your face. The game supports ARM, MIPS with requirement of 4MB in memory.

So what are you waiting for, get your Pocket PC out and let’s dance!

Playing Hints and Tips

The single most important thing next to staying alive is the upgrade your weapon and keeping it for the bosses and higher levels. Changing weapons frequently will result to using lower power weapon when you need big guns.

Beating the Bosses: (major spoiler)
Boss #1: It’s very easy to duck from the single line fire. When it shoots the group fire, stay on the side of the boss ship. It should take no more than 2 turn of this maneuver if you have your weapon build up.
Boss #2: Drop 2 bombs to finish stage 1, don’t touch the ship. The second stage is where the boss ship charges at you. All you have to do is to stay in the center for as long as you can, but give yourself enough time to move out of the way when the boss ship charges. Your regular weapon should do the trick here.
Boss #3: Like the first boss, stay in the center and finish it off with 1 bomb if you have it.
Boss #4: There're four towers you need to take out. Take out the smaller one on the left by just shooting at it and staying in the left bottom corner. Next take out the big turret on the left by either dropping a bomb or just keep shooting. The next to go is the smaller gun on the right. I stayed on the left side and used side guns on my ship to destroy it. The final tower has killer beam, drop a bomb or just shoot it.
Boss #5: Same as Boss #3 adding a laser beam, do the same thing or drop two bomb with some shooting.
Boss #6: Stay on the side away from the thorny tail. I found it hard to maneuver in this boss level, so I used 3 bombs and finished it pretty easy.
Boss #7: Same as Boss #3, #5 with additional charge move. Do the same things, 2 bombs should finish it.
Boss #8: (you’ve got to finish something without me. )