Oni (video game)

This article is about the computer game. For other uses, see Oni (disambiguation).

Oni
Developer(s)	Bungie (Windows, Mac), The Omni Group (Mac OS X port), Rockstar Toronto (PlayStation 2)
Publisher(s)	Gathering of Developers (Windows), Rockstar Games (PlayStation 2), MacSoft (Mac, North America), Feral Interactive (Mac, worldwide besides N.A.)
Designer(s)	Brent Pease, Hardy LeBel
Composer(s)	Michael Salvatori
Platform(s)	Windows 98/2000, Mac OS/OS X, PlayStation 2
Release date(s)	Windows/Mac EU January 26, 2001 NA January 28, 2001 JP September 27, 2001 PlayStation 2 NA January 29, 2001[1] EU March 9, 2001
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter, Beat 'em up
Mode(s)	Single-player
Rating(s)	ELSPA: 15+ ESRB: T
Media/distribution	1 CD

Oni is a third-person action game developed by Bungie West, a division of Bungie. Released in 2001, it was Bungie West's only game. It broke new ground by blending third-person shooting with hand-to-hand combat, resulting in a unique, yet familiar game for third-person shooter enthusiasts. In 1999, while still in development, Oni won the Game Critics Awards for Best Action/Adventure Game. Due to difficulties in debugging and the general unplayability of a fighting game over any less reliable network than a LAN at the time, multiplayer was omitted from the released version.

The game's universe is heavily influenced by Mamoru Oshii's anime film Ghost in the Shell.^[2] The main characters Konoko and Commander Griffin look similar to the film's protagonists Motoko Kusanagi and Daisuke Aramaki. Dark Horse Comics published a comic-book version of Oni as a four-issue limited series, the first issue of which was bundled with the Windows version of the game.

Gameplay

Konoko using a move effective on multiple enemies, the Devil Spin Kick.

There are ten different guns in Oni, including handguns, rifles, rocket launchers, and energy weapons. Power-ups such as "hyposprays", which heal damage, and cloaking devices, which render the player invisible, can be found scattered throughout the levels or on corpses. Since the player can carry only one weapon at a time and ammunition is scarce, hand-to-hand combat is also effective. The player can punch, kick, and throw enemies; progressing into later levels unlocks stronger moves and combos.

There are multiple classes of enemy, each with its own style of unarmed combat. Each class is subdivided into tiers of increasing strength. As in Bungie's earlier Marathon titles, tiers are color-coded.

Oni does not confine the player to fighting small groups of enemies in small arenas; each area is fully open to explore. The fourteen levels are of various sizes, some large enough to comprise an entire building. Bungie hired two architects to design the buildings.

The Oni engine implements a method of interpolation that tweens key frames, smoothing out the animation of complex martial-arts moves. However, frame slippage is a common problem when multiple non-player characters near the player are attacking.

Plot

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.

Cast

• Amanda Winn Lee as Konoko, the game's protagonist.
• Pete Stacker as Commander Griffin, the Head of TCTF Headquarters and Konoko's boss.
• Anne Bowerman as Shinatama.
• Norm Woodel as Hasagawa, Konoko and Muro's father and college teacher of Jamie (Konoko and Muro's mother and a sister of Dr. Kerr).
• Bob O'Donnell as Dr. Kerr, Konoko's uncle.
• Kurt Naebig as Muro, the game's primary antagonist.
• George Adams as Babaras, the game's first sub-antagonist, encountered in Missions 3 and 6.
• Kevin Gudahl as Mukade, the game's strongest sub-antagonist, encountered in Mission 10.

Easter Eggs

The first crate in the game's opening level carries the label "-OMM- TTC 1.1" This is a reference to the hugely influential now-defunct web publication Old Man Murray, which had created a humorous game rating system that would correlate the game's quality to the time the first crate would show up in game with crates signifying a lack of imagination of the level designers. "-OMM- TTC 1.1" stands for Old Man Murray time to first crate 1.1 seconds.^[3]

Reception

Critical reviews tended to be internally divided over the game's pros and cons; on Metacritic Oni has a "metascore" of 73/100 from critics, but a 9.6/10 from the website's voters.^[4] Some reviewers were unimpressed by the minimal detail of the environment graphics,^[5] the lack of intelligence on the part of the AI in some situations,^[6] and the plot, which was occasionally criticized as underdeveloped.^[7] The game's difficulty in combination with a lack of savepoints was sometimes cited as a negative.^[8]

Moreover, many fans felt cheated because the game did not deliver on all of its promises. The most notable shortcoming was the absence of LAN-based multiplayer, which had been demoed at hands-on booths at Macworld Expos during Oni's development, but removed before release due to stated concerns over latency issues. This too contributed to some lower scores from reviewers.^[9] Some of the game's content was cut as well. This included the highly anticipated "Iron Demon", a large mech shown in-game in one trailer. Also, many of the weapons featured in the trailer and the game cover were not in the game.

However, Oni received the most praise for its smooth character animation and large array of fighting moves, as well as how it blended gunplay and melee combat.^[10] Thus, reviewers gave Oni mostly average-to-good scores in recognition of the enjoyment factor of the game.

References

1. ^ oni.bungie.org
2. ^ Interview with lead engineer Brent Pease
3. ^ "Easter Eggs". Oni Galore, a wiki dedicated to the video game Oni. http://wiki.oni2.net/Easter_eggs#Old_Man_Murray.  Retrieved 2011-03-03.
4. ^ Oni's average review score according to Metacritic
5. ^ Computer and Video Games' review
6. ^ IMG's review
7. ^ Firing Squad's review
8. ^ Game-Over's review
9. ^ IGN's review
10. ^ Gamer's Hell review

External links

• Official website
• Unofficial Italian Website
• Oni Central Fan Community Portal
• Oni at MobyGames