In Honor Of Bowie, The Nomad Soul Is Now Free
Omikron for all
The god of pop passed away at the weekend, and it's hit many of us harder than we would have expected. I've been listening to nothing but Bowie all week - Station To Station remains his best LP, since you ask - but another, stranger way to play tribute would be to play 1999's Omikron: The Nomad Soul, the David Cage (I know, I know) game in which Bowie's face and music play something of a starring role. Sweetly, its current publisher Square Enix is giving away free Steam keys for it (note - a separate link for US folk is below), in honor of the great man's passing.
Update: if you are in the US rather than Europe, you need to use this link instead and must enter the code 'omikron' at checkout in order to make it free.
The Nomad Soul was what Cage's Quantic Dream studio did before Farenheit: The Indigo Prophecy, and thus long before Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. His games grew less weird and more grating over time as far as I'm concerned; Omikron: The Nomad Soul is difficult to describe, let alone play, so wild is its ambition and... complicated its execution. But it is the closest we ever got to A David Bowie game, and it also features music from his last 90s album Hours... (Which, appropriately, was also the first-ever album to be sold as a digital download. Always a prophet, Bowie).
I really can't promise you a good time from Omikron, but it's a fascinating historical document both of PC games and of Bowie at that stage of his career.
Keys are free until Friday, January 22nd, but you need to obtain them by signing up to the Square Enix site here if you're in Europe, or here and entering the code 'omikron' at checkout if you're in the US.
I miss him.