Okami Wii

Posted by Blakeborough on Mar 24, 2009 in Features, Games, Nintendo, Wii | View Comments

Its been out a while for Wii now, and Playstation owners have already fanwanked all over it, but I thought that now I’ve spent sufficient time with Okami I would let everyone know my feelings.

Okami is stunning. It takes a little while to get used to all the swirlyness and vibrant colour (I found that putting my telly on ‘Sport’ mode made everything even more gorgeous) but by the time you do, you’re already totally in love with Okami. You play as the sun goddess Amaterasu who is a lovely white wolf with loads of special powers released through the power of the motion controlled brush. I wondered how this would work actually as the game pauses so you can draw various shapes onto the gaming action which will then make Ammy do various different moves, grow plants, slash things and fire ink bullets. However, this doesnt seem to slow down the pace of the gaming as even though it is extremely useful to be able to freezeframe during boss fights, I found myself so engaged that I was rushing through it at normal speed anyway. IGN tells me that the Wii suffers from a loss of the papery-ness that the Playstation version had, but I never played that, so I don’t care.

But now for the bad. The difficulty of Okami I think is pitched about right for the main part of the game, but unfortunately there are certain mini-game aspects that you must complete to proceed which border on unfair. One game where you have to make a crap Samurai feel good about himself by cutting down poles as he sweeps past them made me scream with rage and stomp around like a petulant child. It sounds easy, and some smart arse will probably point this out, but you have to draw the right size line, at the right time, at the right angle at the right point on the pole exactly to cut it down. Also, when you start the game there seems to be three poles (which themselves took me far too many tries) until you cut what you think is the final one and find that there is one behind you and if you fail to do this one, you start all over again. My other half will testify that I was unbearable until it was completed and vowed never to play Okami again.

I lied though. Okami is bewitching. I’ve actually had dreams about becoming Amaterasu, and I find that its currently my main day dream at work. For its faults (sometime appalling camera angles are another one) I don’t want to play anything else at the moment and although I know its going to get so hard that I’ll weep, I don’t want it to end. Oh yeah, and its funny! I never expected it, but there are some genuine LOL moments; particularly the half naked tree spirit who shakes her boobs at you and Waka the bleach blonde French (apparently) swordsman/prophet. Love love love it.

Au revoir baby.