To look into the world of Odin Sphere is to peer into an alternate present, a place where towering, razor-sharp 2D sprites are our stock videogame playthings. In this reality there is no place for the awkward, inexact realism of 3D objects no matter how well lit or posed they might be. Odin Sphere is instead the latest in a lineage of increasingly resplendent 2D masterpieces that never were - ripe fruit from a branch of the creative tree our world's developers absent-mindedly lopped off as soon as they discovered Mario 64's beguiling polygons.
Its 2D sprites, set upon a card deck of extraordinarily detailed parallax background layers, are arresting in their inventiveness, coherence and vision. A hunched king, crown brushing the top edge of your widescreen plasma, boots planted on the bottom, leers with almost Monty Python-esque animated poise. A snaking dragon, four screens long, lunges and recoils as if at a Chinese New Year carnival, spewing attacks at you like videogaming's monsters of yore except here repainted, reanimated and indescribably now.
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Pause the game and the frozen image could be hung on your wall. Unpause the game and this is a moving artwork no amount of hyperbolic prose could repaint in words.
But while Odin Sphere's art team should be happily squished under an avalanche of awards and accolades, its design team are in need of a different kind of critical pressure. It will take a while, for some it might even be hours, but eventually you will grow used to this brave new faηade and the contrasting conservatism of what lies beneath is revealed.
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