I recently downloaded the demo, and I'll admit that at first I wasn't sure if I was going to like this game or not. Several friends of mine took a look at it at E3 and told me not to expect much, and the gameplay movies that had popped up at other sites weren't really inspiring me much. Still, I had read a couple of interviews with the art team last year that intrigued me, and Bungie has a great track record for making fun, addictive games (Myth anyone?), so I sat down with an open mind and was ready to have the time of my life.

The story centers around Konoko, a young female cop who works for the Technology Crimes Task Force (or TCTF for short) in the year 2032. The TCTF is a future day SWAT team that fights against the evil Kage crime syndicate, and Konoko is a young promising rookie that has a bit more to her than her appearance shows (I'm thinking bionic woman, if what I saw in the demo was correct). Of course, no good anime style game would be complete without angst, and Konoko has it in spades. Never alluded to in the demo, several press releases from Bungie have hinted at a search for redemption from her past demons (Oni means "ghost" or "demon" in Japenese). Of course, to make things extra intersting, we learn that Konoko is oblivious to her special nature, and while it was never revealed why that is (in the demo), I'd be willing to guess that it works out to be something along the lines of La Femme Nikita, where a criminal joins the good guys to fight a greater evil. Obviously, this is total speculation on my part, but Oni just has that sort of feel to it (and some screenshots I've seen show Konoko dressed as a leather-wearing bad ass, and not in her TCTF uniform). Unfortunatly, the demo was light on story, heavy on gameplay, so I can't give you a full run down on what it's going to be like, but I'll admit that I'm more than a little interested to see what it will turn out to be in the full version.

I have no other word besides "WOW!" Oni was a blast to play and for me to say that is high praise indeed. Very rarely do I find a game that I truly enjoy, but I found myself coming back to the demo again and again to experience all I could in the game. Movement is intuitive and there are more than your standard fare of forward, back, side to side and jump : included were rolls, flips, slides, and a host of combat moves included with each direction of movement. Fighting is based on a simple punch/kick system that rapidly expands when you include combos and special moves. Most fighting games love to rave about how 3D their worlds are, but when it comes right down to it, gameplay is about the same as its been since the early days of Street Fighter 2 and Virtua Fighter. In Oni, I truly WAS in a 3D world, playing a fighting game. Moves can be performed in any order, anywhere, anytime, and they look smooth and coordinated. I counted a total of 10 moves for Konoko, and I got the impression that there were literally tons more for me to unlock in the full version.

Enemies used a battle style that was unique to each of their types, with some of them showing off the old SF-style by shouting out their move name and having speed blur lines added (one guy kept trying to pull off a "STATIC FIST" which I found pretty easy to block and then kick his butt while he recoverd). If all Oni were is a fighting game, I'd be happy with it, but Bungie took it that extra step and added gun play to the mix, with weapons ranging from your simple pistol, to SCRAM rocket launchers and tazer guns.

Knowing that an enemy might chose to fire at me or come at me with his gun added an extra element of "How do I approach this situation" that I found made each replay a unique experience. In fact, I found that enemies would usually react differently based on what form of attack I would chose, making it rather difficult to pass certain areas. I will admit it, fighitng three enemies at once, some of them shooting at you, others trying to box your head, made for a fun experience, and one I would have over and over again.

My only complaint in the gameplay arena was the control scheme. A fighting game usually doesn't translate well to a PC platform, and I found that I had a hard time keeping track of all the keys I needed to use in order to make my way through the levels. The demo came with no utility for configuring your own control scheme, and I found the default scheme to be horrible to use. Often I would hear my PC beeping at me because I was overloading its input buffer as I attempted to kick some dude's butt. Now, this being a demo, I'm going to cut it a lot of slack and hope that things change for the final release, but I'm seriously considering going PS2 with this game, if for no other reason than I know my button mashing will not overload the machine.

While sound usually plays a big part in most games, I would say that in Oni it plays a functional purpose, which I do not find to be a bad thing at all. In most games I find that I must tune down the music, tune up the voiceovers, and usually tune down the sound effects, but Oni uses sound sparingly so that it enhances, rather than detracts from gameplay. All the usual sound effects are there for walking fighting, and shooting of weapons, but they are not loud or annoying. Music comes in only at important plot points, and is not constantly in the backgfound. When it does start up, you'll find that it not only fits, but is some of the best hard core techno you've heard in a game in a long while. The voice overs are also done excellently and not once did I find myself wondering why the actor was allowed to just read their lines as opposed to acting them.

Graphically, Oni at first appears to fall on the simplistic side. Each room you enter is large, and of the mostly square variety, and while the levels are built well and give a good idea of the setting, nothing I saw set them apart from other games. In fact, I found most of the textures and coloring to be simplistic and they reminded me of comic style structures. I had read that Bungie employed several architects as level designers, and while this could be a good thing, I think that perhaps they built levels with more of a real world look, because, let's face it: nothing in the real world is ever as cool looking as a video game level (with the possible exception of the Taj Mahal).

I'll be honest, the graphical style of the game was not to my taste, however I also think it fit exactly what they were aiming for, and that's the feel of a playable comic book. All of the characters looked fantastic, and their animations were so smooth that not once was I distracted by odd looking movements, or characters moving in ways that were unrealistic. Each character also looked like what a 3D model of an anime character should look like. Instead of trying to make Konoko and her allies and enemies look human, they instead tried to make them look like anime characters, and the effect is totally believable. Not once was I thrown off by bad looking textures on low poly models, and instead I found myself several times thinking how great they looked.

The weapons and fighting effects were rather simple, yet effective for the game. Punches and kicks connect with a flash of colored light and particles that indicate the amount of damage done, and lightning guns and SCRAM missles give the desired effect of the weapon without distracting from gameplay. Shields used in the game use a cool effect that would be totally original, if not already done in Quake 3, but as I said before, they are effective and do not hinder gameplay.

What really blew me away was the opening intro sequence to the demo, which was basically a thirty second clip of anime style animation, showing off our heroine battling against many enemies with laser scopes on their heads, and absolutely tons of explosions. I'm not sure how prominently this will figure into the final game, but I can say that I hope there is a LOT of it, and that perhaps the Bungie folks should be thinking of making a movie based on their game (ala the Sin anime, though hopefully much much better).

Bottom Line: Oni is a blast of knock-down drag-out fun, and I found myself not able to put it down. While not on the cutting edge of technology, it had some unique aspects to it in the way the characters look, and the gameplay was a refinement of several different types of games, and it comes together well. As I expressed earlier, if you like posses the passions for anime, fighting games, and third-person action games, then you'll like Oni. Heck, if you like fun then you'll like Oni, and I can't imagine anyone reading this hates fun, except for perhaps Alan Greenspan.

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