The Wait is Almost Over!

It's almost been two months since the last episode aired and I'm getting restless. Perhaps the most highly anticipated season of all-time will finally commence when A Capsule Comes to Town in less than three weeks! In case you haven't noticed, there's been an extreme deficiency in podcasts this year...

Wait, we haven't released one yet?

Whoops.

Anyhow, to whet your appetite, I'll be posting our latest interview with Nathan Hoobler and Marshall younger tomorrow. In it, we discuss episodes from the past season as well as things to look out for in the upcoming season! You won't want to miss this exclusive preview!

Well, you could, but then you'd have to wait another two weeks to hear anything new about the 50th season. That wouldn't be fun now, would it?

Check back this Saturday afternoon for the podcast!

Only Two More Days!

Well, folks, the spring season of Odyssey is still forty days away, but Nathan and Marshal have graciously agreed to talk with us in less than a week's time! Which means you have less than two days to submit your probing questions for the two writers/directors! Send them in to our inbox at aiofanpodcast@hotmail.com or post them over at the Town of Odyssey!

In the meanwhile, I have new album cover art that I should've posted a while ago but never got around to doing it. I guess that's what happens when you go on vacation for three weeks. ;)



Album 33 has been repackaged and I'd say this redone version is a significant improvement over the original cover. Let me know if you agree or disagree. Back cover art is not yet available, but I'll post it as soon as it is released!

"A second time! It happened a second time!"

Yes, folks, it's happening again! Sarah and I will be speaking with Nathan Hoobler and Marshal Younger to talk about the past several seasons as well as the upcoming season of Adventures in Odyssey. Have a question that you've been dying to ask the writers? Then start sending them to aiofanpodcast@hotmail.com or you can post it over at the Town of Odyssey. Please keep questions pertinent to the most recent seasons (within the past couple years, preferably) and the upcoming season. Questions are due by Monday, January 21st @ 9:30 pm ET. We'll have the interview available in early February!

The Veggie Pirates Are Back!

I know this doesn't have anything to do with Adventures in Odyssey, but I just thought I'd plug another one of my favorite Christian entertainment series, Veggie Tales! The folks over at Big Idea have collaborated with Universal Pictures to produce Veggie Tales: The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, which released in theaters today! Sarah is supposedly seeing the movie tonight, so perhaps she might post a review afterwards. Until then, be sure to support Veggie Tales by checking out their latest film! You can check to see if it's playing at your local theater by clicking here and selecting "Theater Listings."



Oh, and by the way... Happy New Year. :)

Chris Reviews AnswerThat!

Digital Praise's latest release of Answer That! Adventures in Odyssey Edition invites fans of all ages to test their knowledge of the show with questions ranging from easy to difficult. Modeled after the popular "Scene It" DVD trivia series, Answer That! challenges players to answer questions from the video series, audio clips, and trivia cards. Although it has a limited appeal to the hardcore Odyssey fan, Answer That! offers a good deal of entertainment for the average fan or those new to the show.



Presentation

I was pleasantly surprised with the board game design. The ability to play on four different paths was an added bonus that many will appreciate. Answer That! included four plastic player pieces which I thought were rather flimsy, but I did like the stickers you could affix onto the pieces. Whit, Eugene, and Connie made sense... and Tamika? She's not exactly one of the most popular characters, but at least she's one of the current characters. Someone like Tom, Bernard, or Katrina might have made more sense, since fans are more familiar with what they look like.

Gameplay

The game board consists of seven different types of spaces:

Eugenius tests your knowledge of Odyssey history and characters
Connie's Character Quotes dares you to finish quotes
Whit's Wisdom challenges you to answer Bible trivia
Room of Consequence sends you to a different spot on the board
My Play is an on-screen question for the rolling player
All Play is an on-screen question for all players
You Choose gives you the choice to select any of the above six options

As mentioned earlier, there are four different paths you can choose: two short paths, one medium path, and one long path. However, playing the short or medium paths will present some noticeable problems for players who have a good knowledge of Odyssey. Because the game allows players to take unlimited turns provided they answer each question correctly, a player could theoretically win the game in only a few moves. One of the problems I found with the Room of Consequence (ROC) was the ambiguity in the instructions. The rules seemed to indicate players could answer the question from the space to which they were directed from the ROC cards, but never provided specific details on when the player's turn ended. In my opinion, ROC cards should force players to end their turn after they've moved (either forward, backwards, or swap positions).

