Oboromuramasa

Few consoles elicit more confused reactions, amongst gamers and developers alike, than the Nintendo Wii, to this day lambasted for its gimmicky controllers and lack of power and storage compared to its two main rivals, not to mention the supposed lack of “decent” games available for it. Yet somehow, sales figures can’t lie, it is massively successful and enjoyed by many; the market it provides for, however, doesn’t overlap the group that is most vocal: the internet hard-core gamers and journalists. Some scorn at the success of the Wii Fit but no matter how such products don’t provide for the hardcore, they do provide for the Wii’s main market, and to criticise that is not unlike criticising a dairy farm for not producing the beer you like so much better.

And despite the fact the Wii has proven itself to be the console of choice for, what some call, the “casual market”, some developers and publishers can’t help but try to pander to the hardcore. Games like Madworld and No More Heroes seem a bad fit for the Wii’s market, and their sales figures are less than stellar. This month it is no other than No More Heroes’ publisher Marvellous who bring us “Oboromuramasa”, the latest game by Vanillaware of Odin Sphere fame.

The game itself is nothing more than a brawler set in an ancient Japanese setting, through which the player moves via small stages where the occasional brawler battle takes place. There are some RPG elements involved, like levelling up and forging swords, but generally the game is a button masher and would probably fare better on other consoles where the main market is more receptive to such titles.

That said, what Muramasa has going for it is, like Odin Sphere, the drop-dead gorgeous visuals, proving once again that art direction trumps technological prowess by a mile. This game would have been immensely lacklustre had it been rendered in “glorious” 3D utilising every single byte of memory that the Xbox360 or PS3 have to offer. Instead it runs comfortably in the Wii’s low-resolution environment with its beautiful, hand-drawn 2D graphics that are rich with little touches of detail and sometimes barely perceptible animations. Seeing Musamasa in motion is gratifying in itself, regardless of the game mechanics behind it. It is simply beautiful.

People versed in ancient Japanese art and history will find plenty here to get excited about. Images borrow heavily from famous artworks, and though generally fairly “anime” styled, it has an overall feel of historical paintings. This, the Japanese version of the game, also relies heavily on kanji and a little bit of an obtuse front-end, so importers are advised to wait for the European or American versions.

Once these localised versions are released, though, I suspect it will find somewhat of a larger market abroad than it does in Japan, especially among the “Japanophiles”, as the game drips Nihonese like nothing else. But even then it will have to compete with much better marketed games like Wii Fit and big licensed fare that the casual gamer might have heard of. I fear this game might not receive the attention it deserves simply because it is a new game and people need to know about it before they actively seek it out and buy it, as opposed to stumbling across it in a game shop and picking it up on a whim; that seems to be a tactic that doesn’t work well for Wii games.

Though I am becoming less and less of a “hard-core” gamer, I am immensely gratified developers like Vanillaware continue to pursue their art and create off-beat games like Muramasa; especially as a visual artist myself I am getting a lot of enjoyment out of the presentation alone. My thumb, however, probably won’t outlast the actual gaming experience and I am probably doomed, like many others no doubt, to get the main bulk of my enjoyment from HD Youtube movies created by others.

Oboromuramasa is a gorgeous game. I recommend it to anybody who is serious about the medium to look at it as another example of games being an art in and of themselves, as opposed to something similar or equal to the more established art forms. Buy it when it is released locally and keep your fingers crossed Vanillaware makes enough money out of it to spurn them on to make more games with this visual style.