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So, this is Okami. Been wanting this for a good few months. Started playing the US version a couple of nights ago.
You're Amateresu - Japanese sun god inhabiting the statue of a legendary wolf. Said wolf once helped a brave man defeat the demon Orochi and was immortalised in stone by a grateful townspeople. A hundred years later, human greed leads to Orochi finding a path back into the human world and destroying all that's good and pure - nature, basically. Amateresu is summonsed by a spirit of nature and sets about restoring the world to its previous beauty.
Looks: wonderful. The concept of creating a three-dimensional world that looks like a Japanese watercolour is pulled off flawlessly. You can see the grain of teh paper underneath everything. Outlines change thickness in a way that suggests that they've been painted on with a brush and constist of ink, not pixels. The animation adds to the swish and flow of it all - graceful, smooth and fluid.
Little touches all ove the place. When you look at reflections in water, they thin out the futher they go, as though a wash of actual water has been applied to them. Wind is shown as swirls that spiral onto the screen like they're being painted on in real-time, then float off again.
Sound is a perfect match. If you've played Otogi you'll recognise the style, although it's more rural here. Mythological Japan, right in yr living room.
It plays a lot like a modern Zelda - there's an overworld field, towns dotted around, dungeons. People in the towns offer sub-quests or minigames. Lots of different collectables and a lite RPG styling that sees you spending points gained in battle or given for performing acts of godhood on increasing your health bar, special move bar and so on. New moves and weapons are gained as you play, providing he opportunity to return to previously explored areas and get to the parts of them that were out of bounds when you were less powerful.
In terms of character design, too, it's a Zelda game. The humans look like they've been designed by the same team as did the characters for Majora's Mask and Wind Waker. And the script has the magical Nintendo touch - it's light, amusing and touching, yet still manages to become convincingly grand and epic when it needs to.
It even has an analogue of Zelda's Navi in the form of tiny artist bug Issun, who points out important things in the world, offers hints and tips as and when you need them and provides a chunk of the game's humour.
Where it differs from Zelda is in the unique aspect of its control scheme - the paintbrush. Pressing R1 at any point in the game turns everything on the screen at the time into a flat sepia image - all depth is removed and the thick painted lines are replaced by thos of a light sketch. Holding R1 down, the left analogue stick now controls a paintbrush which you use to paint directly onto the flattened world.
The first use for this is in solving puzzles. No sun in the sky? Paint it in. Broken waterwheel? Draw it. Large boulder directly blocking your path? Slash the paint across it to slice it in half.
The second use is in combat. Amatersu gains new moves and weapons as she progresses through the game which are used in real-time combat. The first move you get is a simple homing attack. Once you've done enough damage to an enemy, its colour drains and it becomes sepia toned. This is where you want to use the brush again - flatten the world and use the brush to damage the prone enemy's weak spot.
There are lots of other uses for the brush, naturally - more than just drawing circles or straight lines. I've only played a couple of hours so far, though, so haven't encountered many of them personally.
It really is a lovely game. Charming, beautiful. The paintbrush makes it so much more than just a Zelda clone and the spectacular visual style makes it a unique experience. Going to wholeheartedly recommend it, based on what little I've played to date.
In related news, I am deeply fucked off at the shock news that Capcom have, just today, announced the closure of Clover - the studio responsible for this game, as well as Viewtiful Joe and God Hand. reading the press release, it looks like they've made the decision to try and cut costs - Clover don't use generic game engines, Capcom want their developers to use generic game engines in order to slice the cost of next gen development. This is bullshit - VJ and Okami wouldn't be half the games that they are if they didn't look as different and special as they do. Rumours that the Clover team are now looking to set up their own independent studio sugar the pill a little, but it's still complete bollocks. I've been praising Capcom from the rooftops for the way they've been supporting this kind of innovation and Clover was a very young studio. It just stinks. More reason to pick this up and enjoy a game of real vision while you still can. |
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