One of the games that made Tom's Hardware's ten games to look out for in 2005 is Okami (Wolf), an unusual PS2 title from the creators of Viewtiful Joe.
Okami dispenses with attempting to dazzle the player with photo-realistic graphics, instead the game draws heavily on creative art, so much so in fact the whole game looks like a beautiful Japanese watercolour painting.
Art permeates the gameplay also, one of the main controls is the ability to pause the game, which flattens the scene out onto a sheet of paper; you can then draw brush-strokes on the paper and when you unpause, the strokes have an effect in the game, for instance, drawing a circle around a dead tree revitalizes it:
The brush can stroke bridges into existence between two shores, dot new stars to fill out incomplete constellations (thereby creating new stellar creatures), slash enemies by literally drawing a bisecting line through them, and dashing gates or other obstructions to the ground before reverting to "normal" gameplay.
It should come off as an awkward, gimmicky; it shouldn't be so elegant, so artistically right. It doesn't; it is.
Gamesdomain Okami preview - Top Ten Games To Look For In 2005
Clover Studio - developer
Okami trailers and gameplay footage
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