Okami PS3 Trailer

A few weeks ago SE announced that "Final Fantasy III DS" would be ported over to the PSP, making "Final Fantasy III DS PSP" (try saying that title the fastest you can, its fun!).  They even included screenshots, and the game looks exactly the same.  No graphical upgrades at all.  So this release could only have two markets:  people who inexplicably do not own a DS and only a PSP, or idiots who buy the same game twice just out of blind fanboy stupidity.

So I bring this up because Capcom actually is doing something very similar.  They're porting one of the greatest video games ever made, "Okami" for the PS3, now calling it "Okami HD".  At first this might sound like a good idea, since "Okami" is a game that's about eight years old and could use a graphical upgrade right?  Actually no, trailer:

THIS LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME!  And I mean, utterly exactly the same.  Capcom even included a comparison between the PS3 and PS2 versions, which I'm going to have to call false advertising.  The PS2 version in this trailer appears to be filmed through a filter of max paper while a fog machine is going off while the game is being played on a dusty TV that hasn't been cleaned since the Clinton Administration.  Maybe if Capcom actually is confused enough to think "Okami" looks anything like that, they could escape my label of being "greedy liars too lazy to make "Okami 3" already".  But otherwise, they're greedy liars too lazy to make "Okami 3" already.

The funny thing about this "Okami HD" remake is how its a classic case of how greed is the gift that keeps on giving.  First Sony develops the PlayStation 3, a console that for no reason at all does not have connectivity with the old PS2.  This turns out to be a godsend for developers, who are able to fill out the console's rather mediocre lineup with "HD remakes" of old PS2 games.  For example, you could buy "Shadow of the Colossus HD" now, which is a silly thing in of itself, because "Shadow of the Colossus" is already a beautiful game that was perfectly fine on the hardware of its time.  Square Enix is quixotically developing "Final Fantasy X HD", because of $$$ mostly*.  Or rather entirely.  So is this the future of gaming?  Every single console generation we'll have to buy a whole new version of the games we bought five to ten years ago?

"Okami HD" is where it just gets surreal.  I guess graphical remakes are fine if you're a really superficial person who needs every single game to have cutting edge graphics or else you just can't play the games anymore, there's a market for it.  But "Okami" is a game that physically cannot be graphically tuned up.  This is because of its innovative visual style that made it one of the most beautiful games to ever be made, so already updating the graphics is pointless.  Cel-shading on its own holds up far better over the years than regular graphics.  Ten years from now people are going to slowly realize that games like "Heavy Rain" look like shit, but "Okami", "Wind Waker", "Dragon Quest VIII", and "Ni No Kuni" will still look as great as the day they came out.  This is why the HD remake of "Okami" looks entirely the same, you get nothing for your money except for two copies of "Okami".

And if its just a question of playing "Okami" with motion controls, there's a Wii version.

So maybe you're a really big "Okami" fan.  I'm an "Okami" fan, I'd rank it as one of the best games I've ever played.  But let's say you're disturbingly into "Okami".  You have "Okami" bedsheets, you snuggle up to your Chibiteratsu plush toy, your car has decals of Ammy on the side.  Go buy "Okami HD" then, fine.  You can get deranged fanboy satisfaction for the purchase.  As for everybody else, you don't need to spend your money here.

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* If SE wanted to give something an HD remake, why not "Xenogears" since that game technically wasn't finished at all?  Or "Final Fantasy VII" since the fans have been begging for that for decades?  Or "Final Fantasy Type-0", which was never released in the US because it came out on the PSP?  That last one is particularly annoying for me, by the way.  Or SE could spend their resources on something that actually matters, instead of a game eleven years old that the world already loves and is mostly completely fine with.