Game Time
School’s in session — not so much fun. Console games — much fun. Get your fun on with these up-n-coming choice video games.
Ōkami
Clover Studio/Capcom
PS2
The PlayStation 3 might be prepped for launch, but that doesn’t mean PS2 games should be overlooked.
The award-winning Ōkami is a third-person, action-adventure rooted in Japanese mythology. You play as a sun goddess who is in the form of the white wolf Amaterasu. Amaterasu must revive a dead landscape, complete side quests and eventually defeat the evil dragon Orochi.
Don’t let the game’s complex storyline intimidate you. Because if you do, you’ll miss out on Ōkami‘s brilliant, innovative animation style, which is based on traditional Japanese watercolor paintings. In fact, one of your main weapons is a “celestial brush” used to paint and cast spells, ranging from making the sun rise to cutting a foe in half.
Japanese developer Clover Studio, renowned for its classic Viewtiful Joe, has produced what is arguably the aging console’s best-looking game yet, which could become one of its last great epics.
LocoRoco
SCEA
PSP
Nintendo DS’ superior games have overshadowed the PlayStation Portable’s better technology for the past year — until now. Sony’s handheld has finally found its way with the fun, weird and undeniably adorable side-scrolling platformer LocoRoco.
Cheerful, singing gelatinous blobs known as LocoRocos spend their time eating berries and bouncing about the 40 levels of their pastel-colored world. That is until the evil Mojo Corps descends from outer space with a hunger for cheerfully singing gelatinous blobs.
The gravity-based gameplay is dead simple — the shoulder buttons tilt the world right or left to roll the Loco and bounce it over obstacles and through tunnels. If a passageway proves too small, it can split into a bunch of smaller blobs.
Impeccably designed and wildly original in style, the award-winning LocoRoco recognizes handheld games are best played in bite-size chunks. Perhaps the PSP has its long-awaited killer game.
Harvest Moon DS
Marvelous Interactive/Natsume
Nintendo DS
Tired of shooting bad guys? Why not try milking cows?
Yep, the long-running and much-loved Harvest Moon series has migrated to the DS. (The game first appeared on Nintendo’s Super NES in 1997.)
Though the overhead graphics aren’t much better than on the GBA versions, inserting a cartridge from the two HM: Friends of Mineral Town game unlocks special features, while the DS’ dual screens keeps the action and menus separate. The stylus also does everything from picking tools to sheering sheep.
There’s a vague plotline — the harvest goddess has been turned into stone and must be rescued to return magic to Forget-Me-Not Valley, the setting of 2004’s Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. But the game still has the same farming themed role-playing-game goodness. Players raise livestock, plant crops, chat with villagers, party at festivals and, eventually, settle down and get married.
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Traveler’s Tales/LucasArts
Multiplatform
While it was certainly satisfying to repeatedly lightsaber Jar Jar Binks into a mess of pixilated Lego pieces, the drawback to last year’s surprise smash Lego Star Wars was that it was based on the inferior second trilogy.
Thankfully, LucasArts went back to the drawing board for a sequel that ups the first game’s satirical humor and goofball charm with more of the famous toy’s inherent creativity. Not only is everything in the game — from the AT-AT Walkers to Darth Vader — built of Lego bricks, now players can customize their own vehicles and characters, mixing and matching to create, say, Lukebacca or Greedo Calrissian. In addition to the 50 playable characters, another 50 can be unlocked with a save file from the prequel game.
Whether playing solo or with others, the game’s new adaptive difficulty setting should ensure that no matter your skill level, the Force will still be with you.
