hen Oni was announced three years ago, it seemed like a cutting-edge idea to have a heroine who could not only shoot her enemies (as Lara Croft did in those days) but who also could punch and kick her way through a fight (like Xena or Buffy). Unfortunately, the path of game development is seldom smooth. Now it is 2001, and Oni, with its feisty, anime-inspired heroine, Konoko, is finally in stores, but by now several games have already made it to market with protagonists who deal death either down the barrel of a gun or fighting hand to hand. Fortunately for Bungie, none of those protagonists has Konoko's moves.
The background for Oni is nothing to write home about. George Orwell and Philip K. Dick envisioned it, Ridley Scott gave it a look, and anime and game producers have been mining it ever since. The future is dark and Konoko is a cop. The bad guys are the Syndicate. There are human-appearing androids on both sides who are mucho tough and dangerous. The Syndicate is running illegal weapons and Konoko is trying to stop them. What stopping them amounts to is the player using the compass in the lower left of the screen to run Konoko from one objective to the next, kicking the bejesus out a variety of thugs and androids along the way.
The view is from behind Konoko, so that the player can watch her make her moves. Aiming is done with the mouse and moving is done with the keys. The keys can be remapped, but the player has to open one of the game files and actually type in the new key assignments. There are a minimum of control keys.
The guns are pointed and fired with the mouse and the fighting moves are done with combinations of keys and mouse clicking. Konoko can be made to leap, roll, slide, cartwheel, leg-sweep, kick, punch, shuffle, flip (backwards and forwards) and run.
Moves that Dark Angel would die for
The best part of Oni is the cool fighting moves--in short, Oni contains enough moves to
satisfy the fans of any fighting game. They can be struck in every direction, so Konoko can bash first the thug in front of her and then the one behind her without changing the way she faces. Many of the key combinations to launch some of the more deadly moves are hard to execute (remapping the key board can help, although you'll have to go to the Web site to find out how to do so), but the basic moves are both dangerous and interesting. Flips, in particular, are gratifyingly easy to perform, and if Konoko flips a thug off an upper-story ledge, he doesn't come back. One frustration, however, is that Konoko can't hit enemies when they are down. She either has to try and jump on them, shoot them or just wait for them to get back up.
Shooting a fallen foe (or a standing one) in Oni is seldom the option. Aiming with the mouse isn't easy, most of the thugs are pretty bulletproof, and whenever they hit Konoko and she has a gun out, she drops it. Of course, this tactic works against the thugs, too. If Konoko hits a thug with a gun, he will drop it. Konoko can pick up his gun if the player is quick about it. When Konoko is fighting one thug, having the fight reduced within moments to an exchange of martial arts moves is fun. When she is fighting one thug and another is shooting her, or if she is fighting two thugs and the thug on the next level is shooting his machine pistol at her (and always hitting her; thugs are all expert marksmen, apparently), then it is not so fun.
The waiting for opponents to get up and the losing of guns at the first blow are both in keeping with the martial arts/anime/action movie genre that inspired Oni. The repetition of the levels is not. The game is fun, but it is a lot of running around trying to figure out what switch Konoko is supposed to throw or which door the player didn't see the first time through the map. The level designers also went to a lot of trouble to make sure that all the rooms and stairwells look the same. This makes it that much harder for the player to remember where Konoko has
been. Basically, Oni a good game engine with good character models and cut scenes that is hampered by some boring level design and a well-worn story.
While it is great that you can kick butt as well as shoot it, what you can't do, even though you're playing a cop, is yell, "Freeze! Police!" and have the thug actually freeze.
-- Eric
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