Okami (Wii): A Great Game, a Great Port

Sometimes a game is just too good to sit on the shelves. In the case of Okami, Capcom knew they had a hit. The critics gave it overwhelming praise for its release on the PS2. A couple years later, the Wii becomes popular, and people start wondering. With the implements of gameplay Okami makes use of, is a Wii release possible?

Apparently so. Another developer handled the port of the game to Wii. Certain features had to be chopped, such as the end-credit cut-scene. It became just a bunch of pictures with words scrolling over. The port didn't improve the game so much as it made it more interesting.

Basically, Okami tells the story of Amaterasu, the goddesses of Japanese myth and legend, on a journey to restore a wrecked world. She takes the form of a wolf and sets out across the land with her Celestial Brush, learning brush techniques that must be performed on screen to work. The PlayStation 2 release handled this well, but the Wii was designed for motion-sensitive controls.

The result works quite well. When you need to scribble a circle, just bring up the Brush scree and move the Wii Remote in a circle. It's that easy, and it makes the game come alive. No more moving joysticks or directional pads in circles, squiggles, or even straight lines. Just move the Remote across the screen. It's poetry in motion. It only made sense.

The Wii version changes nothing from the story of the game. The plot was already great. You run around as a goddess in the form of a wolf. How many games let you do that? The story forces the gamer to dive into classical Japanese mytho-history, expanding cultural knowledge while entertaining.

Okami was praised chiefly for its look. The game uses a cell-shaded technique uncommon in computer-generated renderings. It's also known as toon shading. Instead of an object rendered in 3d appearing in 3d, the object looks as if it were hand-drawn. Things appear flat, with thick, black lines outlining them, but when you move around them, you find that the objects are indeed solid, 3-dimensional objects. Few other games have used this technique, the most notable being The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker for Nintendo GameCube.

Add to that the unique sumi-e style Okami uses. Not only does the game look animated, it looks like a Japanese watercolor painting. It's an astounding visual masterpiece.

The Wii release detracts from none of these, while adding the motion-sensitive gameplay. This makes the game even more relavent today than it was at its release. So check out Okami, and try it on the Wii. It's worth a look.