Console Ports

A Zen Game For a Zen Day

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I thought long and hard (uhuhhuh) this evening about what game to play, the same ol same ol or something different? I thought I would give the remastering of Ōkami a go, and I regret nothing.

Bringing talking out your ass to a whole new level.

I remember hearing about Ōkami a long time ago, when G4 (channel for the latest in gaming, technology, and depending on what time of the night showed awkward animes and porn gadgets) was showcasing this title, and I thought the style and gameplay looked cool. I thought the concept of being an ethereal wolf who defeats their enemies and solves puzzles relying mainly on paintbrush strokes (and pissing apparently?) was intriguing. But alas, the game was primarily for the PS2 nullifying my desire to get in on the action.

Years later I contemplated getting my hands on a rom for it to try in an emulator (this was before acquiring the $10 PS3 mind you), and behold! An announcement was made for a PC port. Now I can play it on my main platform, be able to take it anywhere I go, and use it with any controller or the ol keyboard and mouse setup. I even thought it was nice of Capcom to include an official Steam Controller config for the game, I can tell they took some time to set it up, though me being me I had to configure it my own way. :trollface: Still, a really nice touch on their behalf. They’ve come a long way on the PC side of things. I can almost forgive them for their shitty DMC3 port… almost. :zorak:

I’d have to say the only complaint I have is the long cutscenes in the beginning, and the voices of the characters in the game are out of a fever induced BanjoKazooie nightmare. But everything else is golden. The fighting style is really different, just painting your enemies to death. Interacting with elements of the game with brushstrokes, and of course making the world a beautiful place once again after being drenched in darkness by a 5 headed cockdragon :morty: . I may of had to wait longer than everyone else on PS2, but at least I can enjoy it in my own way. :melon:

Unleashing my inner samurai

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The Steam Winter Sale brought forth lots of fun investments and gifts, I decided to venture into one that was gifted to me recently called Samurai Warriors 4-II. It looks promising, the art style is really beautiful and the dialogue is in Japanese, so you’ll want to use subtitles unless you’ve mastered the language. The characters themselves look pretty awesome! You even have the option of making your own to play outside of story mode:

It was bound to happen.

The gameplay looked like a lot of fun from what I’ve seen in videos. That was until I had a look at the control scheme:

Bit of a problem here… The mouse is non-existent in this game, as in it doesn’t even exist as a cursor. Pretty shitty considering other hack n slashes give you a keyboard and mouse option. Seriously, who thought these controls were a good idea? For example if you want to rotate the camera around you have to press buttons… I tried plugging in a controller, not my Steam Controller but one of my Logitechs, since this game is a port from Playstation I figured I’d try something close to its native control, but even that felt awkward. And the camera wouldn’t move with the right analog stick, fucking really? When that didn’t work I looked into Steam Controller configs. Some of them came pretty close to working out ok, but I think I’ll have to make my own from scratch.

This is a Japanese game, but for the love of Bob look at some other Japanese ports to PC for inspiration. The Devil May Cry games (excluding 3 because that was a shitty port) and Metal Gear Rising did a good job porting the game to work with both a controller or a keyboard and mouse setup. There really is no excuse for this.

I’m hoping the Steam Controller can fix this game up good with a special config. I really want to like this game, it’s pleasing to all the other senses, but play-ability thwarts appearances. The game has such positive reviews, so I’m hoping there is some sort of workaround.