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Okami is easily one of the best games in years.

The visual design, the gameplay, the story, it's all so great.

It's Zelda, but you're a wolf-god and the game looks like a Japanese wood carving. And you "paint" the screen to realize your godly powers. It's genius.

And if it weren't for the fucking annoying, jumping insect that provides "comic" relief and "helpful" hints, the game would probably be nearly flawless.

As is, it oscillates between me loving the game so much I don't ever want it to end, and me throwing the controller down and screaming at the screen for Issun to shut up.

I'm not sure when video games collectively decided that they needed their own version of Clippy to ensure players would never be frustrated about what to do next, but it was a mistake. A massive mistake.

Navi in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Cedric in King's Quest 5, that damned book in Kameo, Telly in Chibi Robo, they all need to go. Or at the very least, be optional.

When I played The Legend of Zelda in 1986 no magical fairy told me what to do. Occassionally an old man would say something like "10th enemy has the bomb," but that was only when he wasn't trying to get me to play some shady rupee gambling game.

The point is, I was six, I had no fucking idea what to do next. But I figured it out without some annoying fairy telling me what to do and finding my way through Death Mountain and beating Ganon built character.

Clearly not that much character, given how things are going 20 years later, but certainly some character.

I worry for today's youth.

— October 10, 2006

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