My biggest concern from the start was whether or not the trivia questions would be difficult enough. Digital Praise, thankfully, got it right when they chose to create double-sided trivia cards. One side lists Easy questions, while the opposite side shows Difficult questions. Those who have listened to most of the episodes will probably not see much difference, although there are definitely a handful of harder questions included on some of the cards.

Just as there are an assortment of questions in the trivia cards ranging from easy to (somewhat) difficult, so too do the on-screen questions offer a variety of challenges. Many of the DVD questions were in the Picture This category, which involves the identification of a particular location, episode, or character. Occasionally, the picture displayed would be from album artwork, but I found that too many of the images were from the video or book series. On the other hand, I particularly enjoyed the Chrono-Logic (placing four events in order) and Guess Who (guessing who is being described) categories. Of the seven categories offered in the DVD, those two offered the highest level of difficulty for episode-related questions.

A similarly fun category was In Your Ear, in which the question would be based off an audio clip from the radio series. It really made me want to listen to the episodes again, especially when they played clips from old or favorite shows. The only disappointment was that most of the audio clips gave you the answer in the actual clip. So instead of testing your Odyssey knowledge, it would simply test your listening capability. Admittedly, it would have been nice also if they had included more of the radio series clips, since the audio drama comprises such a large portion of Adventures in Odyssey!

Lasting Appeal

Answer That! boasts over 1000 trivia questions, half of which are on the trivia cards while the other half are on-screen questions. Unfortunately, the DVD does not offer the individual game feature which some Scene It and Trivial Pursuit DVD games include. As a result, don't be surprised if you get the same question more than once. In fact, on a few occasions, we received the exact same question in a row and during the same game! To the designers' credit, you can press the return button on your DVD remote to bypass repeat questions and automatically get a new one. For younger fans and those relatively new to Adventures in Odyssey, Answer That! will be a game which they can continue to enjoy for a long time. Older and long-time fans of the show, however, may quickly tire of the game and its lack of difficulty.

Conclusion

AnswerThat! is a fun and innovative game... and it's all about Adventures in Odyssey! In the end, determining the overall value of the game is highly dependent upon your knowledge of the radio series. If you are a casual fan and haven't listened to all the episodes, then you'll probably enjoy this game the most. If you are a die-hard fan and have listened to nearly every episode, however, then you may be disappointed. While Digitial Praise catered to the non-Odyssey fan by including many questions that could be answered by the casual or non-listener, perhaps they could have spent more time developing more difficult questions.

I found it very interesting that they included the following in their summer press release: "However, even if players haven't had any exposure to Adventures in Odyssey, they'll be able to answer many questions thanks to on-screen audio and video 'hints' -- a key to the game's multi-generational appeal." It doesn't seem like players who haven't had any exposure to Adventures would be interested in the game in the first place. Although it made sense from a marketing standpoint to widen the target range of their prospective customers, I don't know if it was the smartest move to make the game so easy considering most of the people purchasing Answer That! would have to be pretty big Odyssey fans to make the $40-$50 investment. Nevertheless, in spite of its flaws, Answer That! remains in my eyes a fun family DVD trivia game!

Pros:
- Ability to choose length of play: short, medium, or long
- Lightning Play version on DVD
- New fans to Odyssey can participate
- Audio clips from the radio series, movie scenes from the video series

Cons:
- Playing pieces are easily breakable
- Lack of separate games on the DVD (different questions per game)
- Many of the trivia card and on-screen questions are too easy
- Not enough clips from the radio series

Presentation: 4/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Lasting Appeal: 3/5
Overall Rating (not an average): 3.5/5

Unofficial Podcast Ep. 28

It's been nearly three weeks since we spoke with Lauren Schaffel, but now we finally get to release the full interview! Due to some technical issues, we unfortunately ended up losing some sound quality during the recording. As a result, Sarah and I are not nearly as crystal clear as I would've preferred.

