ōdi∙um

aka: Gorky 17, Gorky 17: Das dunkle Vermächtnis, Gorky 18, Odium
Moby ID: 2185
Windows Specs
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$4.99 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

Story

Mutants have been found in the bombed out Polish city codenamed "Gorky 17" near Lubin, and a trio of soldiers (Sullivan, Owicz and Trantigne, each of different nationalities) enters the city to find out what happened and look for any member of the first squad previously sent there. You control the team and direct them through a world of surprises and mysteries that wait to be resolved.

Gameplay

The game is composed mainly of two playing modes. The (tentatively named) "Adventure mode" is displayed in a top-down view, with the team walking around the city in real time, interacting with objects, picking up weapons and ammunition from item chests, and using key items (such as keycards) to advance to new areas. At fixed locations, the team will be ambushed by mutants, and the gameplay switches to the (again, tentatively named) "Battle mode", featuring a battle field in isometric perspective divided into square grids. Each side takes turn moving, attacking, defending and using items; the battle ends when all mutants die, or one of the main characters dies. The battle field would sometimes have items like exploding barrels, or item chests similar to those in "Adventure mode".

Character Advancement

Each time a soldier hits and wounds a mutant, they gain experience; once the character has gained enough experience, they level up and gain stat points which can be used to improve attributes such as hit points, accuracy, etc. Also, each time the character successfully uses a weapon, their experience with that particular weapon will improve, and at the highest level (level 10), the weapon will deal its intended maximum damage (displayed as "max damage" in the weapon info).

Items and Weapons

The soldiers can equip themselves with melee weapons (crowbar, axe), conventional small arms (pistol, shotgun, assault rifle), special weapons (tranquilizer dart gun, stun gun), heavy or sci-fi weapons. All weapons have limited range and most firearms can only shoot in certain directions (for example, pistols can shoot up, down, left, or right, while assault rifles can also shoot diagonally); some fire in bursts or have splash damage, meaning they can hit multiple enemies. Mutants also have varying degrees of protection (armor) against certain types of weapons and some have immunities to weapon special effects (such as stun), which are automatically added to personal notes as the player finds about such information.

In both "Adventure mode" and "Battle mode", characters can transfer and equip weapons and body armor if available, or heal themselves or each other. The characters are 3D models while the environment is a pre-rendered 2D background, similar to games like Resident Evil 2. At certain points in the game, the characters may be joined by surviving soldiers or citizens, and will occasionally encounter boss-like monsters.

Spellings

  • Gorky-17 Мужская Работа - Russian spelling
  • Горький-17. Запретная зона - Russian spelling (alternative)

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Credits (Windows version)

110 People (96 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Program Design
Product Development Manager
Box/Manual Layout
Public Relations Germany
Public Relations International
Quality Assurance Lead
Localisation
Translation
Voices Recorded at
  • Brainhaus GmbH & Co. KG
Voice Direction
Final Boss Fight
Special Thanks To
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 39 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 48 ratings with 3 reviews)

A nice tactical game, not quite as chess-puzzle like as Incubation, not as open-ended as the best in the genre.

The Good
I actually liked this game better than Incubation. The missions felt much less like a puzzle to solve and more like a tactical problem, though the story was at least as intense. The game system gave enough flexibility for meaningful tactical choices, again less artificially constrained. The art was sufficiently dark and spooky to support the story and the desired mood. It was a fine diversion.

The Bad
It was rather short, and not all that replayable. It lacked the overall depth and playtime of XCOM, and it didn't have quite the variety of tactical challenges that either Incubation or XCOM did. Though I liked the game system well enough and better than Incubation, many of my friends did not.

The Bottom Line
A fine, if somewhat short, tactical RPG.

Windows · by weregamer (155) · 2003

It's good!

The Good
Odium is a good, solid game. Basically, it's a long series of turn-based battles (like X-COM, only rather more Chess-like). The RPG elements are pretty good, too - You get experience points, go up in levels, and increase your weapon skills the more you use a particular weapon. The battles are generally a lot of fun, and, while not very realistic, do require plenty of strategic thought. There is a wide range of weaponary to find and use, and a wide selection of twisted mutant enemies to use it on.

Perhaps the best thing, though, about this game, is its graphics, which are exquisite. There are loads of different locations, and the painstaking attention to detail in every scene is awesome. The 3D engine is equally fantastic. The character models, animation and lighting effects are very, very impressive.

