The more you play O.D.T, the more you wish you were playing a better game, particularly one named Tomb Raider.
After a gas-powered craft called "The Nautiflyus" crashes in alien territory, the four men and one woman crew sets out to look for gas canisters to re-inflate the balloon. Even worse, the mysterious Green Pearl which the crew was supposed to bring to the land of Calli in order to stop a terrible epidemic has gone missing as well. Story is actually quite weak, but the well animated cut-scenes make up a little bit for this weakness.
These cut-scenes can not make up for the broken gameplay, however. Most of the time, you'll run around shooting some evil creatures while solving a puzzle or two on the way. Does it sound familiar? It's because this game is just like Tomb Raider, but for some reason Psygnosis decided to ruin O.D.T by leaving out most of the things that made Tomb Raider worth playing through. The levels in the game are not only poorly designed, but there are times when you'll get completely lost and will have a really hard time figuring out where you're supposed to go next. The fatal lack of save points and the fact that you can only use one of these ONCE doesn't help either.
Combat is also flawed, mainly because of the somewhat poor targeting (both automatic and manual) but also because of the fact how cheap some of the enemies are. The flying creatures can push you off cliffs as you're desperately trying to take them down and there are even some enemies that can attack you while they're taking damage.
However, the worst part in O.D.T lies in the puzzle part, despite the fact that they're usually about pulling a lever here and placing a specific object there. Some of the levers are hard to spot and several of the objects required to solve some of the puzzles are hidden in the most obscure places you didn't even know you could get to, forcing lots and lots of agonizing backtracking.
As if this wasn't bad enough, controlling your character is as easy as trying to hold onto a wet soap. You have to press both L2 and the square button just to crawl and if you stand still while jumping, your character only steps a few inches forward usually causing you to miss a jump and fall to your death.
Visually, O.D.T is a mess. The graphics are sloppy and uninspiring in many ways. The textures are just awful, the characters are built up of 4 polygons and there are even times when you can see through walls if you stand close enough to them. Music is also not very engaging. It's stays silent for the most part and even when you hear some music, you'll probably whish you didn't.
If a game developer absolutetly must make a clone of another game, they should at least try to make it a guilty pleasure, something Psygnosis hasn't made here. The more you play O.D.T, the more you wish you were playing a better game, particularly one named Tomb Raider.