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Oni, a game I enjoy the most.

In despite of the plural title for this page, I am only touching upon one game that I find most interesting. This game is called Oni. The title is the Japanese word for ghost or demon (written like the Chinese character 'gui'), and is a Third-person shooter game for PCs, Macs and PlayStation 2 that focuses on hand to hand combat, in addition to your standard set of guns. The game also has an animé-like theme, and has been inspired by animés like Ghost in the Shell.

It is done by Bungie, the same company that had made Halo and Halo 2 , albeit before their acquisition by Microsoft.

Set in the future, when the world has suffered severe atmospheric pollutions. The world is now under a single coalition government, and technological crimes are abound. To due with these crimes, the Technological Crimes Task Force (TCTF) was set up. This is where the player come in, for the player will control a member of the TCTF, named Konoko.

Konoko performing a flip on a character in the second level of the game.

The reason why it attracted me was the hand to hand gameplay. Although abundant in gaming consoles like PlayStation and Xbox, games with hand-to-hand combat elements are rare, if they exist at all, on the PC at that time.

And even then, it was unique to all platforms because it was a Third Person game that implements hand-to-hand, and the character can run around in huge environments freely battling hoardes of enemies, instead of battling one or two in an enclosed environment, commonly seen in consoles.

Some recounts...

I remember the first time I saw the game. It was available as a demo game in a local computer magazine called CHIP, and I tried it, having nothing else to do. I was indifferent to it when I first played through it. The game started at a Training Level, in which I was shown the ropes of the game. The first few actions were pretty dull -- running, walking and jumping. Eventually, though, I got to the crux of the gameplay: hand to hand! I able to punch and kick! It was then when I was hooked.

That was 5 years ago, and even now I would take the time to play this game.

On one of my roams around the Internet, I encountered a community of Oni players. I realised that the Oni community is actually very small.

Oni? What Oni?

Level 4 of the game.

You could be forgiven if you have not heard of this game. It does not exactly share the popularity of games like Half-life or Doom. In fact, it is the unfortunate fact that Oni did not see much popularity amongst the masses despite its exciting gameplay.

The graphics were also considered bland and dull by some. Oni fans attribute that to the cold and efficiency of the world in the future, as well as the animé feel the game is trying to achieve. Critics attribute that to sub-par work.

I do agree that the graphics are bland, but I was thankful for it, for back then my computer had not the power to run any advanced games. Hence, the actions and pace were still fluid and fast. Now, with a faster computer, speed is no longer an issue, but I do not have any gripes about the graphics, for I believe the gameplay overshadows the graphics. In fact, the moves are the graphics!

What I believe was also a reason for Oni's lack of popularity was its lack of advertisement, at least in Singapore. I have hardly seen any mention of the game, except within the same CHIP magazine I got the demo game from.

Multiplayer for Oni

The flip is performed!

Unfortunately, Oni does not have any multiplayer options, which is a pity. Imagine a multiplayer game where you can actually fight hand to hand with an actual human being (ok, actual human-controlled characters)! The potential for a multiplayer game would have been great. Sadly, no such implementation was done.

Fans have tried to do their own implementation, but so far, not much have been seen.

A Sequel?

A sequel to Oni is also a highly demanded thing in the community. Unfortunately, since Bungie's acquisition my Microsoft, the rights to Oni has been sold to another company called Take Two, and Take Two has shown no intention of continuing with the game.

As with the case of multiplayer, fans have tried to create their own vision of a sequel. And again as with the case of multiplayer, not much progress has been made at the time of writing. Hopefully, though, things will change...

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