Dialogue

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Issue 382

The boy who cried wolf

I ended last year the same way we all do: looking over what we enjoyed and didn’t from the previous 12 months while looking forward to what’s coming in the next year. That’s when it dawned on me: there are a lot of long gaps between the games I really want to play this year, so I made a decision and dubbed 2023 the year of the backlog.

On top of this list was Okami, a game I had (mostly) played already when it first graced us in 2006, but one I never finished and had never returned to. It’s a product of its time – the mid-2000s, when developers had budgets to back unique ideas as game creators tried to figure out what the future in this landscape would be. This might seem like nostalgia talking, but being a young teenager at this time made us all feel like Charlie being invited to tour Wonka’s chocolate factory. The downside to being a young teenager is that you’re not all that good at games, and without the vast knowledge to back it up, not very good at understanding their less-thanobvious mechanics.

It’s here that Okami let me down – or rather, how I let it down. It wasn’t until my playthrough this year that I discovered different weapon types had different levels of power, not merely distinct range and looks. Despite knowing this now, I still fell back on my old favourite, the prayer beads that work like a fast whip. They’re the weakest of the weapons but grant the best range and, for my money, the best look. It was only the latter I cared for at 13 years old but now I can appreciate that sacrificing power gave me greater speed and distance. Not that the combat is all that difficult – the game throws helping items at you like you’re battling demons with a wooden spoon. I never even bothered to look at them on my first playthrough, since I was getting along just fine.