My top gameplay experiences over the year – #1!
As a consumer, I don’t have easy access to all the year’s biggest games, often I must instead look to years of missed opportunities for my fantastic experiences. So while all the big sites are doing their favorite games of the year, here’s a game-by-game recall of my favorite games that I actually got around to playing this year (and yes some of them are from this year). This is in no real particular order as entrance is more a reward than denial a red mark.
1. Genma Onimusha
Prior to playing Onimusha, I had just come out of finishing my first classic style RE with Resident Evil for the Gamecube. While that game was designed in a more modern day, the experience often felt forced and overdone. It wasn’t even about the controls or the difficulty, I just didn’t have that much fun in hindsight. Part of the appeal in Onimusha was that there was a certain charm to its general simplicity and lack of pretension. It was a rather straightforward adventure game with a great aesthetic, atmosphere, and design. It’s known these days as a DMC-lite, but when playing the game I didn’t feel that it would have benefited from a much more rigorously designed combo system. Some slashes here and a sidestep there seemed more than sufficient. At the time, I thought of the experience as a “gamer’s soul food” as I felt I could get a lot of fun out of Onimusha without having to utterly dedicate myself to the game. And sometimes that’s all that’s necessary to have a good time.
The greatest asset Genma Onimusha has going for it is a classy level design. It may be a bunch of consecutive corridors with some pre-rendered artwork plastered on the walls, but with some well-placed enemies, each location has a unique and memorable feel attached to it. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same of many games that come out today. Keiji Inafune produced the series and I can easily see the same attention to crafting a great package as was given to his Mega Man franchise. Onimusha is a classic example on how to follow the tenets of game design to control the experience rather than overloading the player with gimmicky systems and bloated periphery.
I have no idea why this game is not more often cited for the hilariously bad voice-acting though.
[Image off of TeamXbox]
