Release: 2001 Developer: Bungie Publisher: Take-Two Interactive Link:bit.ly/3VdRygj
Oni is not, in its entirety, a particularly good game. It just so happens to contain one or two great things. Released just ten months before a true landmark game, Halo: Combat Evolved, it paints a picture of astonishing innovation in such a short period of time. Oni feels half rooted in the games of the previous decade, Tomb Raider especially, while Halo would go on to usher a new definition of what mainstream action games could be.
On the face of it, is a clear knockoff, an attempt to capture the essence of the 1995 anime classic. It isn’t really successful at all, evoking neither the melancholy tone or its dense, fully realised world, nor transporting the film’s action into videogames. In fact, I am fully into the virtual world. Pieces of it are so influential throughout the whole medium, but the whole eludes the cyberpunk worlds and sci-fi action titles which fixate on bolder, shinier things that are a world away from the understated anime.
