Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

By now if you haven’t heard that Okami‘s coming to the Wii, you at least know how badly I’ve wanted this to happen. In that light, here we have Okamiday, Final Edition. Okamiday is me posting assets and articles periodically about Okami, the PS2 game that’s widely considered Clover Studios’ swan song, a game whose sales at launch were so weak as to likely be a major factor in the developer’s dissolution.

Here were are just a couple of days before the release of Okami on Wii, and there are already a handful of opinions and impressions on the transition. The original PS2 game got some very strong reviews, and Wii reviews so far have not been quite as favorable. While the consensus seems to be that the mechanic is suited to IR control, impressions from IGN’s Matt Casamassina state that some of the controls are hard to execute until you understand exactly how they were designed to work. The example given is a vertical gesture that makes water spout from the ground, which works better with a quick short stroke than a long one. Something they mentioned a few podcasts ago was that the dodge motion, which uses the nunchuk, really doesn’t work at all, but is not necessary for the game anyway. They also complain about the uneven framerate in the game in recent podcasts, something that was apparently an issue in the original game as well.

Nintendo Power’s review of the game gave it a surprising 7.5, and the reviewer cites the controls as being an issue. They go so far as to say if you can play this on the PS2, do that instead. As someone who doesn’t own a PS2, I’ll be playing it on Wii, but I’ll definitely be trying to keep my expectations down on the game.

On the bright side, all seem to agree that the brilliance of the original game is completely intact, and the music is incredible. Casamassina, who was a main voice against IGN’s awarding the game Game of the Year for 2006 (beating out Twilight Princess) has said that now that he’s spent many, many hours with the game, he’s really getting the point.

I’ll be sharing some impressions of the game myself, as I expect to be picking up my preordered copy this week when it releases.