Life’s full of rage. Kids are getting meaner, more violent and more out of control. Beat-‘em-ups become a way of life. Some days you can flump about thinking about how dark and depressing our world can get, and then you play a game where you can run around as a wolf and paint your enemies to non-existence. Bit of a turn for the books I agree, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless.

If I were to put the full background story to Okami in this section, you’d be pretty old by the time you finished it. As a summary, the game is based around a wolf called Amaterasu, or Ammy for short. While you look all fluffy on the outside and share a wide variety of bad table manners and bathing habits, you are in fact the reincarnation of the Sun Goddess Shiranui who has been summoned to aid the village of Kamiki from an evil multi-heading snake Orochi. [Right – so goddess dog saves town from mega-evil snake? Sounds fun in a Daily Mirror sort of way! – Matt]

After learning all this you discover that you have the ability to use a paintbrush to draw in missing items on screen, or attack enemies. Quite soon you’ll be on the hunt for more techniques, most of which will be repetitively explained to you by little bug (that doesn’t like to be called one) called Issun, who effectively acts as your companion and walking tutorial throughout the game. Think Navi in Ocarina of Time and you’ll be about right.

The first thing you’ll notice is the quite beautiful watercolour style, cel-shaded artwork that has been created to mimic Japanese ink-illustration. Not only does it give the game a different feel, and more away from the bog standard RPG looking games we’ve all grown used to, but it allows for different effects and gameplay styles, like using the brush and for it to all integrate seamlessly. I’m glad that Clover Studio decided to create the game this way as it’s about time people think outside the box with regards to this style of game.

You might wonder how being a wolf in an RPG scenario would work, how the fighting style works, and whether it works well. In short, it works as well as you’d expect. While you’ll perhaps want to hack and slash your way through enemies left right and centre, it wont work. Like the art, the conventional fighting methods have been somewhat changed, and while I expected to use teeth and claws you in fact use a glowing mirror that Ammy carries around on her back. I know, call me crazy, I wouldn’t have thought of it either.

Tactics are increased by having the ability to freeze time and draw in new things to the environment like trees, or bombs, or merely slashing through the critter with one deft stroke of your mighty brush. While you’re limited to the amount of ink you can carry (unless you spend points to upgrade this), for the most part if used wisely you’ll have enough to get you through most situations. Still, if you run out you’ll be glad to find that it automatically regenerates over time. Most of us have played a game like Spyro so it’s not that radical to make your way through an environment on all fours, and seeing as they let you run at quite a pace (flowers flowing wherever your feet touch the ground, naturally), it’s nice to be something other than a plodding bloke in plate mail that’s in desperate need of a horse.

Whereas the majority of games these days are about destruction, Okami is about making things beautiful again. While you might be sat back thinking that you’ve handed in your Katana for a copy of “What Wallpaper” magazine, you’ll have to play it for yourself to perhaps appreciate why it works so well. For example, after each fight you’ll get yen, which you can spend on food at shops to feed animals. As these animals are grateful, they’ll generate ‘praise’ which in turn you can up your stats. That’s not a bad trade off. At the same time you could always go and do a few side quests, or make some trees bloom once more for extra bonus points. Each time you’re rewarded with some more of that nice artwork, which makes it all feel worthwhile.

While I get the distinct impression that elements were taking from perhaps the earlier Zelda series, like the quest dynamics or even some of the artwork, I do get the impression that with regards to the sound they should’ve perhaps dispensed with the extremely repetitive sound effects they went for. I think this may have been to avoid translating such a large game, even though us long-time gamers have been used to a lack of voice-over in RPG’s for some time now. Instead, we get some sort of maddening cartoon gibberish. Unfortunately, considering how long some of the cutscenes are, I had to turn the sound off for fear of being bludgeoned by Matt. He came quite close.

But it’s only the voice-over and the music and artwork more than make up for it. With over 60 hours of gameplay I can more than forgive. It’s one of the most original games I’ve played for a long time, and one of the most beautiful. More than enough reason to give it the thumbs up!