PS2
Stroke of genius
Okami is the best game I’ve played all year. I played it for 48 hours over 41 days and loved every minute of it. It’s a huge, sprawling adventure that is perfectly paced and evolves continually throughout. It’s stunningly gorgeous, features innovative gameplay, a haunting score and a compelling story. As soon as I was finished, I was ready to start all over again and reach areas I missed and finish all the optional sidequests. It does the Zelda formula so perfectly, that I’m worried even Twilight Princess won’t compare to this masterpiece.
Naturally, it isn’t selling, and Capcom closed down developer Clover Studio. Who needs good original games when you can just keep on churning out sequel after sequel? I can’t wait to play Mega Man X988282701342! 
Comments
Okami certainly sounds like a good game. I’m looking forward to borrowing it from you. But I doubt Nintendo is too worried about it doing the Zelda thing better than Zelda herself.
I’m a Zelda apologist for real, so I’ll play whatever the N puts in front of me. I think the recent Zelda games shows I’m not alone. They’re littered with one-off concepts like time management (Majora’s Mask), miniaturization (Minish Cap) and sailing (Wind Waker) that are only loosely tied together with the Triforce and green hat. Seems that what Zelda people are really after is Zelda, not any particular component of the gameplay.
Nintendo’s earned themselves a certain elasticity with Zelda. And even if Okami ends up being a higher quality game than Twilight Princess from an objective standpoint, TP would have to be far beyond terrible to be considered anything other than a success.