Oni (Sony PlayStation 2, 2001)

Oni is the story of a futuristic spec-ops/policewoman named Konoko fighting an antigovernment agency while dealing with the problems of her past. The characters in this game draw heavily from the anime/manga Ghost in the Shell (Konoko, Kusanagi, hmmmm?)and if you happened to have played the Ghost in the Shell: SAC game, then this game will feel like a low-tech rendition of it.

Like SAC, Oni is plagued by monotonous enemies, drab backgrounds, and a rather awkward battle system. More often then not, you will find yourself knocking down an enemy and then be unable to inflict more damage until he gets back up (and he takes his sweet time too) in which he has another opening to hit you. I mention the hand to hand combat first because this would probably be the most effective way to take down any enemy period because the aim of most weapons is difficult at best. However, sometimes your weapon will auto target when the crosshairs get close enough to the enemy, but don't count on it. You can also pull of some pretty cool stealth kills later on in the game, but when you need to take out a large number of soldiers, good ole' punches and kicks are about the only way to go. In addition, if you need to scale a building, be sure to take about ten to twenty minutes to scout out your route and practice jumping from box to box because controlling your jumping on small platforms causes more frustration than it is worth. In short, most of the controls in this game are severely flawed, although I give them credit for mixing guns and melee attacks as they did.

One thing the game developers did get right (!) was the storyline and cutscenes. Nowadays almost every game has a strong voiceover set for the characters, but for the time Oni came out, voiceovers such as those found in Oni were rare (bear with me, this is coming from a RPG enthusiast standpoint where most RPG's of the day rarely had any voice acting). These voices greatly enhance the quality of the cutscenes, considering how outdated the graphics of the characters are.

Did I mention this game was developed by Bungie? Bungie seemed to have made a variety of games, many of which seemed to stem from another idea, just like Oni is so similar to Ghost in the Shell. Oni was Bungie's last game before making the prolific Halo series every fps fan knows and loves.

Most of the graphical flaws are probably due to the age of the game, but if you notice a head or an arm sticking through a wall, you know you are close to a room you just finished. However, sometimes you will get aid from other characters such as rank police which help distract some of the enemies from dogpiling you during intense missions, or civilians who will give you items or aid mission objectives if you manage to protect them from harm. This feature alone puts the gameplay above that of SAC in my personal opinion.

Some games that come to mind as similar styles to Oni include the Splinter Cell games, the PS1 Fear Factor games, even a bit of Timesplitters, and of course if I haven't stressed it enough, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. If you liked any of those games then Oni might perk your interest, but don't expect much from it, and it won't expect much from you. And at the price you can find it for these days (as low as about $1 !!!) Oni is a bargain if you are bored and yearning for some old school stealth action.

On the first, an only, PlayStation 2 game that developer Bungie designed, They change their bonafide Marathon first person shooter for an anime style third person action game.

Don't get me wrong. Is a very good game. It's just unusual for an American Developer to create a complete anime-inspired game from the ground up.

Your main character is an android named Konoko. She is part of the law enforcement in the city. What she didn't expect is a mysterious voice that talks to her. Only to find out is an old ghost from a past she doesn't even know it really exist(the Oni). That is pretty much the story of the game.

Now the controls. Unfortunately is not what you can expect from a third person action game. The camera is very sensitive. You can easily change the view and it moves fast can disorient you very quickly. The anime style video cutscenes and the plot itself will remind you of a mix of different animes. The targeting system is very good. You can at least point and shoot with no hassle. You will have more trouble with most of the actions your character does.

Still, this game is enjoyable and a must for Bungie fans.

The events of Oni take place in or after the year 2032. The game world is a dystopia, an Earth so polluted that little of it remains habitable. To solve international economic crises, all nations have combined into a single entity, the World Coalition Government. The government is Orwellian, telling the populace that what are actually dangerously toxic regions are wilderness preserves, and its police forces to suppress opposition. The player character, code-named Konoko (voiced by Amanda Winn-Lee), full name later given as Mai Hasegawa, begins the game working for the police. Soon, she learns her employers have been keeping secrets about her past from her. She turns against them as she embarks on a quest of self-discovery. The player learns more about her family and origins while battling both the Technological Crimes Task Force and its greatest enemy, the equally monolithic criminal organization called the Syndicate. In the game's climax, Konoko discovers a Syndicate plan to cause the Atmospheric Conversion Centers, air-treatment plants necessary to keep most of the world's population alive, to catastrophically malfunction. She is partially successful in thwarting the plot, saving a portion of humanity.

This game is a third-person shooter, which is one of my favorite types.
The storyline was pretty good and hand-to-hand combat is very fun.
The only thing i didn't like were some areas of the game map where you can
enter but there's no where to go, so you'd get stuck.
Overall it's a pretty good game for 2001 and i really only bought it because
i didn't have it, but i'm satisfied with it.

It was a memorie of when i got my first ps2 i love that game. The game play is really good. The story line and plot of the story is pretty good so overall it is a great game.