Review: Otto Matic

Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner

Review Date: January 14, 2002

Genre: Third-person action

Format: CD

Developer: Pangea Software

Mac Publisher: Aspyr

Minimum System Requirements: 266MHz G3, Mac OS 8.6, ATI Rage 128, 96MB RAM, OpenGL 1.2.1

Network Feature: No

3D Support: OpenGL (required)

Mac OS X Compatible: Carbon (10.1 or higher)

Rating: E (violence)

Availability: Out Now

Price: $34.99

I feel sorry for the robots. No one loves robots, apparently, or at least not like back in the 50s and 60s. Back then, robots were both feared and adored. Placing tin men in movies was almost always pure gold, with robots such as Robbie, Gort, and...uh...the Robot stealing the show.

These days, however, robots are what animators kill because they can't kill humans or animals. You can make cartoons about war, invasions from other planets, or grade school recess, but all your violence has to be directed towards robots. Even the latest Star Wars movie, which I guess was aimed at the same age level as Disney's Recess, saw legions of robots destroyed by some goofy looking salamanders throwing rocks.

And don't even get me started on these Battlebots. Cock fighting with diodes, that's all that is. Air this show with dogs or poultry and your sponsors would pull out faster than you can say "Bill Maher." But put robots in there and even the National Coalition on Television Violence is tuning in and wagering.

Thankfully, our hero, Otto Matic, comes from 1957, a time when humans weren't so cruel to our metallic friends, and so they happily adhered to the Three Laws of Robotics, as published by the late Isaac Asimov in I, Robot:

1. A Robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A Robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A Robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First Law.

Otto Matic is a member of the Otto Matics, an organization bound to face confusion when calling the role at group meetings. The Otto Matics police the galaxy "...in the name of all that is good and decent," which of course means saving humans. I don't know what it is about humans, but we sure need a lot of saving.

This time around, it's the Brain Aliens from Planet X who are out to get is. They're abducting the obligatory dim-witted but good-natured farmers, all-American cheerleaders, neighborhood gossips with their beehive hairdos, and pipe smoking scientists. Seems they need human slaves to serve The Giant Brain. Isn't that always way?

Otto's adventure begins on the planet Earth, but it quickly rockets off to strange and exciting planets rife with danger. As if the Brain Aliens weren't enough, Otto will have to contend with volcanos that rise from the ground and spout forth molten rock. Meteors plummet from the sky. Crystalline rock formations crash all around him. On each planet, he must reach the wandering humans before they can be beamed aboard the enemy spaceship. He must also gather enough fuel along the way to escape the planet in his own rocket.

Unfortunately for Otto, the Brain Aliens have help. Each planet presents a new host of enemies: blobs, tomatoes, giant mantes, fire monsters, living hammers, and countless others. Luckily, Otto is well prepared. He's equipped with a rocket pack that allows him to "jump-jet" quickly to humans in distress or to escape from a troublesome situation. The jet pack is also used quite a bit to cross rivers of lava, leap amongst clouds, smash through walls, and so on. Fuel for the jump jet is provided when Otto either kills certain aliens or finds it hidden in Powerup Pods that are scattered throughout every level. Aliens and pods also contain fuel for Otto's ship and health for his...health.

Equally important, the Powerup Pods also contain various weapons Otto must use against his foes. He always has the ability to punch the aliens, but won't always have the ability to get near to them. Otto may be tough, but not as tough as a ray gun, flame thrower or the wicked supernova. And you don't even want to think about punching a blob until it's been shot a few times with a freeze gun. Then, it's great fun.

In previous reviews of Pangea games, I've talked about how much I love the vivid colors and lush level designs. Otto Matic takes this to new heights. The wildly elaborate planets with their swirling clouds and active landscapes are the perfect backdrop for the retro design of the aliens, spacecraft, and--of course--Otto himself.

I've also talked about how much I love the music. I was disappointed to learn that Michael Beckett would not be involved this time around, but Aleksander Dimitrijevic offers a score that captures the spirit of the game, keeping it firmly rooted in the genre by which it's inspired.

What I want to talk about now are the details. There are so many little things in this game that make it cool, like the way Otto stores his extra weapons in his torso, lifting his head to drop them in. I love the way the blobs shatter when frozen, their bits turning into new blobs if not picked up by Otto. I love the way the humans look around in confusion after being zapped aboard Otto's space rocket.

I also got a kick out of the mini-games included in various levels. Otto Matic doesn't just run, jump, punch and shoot his way through the game, he also water skiis, drives bumper cars, gets shot out of a canon, and pilots an enemy spacecraft. These diversions are a nice break from the normal routine, even if they are a bit more frantic.

Know what else I liked? Otto doesn't talk. Unlike most first- or third-person shooters, he doesn't have a bunch of one liners to spout when defeating his enemies. There certainly could have been. It wouldn't have been too difficult for Brian Greenstone to give Otto a voice, but he chose not to, and that makes Otto more endearing, more dutiful. In a way, this helps him rise above cliche, and something this small made the game that much more fun for me.

What I enjoyed most, however, is the love for the genre that Brian built into the game. It's not hard to discern the inspiration for the various levels. Indeed, Aspyr focused on this in one of their marketing campaigns. Playing this game was like taking a trip back to childhood when I'd stay up late at night to see yet another nuclear-mutated giant terrorize some small town. Ah, childhood nothing. I stayed up late this weekend to do the same.

Unfortunately, Otto Matic does suffer from a couple flaws, the importance of which will depend upon the gamer. There are the occasional graphic glitches that cause characters to disappear behind walls and allow aliens to shoot from behind barriers. Although the camera usually does a good job of placing itself in a sensible position, there were times when even manual control would not allow me to see where the aliens were or what Otto was punching at.

The game was very stable and ran well on the 867MHz G4 and 500MHz iBook on which it was tested, but I did at one point lose my game pad settings. When I went in to fix them, the Input Sprocket was pulling in settings for a game pad I've never even seen, let alone attached to my system. When I tried to exit out of the dialogue, the game experienced its only freeze in either the legacy OS or OS X. Although, because of the lack of game pad support in OS X, I did about 90% of my testing in OS 9.

And finally, the game is perhaps too easy. There were a few points that proved quite challenging, but for the most part, I breezed through the game like through a Saturday matinee of Sinbad movies.

But perhaps that's the point. Otto Matic isn't designed to be another Baldur's Gate or Unreal Tournament, it's meant to be a light trip through post-war pop culture. It's on a level of fun normally sold for the Sega Dreamcast or Nintendo Game Cube, but reserved this time soley for the Macintosh.

And please, people, let us remember Otto Matic's deeds when we cheer the cinematic destruction of robots. Remember how he saved us when you turn to BattleBots. Remember how easily he killed The Giant Brain when you go to buy one of those ridiculous looking robot dogs. Remember, robots are our friends. They are our protectors. They are our brothers.

Well, maybe not our brothers, although my older sibling Matt still occasionally walks around chanting, "Crush! Kill! Destroy!" at family reunions. So much for the Three Laws...

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