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Okami: Clover’s Last Stand
(by Caleb Rumley - May 14, 2008)
Clover, supposedly short for Creativity Lover, was one of the best and most original game developers on the market. In 2006 they released Okami on the PS2, a game which was met with great critical acclaim but unfortunately never sold as well as Clover hoped for. The studio, which was always a part of Capcom, ceased to exist after releasing Okami because the division was simply not profitable.
But every cloud has a silver lining – and for Clover, that was the Wii. Okami is an incredibly unique game, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it. You play as a wolf named Amaterasu, who can change and mold the world of Nippon with his celestial brush. The celestial brush is the key part of the game: draw slashes over enemies or circles to make trees go into full bloom.
Like I said before, Okami was initially released on the PS2, and never went on to sell in great numbers. But Clover saw the obvious parallels to the Okami’s gameplay and the Wii’s controller: simply brandish the Wii remote like a brush and draw as much as you want. The game was released a few weeks ago, and the transition to the Wii was definitely a great move by Clover.
Okami starts off in the middle of an ancient tale – the backdrop for all of the events to come. An intricate story about the treacherous eight-headed dragon Orochi and the fearless Amaterasu is woven at the start of the game. Amaterasu (the main character) has lost all of his Celestial brush powers and must reclaim them from the various spirits in the game.
As you play Okami and regain your powers, you can access more secrets and areas of the game. Okami plays out a lot like a Zelda game – in fact, the game is very similar to the excellent Twilight Princess, which launched with the Wii. But Okami has a very different and unique graphical style that takes it away from your typical adventure game.
Okami looks great with its cel-shaded graphics, but the entire style of the game revolves around the beauty of nature. As you traverse Nippon and restore beauty back to the land, flowers shoot up and rivers begin to flow again. Honestly, I spent time just looking at the game’s wonderfully crafted graphics, which is something I can’t say I’ve done for many Wii games.
But as good as Okami is, there are still quite a few problems within the game. Some of the Celestial Brush techniques didn’t work every time. It probably was my fault anyway – who says I know how to draw a circle? But for whatever reason, every now and then activating a power to bring life back to a tree might take several tries.
The game’s Japanese setting and storyline is great, but as trivial as this may sound, I couldn’t keep track of several of the characters names! I soon got the hang of it, but at first I was pretty much lost whenever I tried to think of the different characters.
I haven’t played a game as good as Okami in a long time. It’s so incredibly unique and creative that, even though it has strong ties to the Zelda series, is an excellent game on its own. The only problems I can think of are so minor that they hardly detract from the game experience. I strongly recommend Okami, and I can only hope that the Wii version of Okami sells as much as it should. This impressive adventure game gets a 9.0 out of 10, and anyone who liked Twilight Princess really should definitely give it a try.
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