A
Apossum
Guest
Just whipped this up, sorry for any vagueness or non-sensicalness ;-)
Okay, let me just start out by saying that everything you have heard so far is bullshit.....the game is about 10x better looking than anyone may have led you to believe. If Wind Waker was like playing a cartoon, Okami is the closest you can get to playing a Japanese water color painting before it has dried, so that the colors are at their brightest and fullest. The paint never dries in Okami and the style doesn't stop gushing. If you are not in a complete trance within 5 minutes of booting up the game, go get a CAT scan.
Since it would be pointless to talk about the graphics anymore, just go view this trailer(click the one all the way on the left):
http://www.cloverstudio.co.jp/tgs2005/tgs2005.html
That is the world you inhabit throughout the demo. It would make Miyazaki blush. One really cool detail is when you draw the sun in the sky, the background looks like textured watercolor paper with a light blue wash. After seeing that for the first time, it put everything into perspective.
The animation is a bit of a trick. It all looks good and smooth and there's an interesting "real time" look to it, like each frame is completely redrawn. Put that under a slight amount light blooming, along with models that look hand painted and cel shaded, and you have the magic of the game's look in a nutshell.
The demo started out by teaching me a few tricks-- how to paint and how to use the sword. It wasn't a simple tutorial which taught me the buttons. I had to earn each skill-- first, I had to paint a constellation in the sky, which was the intro to screen painting, which is initiated by holding R1. A canvas pops up, which contains a pen and ink drawing of the screen (how the
did they do that?!), along with a brush, which you move with the left stick and paint with the square button.
After learning to paint, I had to do various tasks to get to the next point. First, I had to draw shallow water to get across a gap, then I needed to draw a sword on a statue, which introduced me to a deity that taught me how to use the "slash" technique. I then had to cut my way out of the cave I was in and get back to the spot where I started the demo. I thought it was a dark cave, but it was just a patch of the world that was devoid of color.
So I arrived and used my slash technique to cut down a balloon full of color that brought that whole area back to life. After that, I came upon a town and had my path blocked by a huge boulder. It was night time, so everyone was asleep. No problem! I ran up to a clearing and drew a sun! With that, the whole town woke up again, ready to assign me various tasks in exchange for getting me past the boulder, of course. The articulation of night, day, and nature in this game is something that needs to be experienced-- the sounds, and little things like animals, plants, wind, water, all of it, is just so clear and real. This is the kind of world I would want a sandbox game to take place in. Screw GTA, I can go to the city and drive like a maniac whenever I want-- bring on the lucid dream-like worlds!
So there were some fight scenes along the way-- enemies pop up all of the sudden and the area gets closed in with huge puffs of smoke; the sky goes red and the wolf readies it's self. You simply hit the square button in succession to perform combos till the enemies die. The amount of hits you get in a row brings up a combo meter-- Hara Kiri is the lowest level, Shogun is the highest. Battle is simple for the most part, but enemies come in groups, so a few strats are necessary to win a fight:
--after hitting an enemy a few times, they can be stunned if you paint a circle around them, allowing the wolf to concentrate on the rest of the group.
--the wolf can backdash with R2, which is a good enough distance to escape an ambush and get a jump on the foes
--the game goes into "bullet time" when the wolf gets it's last hit on an enemy, giving you time to position it for the next enemy.
Battle is a lot of fun and I can't wait to try tougher enemies in the real game-- the potential for amazing fight scenes is really high.
Throughout the demo, I found myself most enthralled with the ease of which the wolf controls, the fact that the graphics and sound work together to create a world oozing with traditional Japanese style, and the amount of detail and life that could fill what is essentially a forty five minute long demo.
I honestly don't have much in the way of criticisms right now, except that there was the occasional bout of slowdown, which didn't effect gameplay and that certain things, like plants and leaves, didn't seem fully animated yet, but this is from an unfinished build, so maybe they'll fix it up more. Even if they don't fix those problems, it would still be a very minor setback, as they are barely noticeable.
Unless this demo is the best this game has to offer, which I doubt it is, I think Clover is on to one of the best games of all time. Can't wait to play the full game....
