Diehard GameFAN Review: Okami

Diehard GameFAN writes: "Clover Studios, despite only actually developing about five or six games (most of those being Viewtiful Joe products), has become one of those cult game companies that a lot of gamers mourn the passing of, and it's not too hard to see why: they were essentially taking established game concepts and stuffing them chock-full of style and artistic oddity, which was pretty much guaranteed to endear them to the games-as-art crowd. They didn't make the most unique games gameplay-wise, but their games were stylistically interesting and different, and had their own interesting design and sense of humor about them that was pretty sweet, and for that they will be missed by a lot of players.

I'll miss them because I loved God Hand, so to each their own.

But let it never be said that Capcom doesn't know how to squeeze the money out of something; after Clover's last two titles flopped on the PS2 (God Hand and Okami) and the studio was dissolved (because all of the talented people left the company, as opposed to the original belief that neither game was a success, though that might have had something to do with things behind the scenes), Capcom has opted to release the more marketable of the two games on the system that it is most likely to generate interest on, thus giving us Okami on the Wii. Far be it from me to suggest that something was perhaps less of a case of genuine desire to see a product succeed and be adopted by the fans and more of a case of making back your investment as quickly as possible, but in the end it doesn't matter; Okami was one of the best games released on the PS2, ever, so the fact that it gets another chance to make a go of it on the Wii is a-okay by me."