Okami (Wii)

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In 2006, Capcom and its offbeat development group Clover released the PlayStation 2 version of Okami -- an engrossing action-adventure set in a beautifully rendered mythological Japan that met with great critical fanfare but little commercial success. Clover has been dissolved since then, but at least Okami is getting a well-deserved second chance at a wide audience with a Wii port handled by God of War: Chains of Olympus developers Ready at Dawn. Despite some ill-advised use of motion controls in this version, Okami's overall quality is no less compelling than it was two years ago. There's not much new here for veterans of the PS2 original, but Wii-owning newcomers will find Okami to be one of the best adventures currently available on their console.

The game is set during an indeterminate time in Japan's ancient, mystical past. It's been 100 years since a valiant warrior named Nagi and a mysterious ethereal white wolf called Shiranui defeated the evil, eight-headed serpent-beast Orochi (though it was Shiranui who handled most of the heavy lifting). Now Orochi has somehow been freed from its imprisonment in the Moon Cave, and a creeping decay has begun to blacken the landscape and fill the countryside with monsters. You take control of Amaterasu, a second white wolf said to be the embodiment of the sun god himself. Along with Issun, a tiny traveling artiste who provides running commentary and comic relief, you'll direct Amaterasu across the blighted lands of old Nippon, using your divine powers to defeat demons and magically restore the country's verdant hills and babbling brooks to their former splendor.

Okami flows a lot like modern 3-D Zelda games: You'll move from villages to shrines to caves, meeting a variety of characters and solving their problems as you work to reverse Orochi's blight. Collectively, the game's many areas are a real sight to behold. Even two years after its first release, Okami's evocative graphics are one of the first and most impressive things you notice about the game. Clover took the game's setting as inspiration for its visual design, combining smart texture and modeling work with post-processing filters and effects to give the game a wispy, ethereal look that's effectively reminiscent of an old-fashioned Japanese watercolor painting. It's a style best appreciated in motion, and it really enhances the sense of otherworldly mysticism that's present throughout Okami's adventure.

The game's painterly visuals go hand in hand with the Celestial Brush, the game's primary puzzle-solving mechanic. You can flatten the game world onto a 2-D canvas at any time, and then use this brush to paint a number of different simple shapes that cause all sorts of magical effects. A simple horizontal stroke can chop down a number of trees, for instance, while painting a circle in the sky at nighttime causes the sun to appear and bring about a new dawn. Painting that same circle over a rotted old tree or befouled patch of earth, however, causes it to bloom anew. Painting a circle with a line through one side (that is, a bomb with a fuse) causes an explosion that you can use to demolish some obstacles. You meet numerous divine personalities as you continue to restore the land, and each one of them will bestow a new brush technique you can use to solve future puzzles.