TEH. BEST. GAMES. EVAR.
By Andr'e Swartley

Issue #8
Okami
Developer: Clover Studios
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Playstation 2, Wii
Rating: T for Teen

I mentioned Hideki Kamiya's masterpiece Okami in my Holiday Buyer's Guide before Christmas, but I won't let that preclude the full review this game deserves. And what better time than now, with Kamiya's newest game, Bayonetta, being released Jan. 5.

Hideki Kamiya created a name for himself early in the lifecycle of the Playstation 2 with the game Devil May Cry. It was a sword-swinging action game with tremendous style, a rare game that wanted to be cool and actually was. The same held true for Kamiya's next franchise, Viewtiful Joe, which chronicled the adventures of a regular American teenager who got sucked into a superhero movie to save his girlfriend. But, pizzazz aside, both of those games are hard. Really, really hard.

Thankfully, with Okami Kamiya held onto his unique sense of style while abandoning his tradition of punishing difficulty.

It is immediately apparent that story is paramount in Okami. The game begins with an unskippable 20-minute movie that describes the climactic battle between Okami Amaterasu, the goddess of Creation, and Orochi, the seven-headed demon of destruction.

Every scene in the introduction begins with a blank piece of parchment that is quickly filled with simple, beautiful ink drawings from a calligraphy paintbrush. The drawn characters animate stiffly like shadow puppets in an ancient Asian theater. At the end of the introduction, Amaterasu appears as a white wolf. Color bursts into the landscape as she runs across an open plain and leaps to the top of a mountain to deliver a triumphant howl over the world she protects.

This image is both striking and apt as a preview of the rest of the game. Okami was designed to look like a moving watercolor painting in which you, the player, will spend your time galloping from mission to mission. And I use the term "mission" loosely. You will divide your time between tasks like helping a boy catch a fish, feeding hungry woodland creatures, restoring life and beauty to patches of barren lands, and combating world-destroying demons.

Your main tool is Amaterasu's bushy tail, which you will use like a paintbrush. There are 13 brush strokes in Okami, and all of them are necessary at some point. The most common and dramatic is the "bloom" stroke. Draw a circle around a dead tree or flower and it will immediately bloom to life in a storm of flower petals. There are also strokes to make the sun rise or set, call a gale of wind, and create spouts of water or flame.

Every task Amaterasu must perform sounds straightforward and simple at first, but quickly branches into multi-tiered quests that take you through caves, across treetops, behind waterfalls, or other locations you must see to believe. Variety is the name of the game in Okami, which is a very good thing because even a speedy trip through the game will last upwards of 30 hours.

Okami originally came out in 2005 on the Playstation 2, where it sold poorly. In a market laden with sequels and exploitative violence, a game as creative and beautiful as Okami was bound to fail commercially. However, Capcom rereleased Okami in 2007 once the Nintendo Wii appeared on the market with motion controls. The "drawing" aspects of Okami and Nintendo's kid-friendly image seemed like a match made in heaven. I would argue that the controls are actually too shaky on the Wii, and a story steeped so deeply in Japanese mythology would either bore or confuse children-Okami is rated Teen, remember.

Still, whichever console you choose for Okami, you will enjoy a long, nuanced tale of art, beauty, and restoration of life. No game has ever looked or played like Okami. And unfortunately, no game probably ever will again.

Final Grade: A