Okami on the Wii

Okami is "wolf" in Japanese.  It's also a video game, with a unique, beautiful art style and unusual play. The art style takes after Japanese scroll art.  Everything is brush stroke and watercolor, soft and dreamlike, and, as you move through the world you see elements that seem paper thin, as if you're actually playing on ancient scrolls.  It creates a mood of beauty and peace.

You play a wolf who is the return of a legend and embodiment of Amaterasu, the Sun, Mother of All, a real-world sun-goddess from the Shinto belief system.  Your legendary foe has gained power and threatens all life.  While you are, of course, there to save the world, your weapon is your celestial brush, and your fighting techniques are what you draw with the wiimote.

In the beginning, I couldn't help feeling I would have a better time with the DS version than the Wii, as I hadn't played with the Wii much at all prior.  Player skill with the Wiimote contributes a lot to the overall difficulty level of the game.  The side slash needing to be horizontal and rather straight gave me trouble, as did other techniques requiring the drawing of circles.  It did get easier with practice.

The violence is completely unrealistic and nothing I worry about my children seeing.  You either spin one of your weapons, such as the sun mandala that is on your back at the start, toward the enemy to hit them, or you slice them with your brush stroke.  Neither produces blood or wounds.  When defeated, their paper doll-like model is cut in half and turns to flowers.

There is some suggestive content.  Your little bug-sized sidekick, who is greatly offended at being called a bug, first appears creating trouble by crawling around in a tree sprite's robe, as she twitches and wriggles, showing a lot of cleavage, trying to get him out.  There are suggestive comments, as well, but my beginning readers and non-readers would have no way of knowing anything about those.  It's rated T for Teen, for suggestive themes, crude humor, use of alcohol (sake) and tobacco, fantasy violence, and blood and gore.  I'm really not sure where they got the gore from.  Either I'm not remembering something, or it's in an area I haven't played yet.

Rather than gaining experience points, you gain praise.  There are typical quests to do for the people which earn praise, but you also gain praise by restoring blighted land, causing trees to bloom, and feeding animals.  Praise can be spent to upgrade your power bars, such as your life force or ink capacity.

I absolutely love the spirituality, the beauty, the peaceful style.  The game feels like such a pleasant escape.  But it doesn't take itself terribly seriously.  Some of the writing is outright funny, and, throughout, the buggy little side-kick refers to this ancient goddess as "Ammy" and "furball."

To see the art and view a game trailer, click on over to the official site.