BitSnark

Praise the sun!

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed fellow blogger Critical Panda has since discovered that the game does NOT require the PS Move for gameplay and can, instead, be played solely with the traditional controller.  The article has been updated to reflect this and a trailer (also discovered by said Panda), has been attached to the bottom of the article.  Enjoy! 

It’s time to dust off or rebuy that Playstation Move controller you scrubs; Capcom this morning have confirmed that one of 2007’s best last gen titles will finally make it’s bow a generation later with the giddy news that Okami will be remastered in high-definition, exclusively for the PS3 with optionalPlaystation Move functionality.

In retrospect, the PS Move with it’s tremendous accurate motion tracking credentials has always seemed like the ideal platform for such a conversion and now it’s become a reality; an absolutely brilliant, fucking reality.

At this point it does look like it will stay a Ps3 exclusive too, I mean could you imagine trying to play it through Kinect? Instead of the masterful brushstrokes required by the game, the screen would look like someone would have thrown the whole paint pot at it.  Still, I would have liked to have seen the game on the 360 nevertheless, even if it *just* utilised traditional controller methods; the more formats Okami is on, the better really.

Details wise, things are pretty thin on the ground as far as the game goes.  For instance, we’re not sure if the forthcoming HD remaster will boast the more muted colours of the original PS2 version, or if it will utilise the much more glossy and vibrant pallete of the later released Wii version, though I imagine that they would be using the latter rather than the former, as a point of origin for the visuals on this version of the game.  No other PS3 exclusive features have been announced either, but the details that we DO know are the price and a release window; which are £19.99 and Autumn respectively.

Really, this game should have happened earlier in the cycle for the PS3 when Sony needed more decent games to reinvigorate the solid, but not spectacular sales of the Playstation Move.  Still, i’ll certainly take this all the same and my hope is that this will pave the way not only for more HD remasters of quality last-gen fodder (Kingdom Hearts i’m looking at you), but also that more cruically, it’ll result in a brand new Okami title for next-generation consoles.

‘Okami HD’ is due for release this Autumn exclusively for the PS3 with additional Playstation Move functionality