PlayStation 2 Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Okami (Capcom, PlayStation 2, 2006)

Wolp :)

A story so epic even its biggest fan, my girlfriend Caby, has only beaten it twice, there is no poster child for cult video games as a whole greater than Okami. Darkness has befallen Nippon after the descendant of the warrior who banished it a hundred years prior accidentally blights the world with it once more, and the sun goddess/wolf Okami Amaterasu (originofallthatisgoodandmothertousall) is called on to rejuvenate the land and vanquish evil once more. Also there's a little guy named Issun on your head. He's a tiny little artist who sleeps in girls' boobs and he never shuts up, but we love him.

Okami is a gigantic wandering puzzle-platformer monster smackathon with a big killer feature: all of the puzzles involve a Celestial Brush you can invoke at any time to draw symbols onto the screen with, providing more weapons during fights, letting you turn night to day, or just plain wrinkling up the platforming. New powers are unlocked through completing constellations that you find through your travels with your brush, bringing fellow gods out of hiding and bestowing you with their powers. Paired with the wildlife you feed and the gorgeous avalanches of plants and flowers as you bring the wastelands you visit back to life, life after death is what Okami's all about, and it really helps to tie the story to the game mechanics in a hugely satisfying way.

Of that story, Okami is wordy and undeniably patience-testing at times, but very fun. You meet lots of bizarre characters, old men with tangerines on their heads, fruity Frenchmen, busty fox wenches, the aforementioned Poncle melon enthusiast, and even your fellow gods have personality and comic relief in spades. It also just plain gets nuts by the end. It's easy to consider it padded, but there's very little of it I'd honestly cut—two games in one is how I think of it. It's also the only game I've played where having a strategy guide on my lap while I played proved invaluable, as my stream chat watching me try to parse other people's video playthroughs live can attest. It's a commitment, and like any religion, requires a bit of faith at times, but the rich world and wall-to-wall unlockables have a way of deeply rewarding the faithful.