Okay, let me just start out by saying that everything you have heard so far is bullshit.....the game is about 10x better looking than anyone may have led you to believe. If Wind Waker was like playing a cartoon, Okami is the closest you can get to playing a Japanese water color painting before it has dried, so that the colors are at their brightest and fullest. The paint never dries in Okami and the style doesn't stop gushing. If you are not in a complete trance within 5 minutes of booting up the game, go get a CAT scan.
Since it would be pointless to talk about the graphics anymore, just go view this trailer(click the one all the way on the left):
http://www.cloverstudio.co.jp/tgs2005/tgs2005.html
That is the world you inhabit throughout the demo. It would make Miyazaki blush. One really cool detail is when you draw the sun in the sky, the background looks like textured watercolor paper with a light blue wash. After seeing that for the first time, it put everything into perspective.
The animation is a bit of a trick. It all looks good and smooth and there's an interesting "real time" look to it, like each frame is completely redrawn. Put that under a slight amount light blooming, along with models that look hand painted and cel shaded, and you have the magic of the game's look in a nutshell.
The demo started out by teaching me a few tricks-- how to paint and how to use the sword. It wasn't a simple tutorial which taught me the buttons. I had to earn each skill-- first, I had to paint a constellation in the sky, which was the intro to screen painting, which is initiated by holding R1. A canvas pops up, which contains a pen and ink drawing of the screen (how the
did they do that?!), along with a brush, which you move with the left stick and paint with the square button. After learning to paint, I had to do various tasks to get to the next point. First, I had to draw shallow water to get across a gap, then I needed to draw a sword on a statue, which introduced me to a deity that taught me how to use the "slash" technique. I then had to cut my way out of the cave I was in and get back to the spot where I started the demo. I thought it was a dark cave, but it was just a patch of the world that was devoid of color.
So I arrived and used my slash technique to cut down a balloon full of color that brought that whole area back to life. After that, I came upon a town and had my path blocked by a huge boulder. It was night time, so everyone was asleep. No problem! I ran up to a clearing and drew a sun! With that, the whole town woke up again, ready to assign me various tasks in exchange for getting me past the boulder, of course. The articulation of night, day, and nature in this game is something that needs to be experienced-- the sounds, and little things like animals, plants, wind, water, all of it, is just so clear and real. This is the kind of world I would want a sandbox game to take place in. Screw GTA, I can go to the city and drive like a maniac whenever I want-- bring on the lucid dream-like worlds!
So there were some fight scenes along the way-- enemies pop up all of the sudden and the area gets closed in with huge puffs of smoke; the sky goes red and the wolf readies it's self. You simply hit the square button in succession to perform combos till the enemies die. The amount of hits you get in a row brings up a combo meter-- Hara Kiri is the lowest level, Shogun is the highest. Battle is simple for the most part, but enemies come in groups, so a few strats are necessary to win a fight:
--after hitting an enemy a few times, they can be stunned if you paint a circle around them, allowing the wolf to concentrate on the rest of the group.
--the wolf can backdash with R2, which is a good enough distance to escape an ambush and get a jump on the foes
--the game goes into "bullet time" when the wolf gets it's last hit on an enemy, giving you time to position it for the next enemy.
Battle is a lot of fun and I can't wait to try tougher enemies in the real game-- the potential for amazing fight scenes is really high.
Throughout the demo, I found myself most enthralled with the ease of which the wolf controls, the fact that the graphics and sound work together to create a world oozing with traditional Japanese style, and the amount of detail and life that could fill what is essentially a forty five minute long demo.
I honestly don't have much in the way of criticisms right now, except that there was the occasional bout of slowdown, which didn't effect gameplay and that certain things, like plants and leaves, didn't seem fully animated yet, but this is from an unfinished build, so maybe they'll fix it up more. Even if they don't fix those problems, it would still be a very minor setback, as they are barely noticeable.
Unless this demo is the best this game has to offer, which I doubt it is, I think Clover is on to one of the best games of all time. Can't wait to play the full game....
