A true work of art with innovative and polished gameplay to boot.
_Okami is another case of Cult Classic. While having bought this game instantly makes you cool and avant garde because of it, you can't help hearing the little voice in your head yelling about how it deserves more sales. You know, the sales numbers that actual Zelda games get, and unique games don't. Of course, the voice in my head can't keep amazing games from lurking in the shadows. Only people who haven't bought it yet can: by buying it.
_Okami was originally a PS2 game, and since you were either too **** stupid to realize what you were missing or didn't have Sony's beloved DVD playing console (I am the later), now is your holy chance of redemption. Okami has been ported to the Wii, with some control improvements, slight graphical changes, and waggle. It goes for a budget price of 40$ and certainly gives you a lot of value, considering it is about 30 hours long.
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_Alright, so what is it that is so spectacular about this game? Well, for one, my eyes were melted from their sockets after I was done due to the sheer beauty. That's right, I had to type this review without my eyesight. If graphics were food, this game would be some sort of well spiced, moist, delectable sushi, and all the others would be a blent mixture of dirty jeans and fish. As I hope you know, this game has a Sumi-E/watercolor art style that is achieved through a mixture of Cell shading and some other clever techniques. Besides the shading, the game uses tons of vibrant colors to please your eyes, and very nice animation. As far as graphics go, this game is peerless, especially considering the scale of the world and the almost complete absence of slowdown, barring rare instances of chugging that last for about one second.
_The PS2 version had a paper filter that dulled the colors and made it look somewhat more like it was actually on paper. In the Wii version, this is almost gone. If you go into a really dark room, you will actually notice a slight intentional grain, but it is hardly there. Now, that wasn't a bad thing to me because, honestly, it hurt my eyes and I would much rather be blinded with color than able to brag that my game has a filter that "brings the whole look together". Either way, they ought to have asked Rockstar, who knows all about filters on the Wii.
_A couple more changes I noticed are that there was some sort of bloom effect or something on some objects and one boss in the PS2 version. In the Wii version, this has been replaced with a hideous flickering mesh of dots that you CAN ignore, but does get annoying. It is understandable that such problems exist, considering how the vast, top notch team that ported this game had about two people in it. Don't worry though, the only part where it is abundant is the first phase of the last boss. The other change is kind of hard to explain. While you move around in Nippon, the outlines and shadows of the environment move to a certain position depending on the angle and distance of the camera. In the Wii version, our beloved team of two screwed up again, and in some spots, the normally smoothly moving shadows flicker like a dying lightning bug. It is extremely distracting and it makes me mad.
_The Wii version also provides wide screen support and a higher resolution, which is great for those who have one of those newfangled HD thingamabobs.
Graphics? 10/10
You can technically improve this in some areas, but it doesn't get any better than this.
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_Oh wait. Okami has gameplay as well. Thankfully, that is great as well. People who have played a Zelda game ought to feel right at home here. Every character got abducted by aliens and replaced with mutant replicas, and the fields of Hyrule have been replaced with the strange land of Japan, but you should know your way around. There are puzzles, bosses, dungeons, Navi, towns, and an over world. Though there is the same structure in place, Aounuma and Co. got replaced as well by a group of weird rebel punks who deviate from the system, so the way all of these things work together and connect is pretty different.
_One thing is that the world, overall, is much more organic. In Zelda, the game makes it very strict: dungeons contain most of the combat and all of the puzzles and bosses, the over world gives you a reason to use Epona or a god**** sailboat until you can warp around somehow, and story mostly belongs in towns. In Okami, the game puts story elements all throughout your environments, from towns, to dungeons. You will also find a lot of elements mixing into places you wouldn't exactly expect them, like Peanut Butter and Chocolate. Puzzles in fields, side quests in dungeons, bosses in the middle of a royal palace, and story goes wherever it fits (which is almost everywhere). The side quests are a lot more rewarding than in Zelda, not to mention more numerous, giving you weapons, techniques, and experience points, and most importantly, they are fun and make the world more pretty. Though it may seem trivial to have less conformist pacing, it keeps things interesting all of the time, which is far more preferable and less monotonous than forcing down powdery spoonfuls of the same gameplay all at once.
