Blog Post 4: Neverending Okami

There could not be two more opposite games than the two for this week. Neverending Nightmare is a dark and introspective look into a horrific scenario and Okami is a classic Zelda inspired, cell shaded adventure. Both to focus on the similarities for a moment, art direction for games is still as important today as it was back in the day. Okami will probably go another ten years just based off of the art direction and Neverending sticks out from out horror games by using an art style that invokes horror in a different way.

A lot of the memories came flooding back when going through the tutorial (there should be a class about tutorials someday in a video game school) because that section scratches the surface how well that game’s art direction accomplishes. The developers are able to present grand vistas on the PS2, which at the time of the release, was old hardware. Metal Gear Solid 2 started this trend of a limit palette able to accomplish a lot. The wind dungeon comes to mind because of how tall the dungeon is but the way you traverse this place is still memorable to this day.