![]() ![]() The tree-goddess guarding the nearby village barely has enough strength left to revive Ameterasu, but once she's up the wolf starts the long, difficult journey to free Nippon from Orochi's darkness.Įven at the start Ameterasu is a powerful hero, able to mix speedy fighting moves with the abilities of the Celestial Brush. When a thief steals the sword from the shrine Orochi promptly revives and plunges the land of Nippon into darkness and corruption. Except she was called Shiranui back then, because mythology is difficult. While the demon was "killed" it wasn't dead-dead so much as "locked away"-dead, sealed by the sword of the hero Nagi who'd fought alongside Ameterasu. Okami is the story of Ameterasu, a sun-goddess that's taken the form of a white wolf, awoken one hundred years after her fight with the nine-headed demon Orochi. There's a reason it's on its third re-release, after all. While this review is for the PC version, it's good to see Okami available on almost any platform that can support it. That was nine years of being stuck on a single console at a time, but those dark days are over at last with a full widespread release of Okami HD on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Okami was originally a PS2 exclusive and the Wii version helped keep the name alive until Okami HD came out on PS3. Either way, Okami is an easy, wholehearted recommendation for me to make.Before there was Platinum Games there was Clover, an offshoot of Capcom that made all the Viewtiful Joe games, the cult-classic God Hand and the utterly-fantastic Okami. If you’ve never spent any time with this game, though? Good god, what are you waiting for? Okami is art in motion, a triumph of gameplay and graphics that will hole up in your brain for months and years to come. If you’ve played Okami before, I promise it’s just as good -if not better- than you remember. That’s a minor grievance though, a single patch of cloud in an otherwise beautiful blue sky of a game. Yes, all that skipping has a negative impact on narrative comprehension, but there’s still so much to see and do in this game that doesn’t rely on a steady stream of Charlie Brown babble. The weird, babbling dialogue audio starts sawing through my skin after a while. Maybe it’s because I’ve played through this game a couple of times before already, but I was so grateful for the ability to skip cutscenes. It makes sense from an accessibility standpoint, as a single nonsensical audio track works equally well for both English and Japanese audiences (as well as everyone else around the world). I still have precious little patience for the vocal style. “Traditional polygons and surface textures grow muddy and bland with every passing year, while Okami will shine bright for decades to come.” Maybe it has to do with their choice of art style, maybe it’s tied to the execution of said style, but Okami has aged beautifully. Traditional polygons and surface textures grow muddy and bland with every passing year, while Okami will shine brightly for decades to come. I sincerely believe that the developers could not make this game prettier with any amount of time, simply because it’s already perfect on that front. Most of all, the sumi-e ink graphics are just as incredible as they were back in 2006. What was amazing about it then is still amazing about it now. While there’s been a few minor tweaks and changes, the lion’s share of this game remains untouched and pristine. Allegedly, uncapping the framerate causes catastrophic issues with the game’s performance. If you’re the sort of person who craves maximum visual fidelity this might be a problem, but the game is designed to run at 30. The one unfortunate downside is the framerate, which is locked at 30 fps. The one major upgrade is the resolution, which can go all the way to 4K if you’ve got the hardware. You can also access various menus from the touchpad and adjust the screen ratio for a more or less modern look. You can skip cutscenes, which is essential for anyone who’s played Okami a time or two before. There are some small fixes which improve upon the original release.
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