_Okami actually also has a pretty big focus on platforming as well. Since you are allowed to jump at will, which is a change form having to walk off of a ledge and pray, a new kind of gameplay opens up and Okami is better because of it. You feel more in control. You will find yourself jumping while you run around Nippon, not out of necessity, like the roll in Zelda, but for the hell of it. Plus, when you jump, pretty autumn leaves fly out from under you, which is pretty. On the subject of platforming, there are lots of neat things you have to do involving jumping around that work hand in hand with the brush, such as freezing or slowing down moving platforms, making your own platforms, or generally multitasking between the obstacles and using the brush.
_And that brings me to Okami's cool gimmick, the Celestial Brush. Wind Waker had that accursed baton, but it was far too clunky and always involved painfully long cut scenes. The story behind you having the Brush is, I think, that since you are a god, you are a master of manipulating the world by painting on it. Or maby that perverted flea who lives on you has something to do with it. I haven't really asked why I have it, and now that I have, I feel bad because it is a really great solution to the "I have too much crap in my inventory" problem, and it is slick as snot on a door post. The basic idea behind it is that you go bullet time and the world turns WWII sim brown; then you can scribble specific symbols to affect the world.
_You can draw stars into the sky, you can slash things in half, you can move water or fire around at will, you can make all sorts of platforms, and it is all very quick and simple. Since the Wiimote is a bit sensitive at times, to draw straight lines the people who ported Okami assigned 'Z' to keep your lines perfect. One problem is that the drawing detection is slightly finicky, and you will want to make sure that you fully close your circles if you are trying to rejuvenate greenery. All of your powers tie into combat and bosses as well, and work just as well. It is also fun to torture passing NPC's with these various powers.
_In combat, besides the brush, you can wield three different kinds of weapons as either sub or main. You find yourself using your weapons more than you would expect, since the brush isn't the uber death killer that you would think it would be. Like many games, there are certain enemies that require a certain treatment, and a lot of times, this makes some of your brush techs useless against a certain enemy. Either way, weapons generally cause more damage and they don't drain your inkpots.If all of your inkpots are drained, which is easy to do if you are spamming the brush, you are turned into an ordinary wolf while you wait for your ink to re-charge. Bosses require use of many brush techniques at a time, so you will rarely feel what I like to call "Twilight Princess syndrome," where you have a crapload of items that end up never being used after their appropriate dungeon.
_To top it all off, the game includes well implemented leveling and customization. You level up in four categories: health, your money pouch, your extra lives, and the amount of brush strokes you can use in succession. You gain "Praise," the equivalent of experience points, by healing greenery, feeding animals, and doing side quests in which you aid NPC's to do things because they don't know their elbow from their anus. All of these tasks end up making the world more pretty, which is a real bonus in Okami.
_The customization comes in the form of up-graded weapon attacks you can purchase form tthe dojo, some artifacts that you purchase with Demon Fangs which are fun to collect in battle, such as a tablet that allows you to walk on water like Jesus. After beating the game, depending on how well you did, you are also given a bunch of different dog breeds you can play as.
_There are some problems, however. The game is a bit easy for the first 10 hours, there is slightly finicky circle detection, and sometimes the game seems to refuse to tell you where you ought to be going. There are points where the developers seemed to take for granted that you could go on the internet for a guide, because they just don't give you any direction. It would be like if somebody gave you a map to get to their party, but didn't show the destination. Also, there are some points where the game acts as if you would obviously talk to a certain person before doing something, rather than straight out doing what you know you need to, and so it won't let you do it until you talk to that person. Also, for some reason, people will suddenly stop talking and you have to start the conversation again to continue, which is a bit nit-picky, but it is pretty annoying at times.
Gameplay: 9.7
Great overall, but a lack of direction can hurt it at times.
Zelda games have always had decent story's, but nothing to get excited about. Okami, on the other hand, has a great plot and, surprisingly, a lot of humor. From Bears with sphere fetishes to your perverted little Navi substitute who lives in your fur and babbles about clevage, there are things in this game that will almost definitely make you giggle. The characters are memorable as well. It is all tied together by an excellent musical score that makes use of oriental instruments. I believe that actual music is a good way to prove this, so here is a link to music that plays while you meet a certain French taoist. http://gh.ffshrine.org/song/7104/75
This game is what some people would call A MASTERPIECE, and if you don't buy it, well, you have forty extra dollars and you have missed out on a very, very, good game.
DO NOT DEPRIVE YOURSELF. GO TO YOUR LOCAL RETAILER AND GET THIS GAME.
