Okami Wii gets Euro date Comments by Tom Bramwell

w1n

I imported this and was pretty disappointed, so I'm very interested to see how the review turns out.

:-)

Looking forward to finally getting the chance to play this. It was one of the titles that finally convinced me that the Wii was a worthy purchase.

I *HATED* this game..

I bought it.. played it for an hour or two.. then decided it wasnt worth bothering with.

.. A few months later.. i picked it up again.. and carried on playing.. it gets VERY VERY good.

Seemingly the first few hours are dog shit.. but it then turns into one of the best games i've played.

Hooray! Earlier than expected - the first reports were 30th June. Clearly someone misheard. "Coming out 13th June!" "30th June?" "No, thirteenth." "Thirtieth, got it!"

ianegg, why were you disappointed?

IMHO .. It IS VERY disappointing if you only play it for an hour or two..

But after about 3 hours of play it starts to get REALLY good.. which is reassuring for a 60 hour plus game.

I was disappointed with the port - Okami is a fantastic game.

They've turned a beautiful, subtle watercolour painting into a bold brightly coloured cartoon - the visual style was a huge part of the PS2 experience for me. I didn't get on with the combat controls either - I gave up and stuck with the beads weapons where timing doesn't matter. And rather than adding anything new, they've actually taken (a minor amount of) content OUT of the game.

The celestial brush is fantastic when it works and skipping cutscenes is handy but overall it just feels unfinished.

Hooray! Earlier than expected - the first reports were 30th June. Clearly someone misheard. "Coming out 13th June!" "30th June?" "No, thirteenth." "Thirtieth, got it!"

it was probably every takeaway employee ever. the number of times i've had a conversation like "no.16" "60?" "no, sixteen" "60, yeah?", "no! 16! one six!", "60, ok, it'll be about half an hour"
then 45 minutes later i get a phonecall from the driver because the person who answered the door at no.60 didn't want the food. and it's a ridiculous one way system so i have to wait another ten minutes while they figure it out before i finally get my over-cheesed pizza or disappointing curry

uh, anyway, where was i. okami? great!

Ugh, waggle combat.

No thanks, I'll stick with my PS2 copy.

Yes yes..

Im sure that just because they toned down the paper effect.. that makes a HUGE difference and the 480p widescreen mode makes bugger all difference..

or something..

I admit - I've not played the ps2 version..

It's not just the paper effect, which is still there but may as well not be. They've changed the way the outlines are drawn so they look less like brush strokes and more like chunky permanent marker with a weird drunk-o-vision blur effect that takes a couple of hours to get used to, in place of the subtle watercolour-esque streaking/running/whateveryoucallit. As well as completely change the contrast or something - watercolours have become poster paints.

I'm a huge advocate of widescreen and progressive anything, and have been for years; playing in widescreen is great, but it makes certain custscenes stick out like a sore thumb where they've just scaled and cropped videos of the PS2 version. (I don't know if they were videos or real time in the original.) The loading screen has a weird jumpy texture thing going on because it forgets it's on a widescreen display for a few seconds. If you don't use overscan, the first line and column have a mind of their own. (Having a bright line across my CRT on an otherwise dark screen doesn't make me a happy chappy.)


I'm just pointing out the bad points here, and I have quite a picky eye for detail. The game itself is still fantastic and worth playing.

I imported this (played the PS2 version too) and found they'd cocked up the one single most important thing in the whole game.

The wii pointer for using the brush in combat sucks.

Problem is, it seems like their pointer implementation just isn't as good as other titles. The brush jitters unpleasantly, and the only way to draw accurately is to draw slowly.

The problem with the PS2 version was that the brushwork thing was a little bit cumbersome. You paused the game, positioned your cursor with the stick, pressed down and then pushed the stick in a direction to get a nice straight sweeping stroke - 100%, every time success.

I had thought the Wii controls would be a perfect replacement for this - and they could have been, but they've been badly programmed. Because of the jitter, you can't reliably draw the stroke in the direction you want. If you draw the stroke too slowly, and get the line perfect, the game goes 'oh, you didn't draw that fast enough' so it doesn't count it as a combat slice move, and just coats your target in ink. If you flick the wiimote fast enough to qualify as a combat slice, you often miss because it's jittered in a slightly wrong direction. Woe betide you if you try and do anything clever like hit two targets with one slice.

I don't know whether the conversion team used the older version of Nintendo's controller library (this year's new one is vastly better) or if they just didn't bother smoothing the brushstrokes, but fundamentally they've borked the controls on their game.

Oh, and just in case anyone mentions it, my setup is fine thanks - I don't get reflections or tricksy sensor bar rubbish, and other games (Link's crossbow training, Ghost Squad, Resident Weevil) are all absolutely fine with fast accurate pointing.

Okami on Wii - epic disappointment, IMHO.

@ostrasized:

Im having NONE of those problems you mentioned? All my brush attacks/etc work first time.

I'd suggest you need to recalibrate your wiimote, move where your sensor bar is, etc?

Also, did you get the game on import or "download" as if you used "download" maybe you got a pre-release version?


@ianegg: Looks fine to me.. but then i dont have the ps2 version to compare against - so i presume you're right. You ARE aware that the brush changes thickness depending on how far/close you are? Maybe you're too close? Just a thought..


But to me - it's a good game, which i couldnt play before (didnt have a ps2).. So i couldnt give a rats arse if one looks better than the other :-)