And yes, I do realize Lauren started with Adventures in Odyssey nine years ago and not eleven like I said on the podcast. Pretty poor mathematics on my part... but hey, blunders and mishaps aside, it was still a thrill having Lauren on the show! Hopefully, ya'll will enjoy the interview as much as we had recording it!

Right-click and save here to download.

Running Time: 41:18

Sarah's Answer That! Review!

Hey everyone!

Well, you finally get a blog post by Sarah - yay! I really am a person outside the voice! :D

I was so excited to get this game, and I played it as soon as I got home from college. I'm planning on having a small party to play it with some family friends this Friday, but sadly, I needed to post my review before then. I've played it several times through already, but if anything changes after Friday, I'll be sure to post something - though I doubt it would. ;)

Alright, I played the game twice through with my parents and each time played all he way around the board making sure to get plenty of both card and dvd related questions. My parents aren't really Adventure's in Odyssey fans, so that made it a little more interesting. I really enjoyed the game alot, and had fun with the questions. A lot of them seemed rather easy for me - but then, when you know the answer it's always easy, right? ;)

However, there were several questions that stumped me - some fairly, others not. I have never played the video games, and kept getting questions about them on the dvd, but I was able to figure a few out. The fair stumps were questions asking which episode a line came from or who said it, and some of those were kinda tricky!

The second round we played, we decided to try one of the presorted questions on the dvd - the one for those who didn't know Odyssey very well. I was under the impression that those would be non-AIO related, and I was apparently mistaken in that. They were still Odyssey related, but were really simple - and most of them had the answers in the question. That was a bit of a bummer, because ot made it feel rather dumbed down. Perhaps there are other sets that are just history/Bible related, but we were unable to find them. (If we locate them this weekend, I'll update this)

I also played the lightning round and had fun with it too.

Overall, I enjoyed this game a lot. The board and pieces were fun (though I thought that Tamika was a rather random choice for the only kid character...) and the questions on the cards were enjoyable as well. The dvd portion was also interesting (the theme gets a bit old after a while, however) and I really enjoyed getting to hear clips from episodes as well.

My final rating is probably a 4/5., and I recommend this game to any Odyssey fan out there. :D

God bless, and Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope some of you are blessed to get this under your tree this year. ;)

Sarah

Countdown to the Spring Season Premiere!

Well, we have the names of the episodes for the next couple months. They've posted all the titles over at WhitsEnd.org, and it looks like we'll be hearing some of the greatest Bernard shows of all-time.

December 22: Suspicious Minds
December 29: Room Mates
January 5: The Conscientious Cross-Guard
January 12: Feud for Thought
January 19: My Fair Bernard
January 26: First-Hand Experience
February 2: Third Degree
February 9: Blind Justice
February 16: Poor Loser
February 23: Bassett Hounds

...which, of course, leads us to the spring season premiere which airs on March 1: A Capsule Comes to Town. In honor of this momentous episode, I've added a countdown to the right-hand column. Only 75 more days, folks!

Unofficial Podcast Ep. 27

Wow, it seems like forever since we've done a podcast! I guess that's what happens when exams hit... and hit hard! In this podcast, we review The Highest Stakes and Chip Off the Shoulder. As we mentioned in our blog, we'll be posting our review of Answer That! Adventures in Odyssey Edition sometime next week. Also, stay tuned for our interview with Lauren Schaffel, voice of Liz Horton!



Right-click and save here to download.

Running Time: 44:39

"Chip Off the Shoulder" Now Available!

So you might have noticed that we didn't release a podcast over the weekend. Considering final exams and studying have really eaten up a large portion of our time lately, we decided to postpone our podcast until later this week. That way, we can review The Highest Stakes in addition to this week's episode. Speaking of which, I might as well let ya'll know that Chip Off the Shoulder is now available! Click here to listen!