Okami (PS2, 2006)

[next-morning edit: other people nailed it much better than i did.]

I've been playing this on and off ever since I finally put down DQ8, really, and just managed to get up my need-for-weekend-accomplishment drive up enough to see it through to the bitter end. Just under 40 hours of playtime logged, though it was actually probably 80% of that due to my occasionally walking away to do other stuff (since the game was so compelling I couldn't be bothered to play it for months at a time).

It must be my age showing, but I really didn't get into this game. It was long and easy and too cutesy, with a lot of the gameplay taken up by drudgery like wandering around a massive world map and sitting through cutscenes that 1) have some random irritating Peanuts-style "wa wa wa" going on instead of actual voice acting, and 2) you can't hit X through to speed up. Then I hop on reviews and boards and all these kids are telling the world it's the best game of the year, the best game on the PS2, this and that. Clover Studio, the developers, certainly adhered to the "more is more" school in terms of plot, sidequests, items, and which I find myself revolting against as I get older. Maybe it's also that I had just logged some outrageous hours doing sidequests in a game that felt much more familiar to me and

No, no, there are definitely things about this game that even though I'm pushing 30 and clearly impatient, are just not great game design. To wit:
- required random battles. Like, you're in a dungeon, and they've established that you can see the enemies as kind of ambulatory floor rugs of different colors that chase you if you get near them. And that's fine, I figure I'll just speed up and get around them and I won't have to fight anyone, and what's the point of fighting anyway because the only way to gain points toward upgrading health and brush capacity is by doing stuff like feeding animals and engaging in horticulture. All you gain from fighting is money and, if you're good at fighting, a self-esteem boost based on how fast you were at killing or how much damage you inflicted, the award for which is more money. (More on that point in a second.) Since the bosses are so easy you can just walk all over them with the right techniques, I'd prefer to not bother fighting and just enjoy solving the puzzles (some of which are very good) and take a SotC-like approach to beating bosses, treating them as puzzles as well. Given this setup, random encounters are nothing but wastes of time. But STILL, in dungeons, you walk through the very linear path from point A to point B, and out of nowhere the fight music starts and some punks ambush you. And they're not even hard and you get like 5000 yen to add to the 200000 yen you already have because you don't need to spend it on anything to progress in the game. It's ridiculous. Either randomize the encounters, or don't.
- Another thing about time and damage evaluation after every battle. I know I'm a terrible action gamer, but do I really need to be reminded of that every single time I fight something by having you show me some pitiful saplings instead of the full-grown or bursting-with-red-life-energy tree I'd have gotten if I was any good? I know most gamers like their achievements and their stats, but in all seriousness, it sucks to have all the other characters thank me profusely for defeating the bad guy, and tell me I'm their hero the SUN GOD AMATERASU who did what NO MERE MORTAL could do, and then a second later have the game tell me that actually, this particular sun god kinda blew chunks and gets no bonus yen. Adding insult to injury, the "you win the fight" music tag is exactly the same whether you do really well or terribly, so it takes on a sarcastic/insulting tone in the contrast between this triumphant sound and your weak, crumbling excuse for plant life.
- ending straight out of Earthbound. I done played that everyone-you-met-during-the-quest-joins-in-prayer-to-give-you-the-strength-to-beat-the-final-boss thing in '94! (though this game being about Celestial Beings and such, it might be more applicable...but really, there's no churches or prayer before they rip off Earthbound for the ending, just a bunch of cartoony cavorting.)
- Japanese mythology and classic presentation vs. juvenile humor and poor taste. I was just not able to go back and forth from based-on-actual ancient legends of gods and demons to pipsqueak sidekicks mouthing off like a prepubescent and slobbering over every moderately attractive female. In retrospect, I should have known what I was in for when Issun your "clever" miniature companion started blatantly ogling the woodland sprite goddess Sakuya, and when later female characters' watermelon-breasts get a smash zoom and the same sound effect as when the Eagle Man said "I've got something for youuuu" and laid his egg, traumatizing those poor women.

By the endgame, I was consulting the walkthrough willy-nilly and using bombs from the inventory everywhere I could rather than using any brush techniques. I found myself reduced to that "let's just get this over with" mentality that is the nadir of the solo gaming experience. (I will say that getting unapologetically schooled by someone half your age sucks a lot more, but that only applies in a multiplayer environment.) My need to see how it all ended had less to do with being particularly enthralled with the story and more to do with justifying the investment I had already made getting to that point, essentially throwing good time after bad. But it's over and I haven't learned anything, except that if I was 37 hours into a game and had to re-fight 5 bosses, some of them for the THIRD TIME, I'd do it just to see what random plot "twist" they can shoehorn onto mysterious reappearing characters to justify their periodic intrusion on the storyline. (a. he's...YOUR FATHER b. he's...THE VILLAIN c. he's...THE SAVIOR)

To gank The Hudsucker Proxy, "It's for kids!" -- specifically, 12-year-old boys. Which is cool, I was a 12-year-old boy once, and I blew innumerable hours on games I thought were awesome and inspiring at the time, but if I played them now I'm sure I'd find them corny and cliched and not funny. By comparison, DQ8 was nothing but cliches, but the production value was a whole other level and just that was enough to make me love it. Me and this game just met too late.

Despite all of the above, as I write this I'm thinking back over the months it took me to finish it and remembering puzzles, dungeons, and whole passages of the game that I found very enjoyable. I think there were at least two too many fake-out "final" bosses - where you're all geared up for the end and you think you did it, but then suddenly it's not over and the game contrives a way for you to go to some new area to fight the even bigger REAL boss - and I didn't care enough where the story was going to slog through more bad cutscenes and crappy random battles.

But yeah, Okami is the hula hoop of the PS2. I believe I have written myself out of my insomnia and will now publish these thoughts in their current unfinished, rambling, in-jokey, sleep-deprived state. Artsy.