Oni is one of those hit-or-miss games that any game enthusiast should play, but hardcore graphics lovers should avoid.
The Good: Decent enough graphics, good animation, good sound, great opening/ending cinematics and refreshing fighting/shooting system.
The Bad: clipping issues, some visual holes in levels, occasionally frustrating AI, not enough shooting, some weapons suck, menu and save point issues, Great opening and ending but average art for everything in between.
The game is set in the future, a rather dismal and dystopian one at that. The world is run by a government that combined to form a single body when a massive environmental catastrophe turned the air of the planet poisonous; small cuts resulted in fatal infections. Atmosphere ‘scrubbers’ keep things livable in cities and cleaned areas. Not to be outdone, criminal organizations joined together to combat the “TCTF,” the universal police force of the government. This ‘criminal government’ is known as The Syndicate, which isn’t entirely original, but is effective enough to give a sort of soulless and violent flavor to its ranks.
The player experiences the game through the eyes, or rather, behind the shoulders of Konoko. She works for the TCTF, and right from the get-go it’s obvious something is weird about her. She has violet hair, the only unique color in the game (despite the games attempt to be an anime inspired game) aside from two of the other main characters. She’s also one of the top agents, despite being new at her job, and is sent in – usually alone – to deal with syndicate threats. The story has some very creepy moments a person wouldn’t expect, such as a torture scene later on involving an android shaped like a 12-year-old. The game didn’t skimp on the character development, that’s for sure.
The gameplay is both straightforward, and a little awkward. The first level of the game is a training mission, which teaches Konoko the basics. Mostly, the player will be fighting their way through the game using combinations of punches, kicks, throws, dodges, and even some sneaking to land some deadlier attacks from behind. It’s essentially a fully 3d brawling game, as if Streets of Rage suddenly got its 3rd dimension and a female protagonist. Different button combinations will perform different moves—three punches will result in a combo, three kicks, two punches followed by a kick, etc. This system plays quite well, and is actually an excellent representation of a fully 3d, multi-combatant brawler with some more advanced tactics such as staggering for attack openings, or throwing opponents into others to get some breathing room while they recover. Sneaking is fully viable, but it is difficult to do since most enemies are actually quite alert. It’s quite satisfying to hear the crackle of the ‘backbreaker’ move, though, so it’s worth it to crouch-walk around and bag a few bad guys quietly. There are, as you’d expect in a brawler, boss fights here and there. Big guys with big guns (that you can use), Super Ninja’s (that means he is fast and almost invisible, cause Ninja’s cheat like that), and eventually indulging in some of Konoko’s sibling rivalry is all here.
Healing and shooting is quite simple. Healing is done with ‘hypos,’ quick injectors of medicines that heal wounds. Several can be carried, and they can be used by hitting the tab key. However, they work differently on Konoko than on… Other people. She can overdose on these health items, getting an unearthly violet glow and suddenly becoming very powerful until the overdose wears off. Gunning in the game is simplistic at best; Konoko wields a single weapon at a time, which can be holstered to let her fight bare-handed. When a weapon is wielded, controls for looking are tightened, and punching is disabled; this makes things more accurate for aiming. However, there is usually not much ammo around for the guns. This isn’t a problem, as Konoko will find herself simply using the particularly painful looking disarming moves to yank a fresh gun from her victim’s hand for a quick kill on another guy in the distance. It goes to note that if Konoko disarms an opponent with a weapon while she’s unarmed, she can hold the trigger down on the gun as she does so, emptying half the clip into her unfortunate target before he’s thrown a few feet away and the animation finishes. Since many enemies are fully armed, the game does give forcefields, which do nothing to sway melee damage but fully absorb projectiles until they collapse from the stress.
The way it all looks and sounds is, well, a bit mixed. The animations and effects are quite interesting in some respects. Most of the animation is fluid, cinematic, and actually quite brief. This makes performing the various bone-contorting martial arts Konoko utilizes pretty satisfying. Some of the weapons are a joy to watch work as well. The ‘screamer’ fires an entity of energy, which will home in on opponents and drain their life force to continue existing in the world. The screech of it is obvious, unique, and when its life ends, the metal projectile it was clinging to will bounce lifelessly as it smolders and finally disappears. The sound of the fighting isn’t lacking either, with smacks, slams, and wet crunches and thuds. However, the textures of the game are quite plain. It isn’t truly cell shaded as XIII was, but instead went for a mock cell shaded look, giving the models a sort of pasty or doll-like look. This made for some interesting things, though, as the shapes of the various models (Konoko herself has several different outfits through the coarse of the game) were pretty varied and didn’t bog down the play. The game is almost fully voiced, and pressing the action button while fighting will have Konoko taunt. Having her say “So there!” to an armored, 7 foot tall soldier after she’s pummeled him into dreamland is amusing, to say the least, and the game’s characters are very well voiced right up until the end of the game. The bad guy at the end gets a little, shall we say, ‘nutty.’
There are a few frustrations. The AI, for one, can be spotty. It will either be as intelligent as a sack of hammers and let you beat the crap out of it with little problems, be nearly omniscient, or in certain cases will outright cheat. Konoko will be busy hammering her opponent, but will suddenly find herself caught out of a full combo – while the enemy was being staggered by the attacks – and into a very damaging throw move (which may very well end with her being sent off a rooftop or high ledge). In some cases, a few enemies can even jump up and instantly throw Konoko to the concrete while they are flat out on the ground. All in all though, the AI is difficult enough to warrant avoid fighting more than one or two at a time—you can only block attacks from the front, and getting in a 5-way brawl isn’t exactly what one would call ‘easy.’
Many of Konoko’s throwing moves have a sort of ‘momentum’ to them, as she does seem to be quite light in terms of fighting. For example, while running she can jump up and grip a victim between her legs, then do a little bit of acrobatics to send him flying several feet forward while she continues onward. This leads to a lack of control at times—which is a big issue in this game. Some of the moves are notoriously difficult to pull off, even though when Konoko discovers them the game tells the player exactly how to use them. A simple spinning kick move could turn into a sweep at just the wrong moment, bringing a lot of hurt down on Konoko as her enemies converge. Or, in the case of that flipping leg-throw, it could send both Konoko and her opponent off a cliff since she cannot stop herself or grab onto ledges.
The most humbly annoying part of the game though, is the save points and menu system. A player cannot customize their button layout—only graphical quality and the inversion of the mouse vertical. Even then, while actually in the game, these options cannot be changed; the options menu is replaced by ‘load game’ for some reason. It uses typical WASD configuration, though, so anyone familiar with FPS games will likely be right at home. The save points utilize checkpoints, and this can be especially frustrating when the AI decides its omniscient for a certain fight. A full half hour of gameplay can be lost from a single opponent kicking the you-know-what out of the heroine or a sudden suicidal streak that has the enemy throwing themselves—with Konoko—into a pit or off a ledge. There is no need to open a save game menu, though, as the checkpoints and level openings always auto-save—which can force you to load a previous checkpoint since the player might get Konoko into a very bad situation without knowing the checkpoint was coming up.
Oni is, at its core, a love-it-or-hate-it game. It is a rather successful marriage of melee combat and shooting, but with a few noticeable drawbacks that do hamper the overall success of the game as a whole. It was a new ‘taste,’ so to speak, a logical evolution of brawling games, and the designers did exceptionally well in the evolution of the combat system. It also tried to create a sort of ‘cell shaded’ universe, and was an attempt at making an anime atmosphere for a game—with mixed results. At least he heroine was kick-ass. “So there!”