The Bad
As the game is really just one battle after another, and each one takes quite a long time to play through, I found myself playing this game in short bursts - Only playing through a couple of battles before I felt like I needed a break. When I came back, I always enjoyed it, but the game does become tiresome easily.

While the combat and RPG elements of this game are well done, the adventure elements are very lacking. All you need to do is pick up everything you find, then, when you get to the place where an item is needed, the game will basically tell you what to use. There are only a couple of places in the game which require minor amounts of brainwork.

The script and voice-acting are bad. But that's OK, because the voice-acting is bad enough to be pretty amusing. Despite improvements in stats, your soldiers' characters never actually develop, nor do their relationships with each other, so by the end of the game, you'll still be in charge of the same old trio: Sullivan (tough, angry Canadian), Ovitz (sneering, cynical Polish guy) and Trantigne (wimpy Frenchman). There are plenty of dodgy accents in this game, too.

Any other things to complain about? Not really - Except that the ending is disappointing.

The Bottom Line
Odium is a very playable, high-quality game, with a lot of fun in it. It successfully blends elements of X-COM, Fallout and Alone In The Dark, while having an overall character all of its own. Its graphics are wonderful, and you have to play the game to experience them. However, Odium is not quite good enough to be 'great', and I don't think I'd really want to play through it more than once. That said, I enjoyed it and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Windows · by xroox (3895) · 2001

Odium means "hatred" in Latin and that's a good word for describing the job done on the Mac port.

The Good
The graphics are excellent. The windows, the items, the background--they all sport high-quality art worth taking a look.

The models aren't detailed, but that could have been intentional to make the game run on slow machines, so it's fine with me.

Other reviewers compare it to Resident Evil for the plot and to X-COM for the combat, but in fact it's more like a turn-based spawn of the Diablo series, with the exception that the characters are done in true 3D and--let's be honest--it comes with a better inventory system.

As in the Diablo series, the music and the sound effect are unique and very effective for the mood.

The game mechanics allow you to do many of the things you wish you could have done on a multiplayer game of Diablo or Diablo II, or a single-player game for that matter.

The Bad
Except for the mutant, the allies you pick on the game are worthless, and all of them either get killed or betray you.

The scoring system is strange to say at least. Each character seems to make points in a different way. Sometimes the one who just killed some minor enemy makes the higher score, and that makes leveling-up dependent on luck rather than strategy.

The game has serious display problems. The read me recommends running it under Mac OS 9 for better hardware acceleration, which wasn't big deal back when it came out because Mac OS X was still new and feature-challenged, and most machines at the time were able to double-boot. But even on Mac OS 9 I couldn't get decent hardware acceleration. Only the main menu looked good--everything else looked pixelated.

The game also has problems playing the cut scenes, and most of the time they were skipped.

My biggest complain, however, is the script system. After being defeated, the first boss is supposed to drop a hand that you need to continue the game. Well, sometimes you got it and sometimes you don't. And after reaching the top of the museum, the characters status got reset somehow and I always ended up in the middle of the game with level one characters!

You may think those things are fixable by cheating, but guess what? The Mac port doesn't have any cheats. What were they thinking?

The Bottom Line
With a buggy port done in a time when Mac OS 9 was being phased out but Mac OS X still wasn't ready to take over, Gorky 17 didn't stood a chance on the Mac platform. It's a shame, because even though the concept behind the game isn't original, it's enjoyable.

Macintosh · by Tashtego (142) · 2008

Trivia

References

In the first part of the game you find a Singing Mutant who keeps singing a song, "Pleasure little Treasure", which is the name of a Depeche Mode song from their "Never Let me Down Again" single.

Russian versions

Two localized versions of ōdi∙um have been released in Russia; both feature plot changes: Gorky 17 is mostly faithful to the original, with main characters identities changed to Russians instead of NATO soldiers, while Gorky 18 features major changes to character personalities, dialogs and plot - in fact, the whole script has been created from scratch. General gameflow is unchanged though.

Sound files

Go to the DAT\COMMON directory that's wherever you installed the game. Grab the "Sound.dat" and "Voice.dat" files, and load them in Winamp. You'll be able to listen to all the sounds and dialogue, but they're all squished together and out of order, so you may spoil bits of the story by doing this.

Information also contributed by chirinea and Irx

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Dragoon.

Amiga added by Evolyzer. Macintosh added by Kabushi. Linux added by Iggi.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Gonchi, Foxhack, Alaka, jaXen, Ivan Napreenko, Klaster_1, Trond Berntsen.

Game added August 22, 2000. Last modified March 14, 2024.