Go to Windows 7 Insider GuideOkami (PlayStation 2)
Manufacturer: Capcom Entertainment, Inc. Part number: 26059
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Gamespot editors' review
Okami (PlayStation 2) price range: $16.99
- Reviewed by: Greg Kasavin
- Reviewed on: 09/18/2006
- Updated on:09/20/2006
- Released on: 09/19/2006
It's only fitting that a game about a god should have an awe-inspiring presentation such as this. Okami is based on the Japanese legend of the sun god, Amaterasu, whom you control throughout the game in the form of a white wolf. A truly epic journey awaits this wolf, who wields divine power quite literally as an artist wields a brush. Despite its unusual premise and other unique qualities, Okami is in many ways a textbook action adventure game. It takes its cues from the Legend of Zelda series in particular and achieves similarly outstanding results. Much like in those games, in Okami you'll traverse a vast countryside filled with intrigue, meet a variety of interesting characters, delve into dungeons chock-full of various traps and fearsome-looking creatures, and become more and more powerful as you go. All the while, Okami's stunning good looks give it the appearance of a cross between a cartoon and a traditional Japanese ink-and-watercolor painting, and perhaps best of all, the game keeps going and going for much longer than most other games like it.
Okami boasts an extraordinary visual style, but there's much more to it than all the pretty graphics.
Though Okami's premise and characters are steeped in Japanese folklore, you don't need to be familiar with the source material to appreciate this game--you just need a bit of an open mind. The story plays out like a modernized anime version of a myth, except with a far more original visual style than what most anime brings to bear. The story is simple: Amaterasu, reborn as a white wolf, has a mission to rid medieval Japan of a demonic curse that's swept across the nation. Apparently, it's all the doing of a massive eight-headed serpent that was killed 100 years ago and has been reborn. Will history repeat itself, or is there an even more sinister plot at work here? At the beginning of the game, Amaterasu is joined by a pint-sized creature named Issun, a bold and smart-alecky little guy who does all the talking for the both of them. Their journey begins by purging the evil from a small village but expands to encompass all corners of Japan, and beyond. The story unfolds mostly through frequent, nicely animated cutscenes. There's a lot of dialogue throughout the game, which makes for plenty of reading since all the characters speak in gibberish that sounds just vaguely Japanese.
The story boils down to a conventional battle of good against evil but effectively sets up a series of remarkable, self-contained subplots that are all seamlessly interconnected. During your quest to purify Japan, you won't just battle that eight-headed serpent--you'll unearth the cause of a deadly plague threatening a huge city, help villagers in danger of freezing to death from a relentless blizzard, come face-to-face with an enormous water dragon that's terrorizing Japan's coastline, and more. While the game is a little dense with exposition, overall you'll feel like you've gone on an incredible and long journey once all is said and done. It helps that Okami will take you at least 30 hours to finish the first time through, and that's not due to any sources of frustration during the gameplay, either. Okami is very long for an action adventure game, especially for one that has so much beautiful scenery in it. If anything, the game probably could have shed a couple of hours for a slightly quicker, tighter pace, since the experience can start to drag in a few spots, such as an obligatory fight-all-the-bosses-again sequence near the end. The game's scarce shortcomings are all this minor.
You're no ordinary wolf in Okami, thanks mostly to your ability to paint miracles using the celestial brush.
Just running around in the world can be exciting, which is fortunate, because there's a lot of running around to be done. Amaterasu, or "Ammy" as her companion likes to call her, can run very quickly and jump quite high, and when engaged in battle, she fights with a divine instrument on her back that acts like a sword. Since she's a wolf, she can also bark and dig holes, but that's not all. The most unusual aspect of Okami's gameplay is in the brush techniques you'll frequently have to use to defeat foes and reach places no man or wolf could go, and these represent her divine powers.
You'll learn more than a dozen different brush techniques over the course of the game, each gifted to Ammy by one of her fellow animal gods. These let her harness the power of the elements, slash clean through solid stone and other objects, rejuvenate plants, blow things up, and much more. To start using brush techniques, you just press and hold R1 to make the scene instantly switch to look like an ink painting on parchment while a large brush (that appears to be Ammy's tail) comes down from offscreen. Then you can draw these simple shapes and lines, corresponding to your different brush techniques, and miracles happen. For example, Ammy can change night into day if you paint a circle in the sky, or she can cleave an enemy in two if you paint a line straight across that foe. She can create large lily pads that serve as floating platforms in the water, and then summon gusts of wind that will push this makeshift boat along, among a variety of other uses. It's exciting to gain each new brush technique, as well as to discover new ways of putting together everything you've learned.
User reviews
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LOVE THIS DARN GAME!!!!!!
by In30sGamerAndMom on August 12, 2009
Pros: Everything.
Cons: That there's not another one. That there had to be an ending in the game and I couldn't just keep playing and playing and playing it.
