Title: Oni
Publisher: Bungie Software
Platform: PC
Ok, imagine this: cross Mortal Kombat, Doom, and anime styled artwork into
one entity. Sounds messed up, right? Now imagine that they go WELL together.
(Yes, you are still in Kansas, Dorothy). Market this messed up innovation,
and Oni is what you get, an interesting (and surprisingly successful)
merging of two of the most favorite style of games. It is the year 2032,
there is a world government a la Big Brother. Most of the citizens are
content (Im paraphrasing from the website, it doesnt really tell you much
about the government in the first few levels), at the cost of a bit of
freedom. There is also the Syndicate (go badguys!), the underworld group of
criminals hell bent on destroying the world or some other lofty goal. You
play as Konoko, a young girl in what passes for the ATF department of the
future. You are young, feminine, and gung-ho. You can also bench press a
motorcycle, if so inclined. But wait, theres more! Your past is shrouded in
mystery, and you are "different." Anyway, to cut to the chase, you get to
run around doing ATF type things, like raiding warehouses for contraband,
and beating the living snot out of anyone who gets in your way.
Plot. The plot builds slowly in the beginning (Ive only done the first 2
missions, mind you). You are let off your leash by your scientist keepers to
go raid a warehouse, and follow up on some leads. In the process, you learn
a few interesting things, like hyposprays give you back your health instead
of rendering you unconscious, and if you OD on them, you can berserk. Other
than that, it starts threads about one of the leaders of the Syndicate and
some illegal weapons research, so on and so forth. In other words, its a
standard plot type, nothing special.
Graphics. 3D graphics. This game isnt as power hungry as most. They
graphics are average. The scenery is decent. This game doesnt really try to
promote itself on eye candy, really. The graphics are nice, but nothing
special. (Note that I found it highly annoying that one cant destroy things
like consoles and other objects in the game). Your viewpoint is from a 3rd
person perspective.
Sound. Again, fairly average. Very nice sound effects. You can taunt your
enemies, which is highly amusing. I dont particularly recall the score. It
didnt move me to tears, nor did it give me reason to pull my sound card
(yes I could just turn off the speakers, or disable the music, but thats
too easy).
Gameplay. This is where the game racks up the points. You have 2 combat
styles: blast anything that moves or beat it to a bloody pulp (alas, no
spiffy blood and gore effects). Unlike all the other shoot em ups, you can
carry only one gun. You can trade it out for others that you find, but only
one at a time in your possession. Guns include a handgun, a machine gun, a
plasma rocket gun, a scatter-pack rocket launcher, and there is also a
really cool heavy mounted weapon, that because of your strength, you can
walk around with it (soooo slowly) and annihilate things. There are two
types of ammo, the green kind and the red kind (the machine gun and the
rocket launcher share the same type of ammo. Interesting, no?). Some
weapons, such as the handgun, have recoil, which means sustained fire at a
target involves some interesting mouse maneuvering. When shooting, you get a
kind of targeting reticule and/or a laser beam guide to your target to tell
where you are shooting, depending on the gun. Ammo is less than plentiful in
the game, which means most of the time you get to go with option number two,
and attempt to break every bone in some poor sods body. The mouse is your
means of orientation for maximum buttocks kicking. You move forward and
backwards with WASD keys (there is a configuration option to switch it to
IJKL for lefties). Shift and control and space let you run, jump, flip,
and twirl. The mouse buttons kick and punch. The spiffy part is that as you
go on, you learn new attacks. Combinations of punches and kicks, jumps and
flips and running, and your location next to your opponent, let you do
everything from punch combos to slides to throws to
dislocating-your-opponents-arms-while-you-break-his-spine (and much much
more!). If it sounds tricky, its really not. Its easy to catch on, and you
have to go through a short tutorial before the general maiming begins.
Final Ratings:
Graphics: 7 out of 10
Sound: 7.5 out of 10
Gameplay: 10 out of 10
Replay Value: 7 of 10
Difficulty: 7 of 10
Spiffiness: 8 out of 10
Overall: 7.75 out of 10
Fianl Note: This is an interesting game. Its quite innovative, and worth
playing, just to try out the gameplay style.
Another Note: Oni means ghost or demon in Japanese. This little fact gets
its own subheading, because I couldnt find anywhere to put it. :)
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
OPERATING SYSTEM: Microsoft Windows Windows 98/ME (with Service Pack 3 or higher)/2000.
CPU: Pentium III processor or higher.
MEMORY: 64Mb RAM
HARD DRIVE SPACE: 800MB free hard drive space
Hardware accelerated 3D graphics card (OpenGL compatible).
Video Modes Supported: Voodoo 2+, TNT2+, Rage Pro+, Intel i890.
Supported graphics: 3DFX Voodoo 2, ATI Rage Pro, ATI Rage 128.
Only OpenGL, Glide and Software Rendering supported on WindowsNT.
Mac OS System Requirements:
System 8 or higher.
300MHz PowerPC or higher.
64MB of RAM.
800MB free hard disk space.
Supported graphics, 3DFX Voodoo 2, ATI Rage Pro, ATI Rage 128 (All G4 based Macs, some non-beige G3 Macs) and CD-ROM.
