What if god was just a mutt? Well, not to get into any religious ideology with you wonderful readers, but that is sort of the premise for the celestial brush miracle game known as Okami.
Okami, which literally means “great god”, takes place in a non-specific era of Japanese history. Okami is set in Nippon. It starts off with a story told about a legend that supposedly happened 100 years ago. This legend depicts a white wolf by the name of Shiranui and a swordsman named Nagi that took down an evil 8-headed dragon by the name of Orochi. Shiranui and Nagi fought a hard battle against Orochi which ended up sealing the 8-headed monster away. For the next 100 years the legend of Nagi and Shiranui defeating Orochi would be talked about through all of Nippon. In the present, a man named Susano, who is a descendant of Nagi, accidentally frees Orochi to bring terror, evil, and darkness on Nippon once more. Because of this a woman named Sakuya, who is the guardian of Kamiki village, calls forth the sun goddess Amaterasu who is reincarnated into the form of the white wolf Shiranui. At this point you also meet a little bug like creature named Issun who is a traveling artist that is there with Amaterasu to help out on the journey to restoring Nippon to it’s former glory and ridding it of Orochi.
As you begin with the story you learn that there is one thing you must do; paint. Yes, if you’ve never played Okami before, you will be in for quite a surprise as painting is an intricate and crucial part of the gameplay. Amaterasu only starts off with one power that her celestial brush can accomplish. That power is the power to finish constellations. What this does is bring back the 13 gods that have the powers for your celestial brush to possess. Your first god that you bring back by filling in the missing stars of constellations is Yomigami, a dragon god. He has the power of regeneration or restoration. Because you brought him back he is able to bestow his power on you for your journey to help in any way possible. Let’s say a bridge is out because it has been destroyed. All you have to do is take your brush and fill in the missing parts of the bridge with ink and voila, instant restoration and the bridge can now be crossed. This is the power of the celestial brush. To understand and fully appreciate this game you must learn when to use the celestial brush and what kind of power should be used at any given point and time.
As the game progresses, knowing the different instances to use the brush becomes rather simple as Issun will tell you (if you haven’t figured it out already) what should be done with the brush. For instance; if you are fighting evil creatures Issun will let you know when the appropriate time to use the power slash technique. As the game progresses this will start to become second nature to you and you will be feeling like an artist in no time.
As the game progresses you will start to see why this game feels so artistic. Amaterasu’s ultimate goal is to rid Nippon of Orochi, but in the process she is restoring life left and right. This restoration of life is most notably in the form of plants and trees. As you go through the game, each time you take out an evil life form plants will start to grow around the area where you took out the evil. This shows a great contrast between dark and light and really magnifies what the job of a god (at least in the game Okami) is supposed to be. They are supposed to keep order and restore life to desolate places.
In my opinion what makes this game so great is its graphics. It literally looks like an art canvass in motion. The colors are rich, the motion is fluid, and you get a real sense of serenity and peace while playing the game. This bit of serenity is magnified when Amaterasu uses the celestial brush to bring plant life back into a dark forest. As you use the brush in a circular motion around some plants, they will bloom. This process of blooming is a gorgeous site to watch as it really shows off the developer’s creativity and artistic ability. Nothing in this game looks realistic as it is purposely supposed to look a little bit more on the anime side. But even though it may look like a cartoon, you’ll never get the feeling that the game is too “kiddy” because the feel of the game isn’t juvenile at all.
The audio is another aspect of beauty. The music seems to go with the scenery quite well. At times I felt myself wanting to put the audio on repeat and just doze off to sleep with the soft flutes playing in the background. The music compliments the visuals and vice-versa. The one gripe I do have about the audio, although small, is the characters speech. The entire game is subtitles, which isn’t a problem. The problem is that instead of just grunting once for a set of subtitles, it seems as if jibberish has to be spoken for every single word. It’s hard to put into text, but it really is part grumbling, part jibberish, for every word that is spoken in the game. At first this got on my nerves a bit, but as the game started to progress it was easier and easier to accept.
Another gripe I have with the game is the actual motion of painting with the Wii-mote. Let me
just say that the motion controls for the game are well done. They are not overdone. The gist of the motion controls is similar to Super Mario Galaxy in which I shake the Wii-mote to attack enemies. The only other time I use the motion controller is when I am painting. This can be good and bad. It’s good because I actually get to draw, and that is pretty neat. The bad part is the execution of what you are trying to draw at times. There were a number of times where I was stuck at a specific cut-scene because I couldn’t draw what they wanted me to draw as specifically as they wanted me to draw it. And some cut-scenes I have had to do more than five times. The other gripe I have with the drawing is that it seems to not always recognize depth. As I am drawing a bomb, I want it to show up in the foreground, where Amaterasu is standing; but instead it shows up in the background in a place where I wasn’t even trying to put it. This is also frustrating when you are trying to draw a circle to bring a tree back to life. Even though I may be drawing the circle directly onto the tree, for some reason it will register that I was trying to draw a circle for a tree behind it. The tree that I wasn’t drawing for is further back that the tree I was trying to draw for. As the game goes on you will find out how to deal with this, but for a casual gamer this just might be enough to make you put down the Wii-mote forever and never touch this game again.
Overall however, Ready at Dawn did a good job in creating a motion sensor game that focuses on art and the beauty of it. The story itself isn’t extremely original and that leads to the game feeling kind of bland. Okami is an original game with original graphics thrown into an unoriginal story line and sub-par dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, Okami is a good game, it just seems to be missing that “fun” factor. I would find myself playing it just to play it, not necessarily because I was having fun. It does start to pick up steam the more and more you get into the game, but five or six hours of gameplay might be too long for some gamers to wait before the meat of the action and story line come into play. For what it is, Okami is a great game. But to me it seemed a little too slowly paced. Maybe this is because it is trying to keep a theme of serenity and peace and “taking your time” with the brush strokes as the game itself tells you to do. All in all if you liked the game on PS2, you should like the game on the Wii. If you’ve never played the game, but like Japanese culture, you want to pick up this game. And if you want to witness some of the most unique set of graphics that next-gen gaming has to offer, you will want to pick up Okami. For some it will be the most intrinsic game they have ever played, and for others, the fun factor just won’t be there. But ultimately Okami is a unique experience that should be enjoyed by any person who has an appreciation for video games, art, or both.
8.5/10
Jeremy aka Adridius
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