Summary: Some may think I'm too "old" to play video games it's not a "girl" thing, but I don't care, been playing them since I was 5 and ...
Summary: Some may think I'm too "old" to play video games it's not a "girl" thing, but I don't care, been playing them since I was 5 and now I'm a 31 yr old mother of two and still playing them. All I can say about this game is that I absolutely LOVE IT. Definately one of the best if not THE best.
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Transcendental work
by Scott Gardener on December 27, 2007
Pros: One of those rare, great pieces of work
Cons: Some nits to pick, see below; not meant for casual gaming
Summary: Okami is for video games what The Cure's "Disintegration" or Led Zeppelin's officially untitled fourth album is to music, one of those works that's so brilliantly artistic ...
Summary: Okami is for video games what The Cure's "Disintegration" or Led Zeppelin's officially untitled fourth album is to music, one of those works that's so brilliantly artistic that you don't even think about the imperfections, because you are drawn in to the beauty and accomplishment of the work itself. This game is already a cult phenomenon, spawning considerable amounts of fan art on sites like DeviantArt and the winner of the hall Cosplay contest at A-Kon 18 in Dallas. It takes the medium of video gaming and transforms it into art. For me, it is the specific reason why I expressly did not want the 40 Gig Playstation 3, which lacked backwards compatability. I made sure the 80 Gig model could play it.
But, Okami is not for causal gaming. The opening sequence that sets the story in motion before even getting to game play is perhaps 20 minutes long. The next hour and a half is then spent introducing both story elements and game play elements.
Visually it is quite stunning. (More so when played on the PS3, which smoothens out the picture with 1080p upscaling.) It looks and feels as if one is living in a traditional Japanese painting. The characters speak in murmurs with subtitles written in brushstroke-like text, but its surprisingly not distracting. It is a rather kitchy quirk, but it adds to the dreamlike feel of the images, which involve surreal symbolism (painting stars in the sky, for instance) and emotional use of color versus black-and-white.
It's a very intellectual piece that is very deeply layered. And yet, it (minus, perhaps, a few brief hints at sexuality) could also be played by children. (Granted, it might go over the head of a six-year-old.)
I have learned that a version of it appears to be forthcoming for the Wii. I am eager to see how it is implemented, as the Wii's motion controller should flow quite beautifully with the painting aspect of the game. (I do wish PS3 SIXAXIS support existed, but it seems doubtful, with a PS2 version already out, that a PS3 version will be forthcoming. Note also that I considered importing a Dual Shock 3 controller expressly for restoring the rumble feature I'm presently missing, though it's not essential for game play, and its absense hasn't really been felt in my experience of the game.) I do hope the Wii version treats it to 16:9 widescreen, even if that console lacks HDMI, or for that matter, high definition altogether.
Okami is one of the driving forces that got me back into gaming after a long absence. It is so completely different from anything I've seen before. It's brilliant and beautiful, more an interactive storytelling experience than the familiar rehash of sword-fighting quests and first person shooters. This surreal and elegant treatment of Japanese tradition elevates video gaming to art unlike anything else I've seen so far. -
Have to knock a couple points off...
by ack-thbbft on September 28, 2006
Pros: Endearing story; like a living painting
Cons: No 16:9 or Progressive Scan support
Summary: Sure, I'll probably be flamed for this, but as an widescreen HDTV owner, I feel a bit cheated. I agree with the 9 score for the most part, but ...
Summary: Sure, I'll probably be flamed for this, but as an widescreen HDTV owner, I feel a bit cheated. I agree with the 9 score for the most part, but have to deduct two points from it for the two features missing: 16:9 and progressive scan.
When I think about a game like this, and how it can only be compared with games like "Zelda" or "God of War", I can't help but wonder what the developers were thinking when they left out widescreen and progressive scan support. That was a HUGE mistake.
A game this beautiful absolutely deserves and demands every last drop of graphical enhancement, especially progressive scan, even if not 16:9. After all, you wouldn't take a Michaelangelo masterpiece and smear it blurry. That's what leaving out progressive scan does to Okami.
On a large screen, low-res interlaced images look horrible. If you own an HDTV, you may want to move your PS2 to an older TV for this game, as the lack of 16:9 and progressive scan won't be missed, and the game will look much better for it. This is just one of those games that is more enjoyable on the small screen.
Perhaps they'll add those features when it goes to the PS2 Greatest Hits lineup, as it surely will...0 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: Capcom Entertainment, Inc.
- Part number: 26059
Product Basic Spec
- Platform PlayStation 2
- ESRB rating Teen -
- Genre Action
- Number of players 1 Player
- Difficulty Easy
- Learning curve About a half hour
Game
- Developer Clover Studio
- ESRB Teen
- Release date 09/19/2006
Manufacturer info
- Capcom Entertainment, Inc.
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse Capcom Entertainment, Inc. products on Shopper.com
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- Website: http://www.capcom.com/
- Address:
800 Concar Drive, San Mateo, CA 94402-2649
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