Okabu (PS3)

Over the lands of Okabu live a race of peace-loving cloud whales, but when the Doza people below begin to build factories that pump out dangerous levels of pollution, the cloud whales begin to fall sick in droves. Two brothers, Kumulo and Nimbe, head out to try and find the source of the smog before it’s too late, and so begins the game Okabu.

 

However, while you do play as these two cloud whales, either by alternating between them in single-player or having a player control one each in the cooperative mode, this puzzle-heavy action adventure title really isn’t about the cloud whales. That opening is pretty much the last moment of story agency the pair get as soon they are relegated to being the mounts of the true main characters, the elf-like tribal people of Okabu hopping on the cloud whales and doing all of the talking. There are four unique characters who will ride the backs of the cloud whale brothers, all of them using their special skills to help to fight against the Dozu’s rampant industrialization of the area.

 

While your cloud whales may be mute and more a means of conveyance for the game’s true heroes, the cloud creatures do still have some impact on the gameplay. The whales are capable of absorbing water and oil into their bodies, the player able to douse things with a small rainstorm or set up a line of oil for a fire to carry across. Oil must be placed perfectly oftentimes to have the fire carry right, and if you didn’t quite lay it right all the way to something like an explosive, you need to go back and soak up more oil. The backtracking can already be a little bothersome, but then placing new oil makes some of the old oil start disappearing, so you can’t just tidy up the little error most of the time. Similarly, if you run out of water you can often expect a level only to have a few clean sources once you push past the game’s easy and relaxed early levels. The placement is definitely part of the puzzle solving as you often need to open up a route to the liquids before you can perform the relevant tasks with them, but you also can’t absorb any fluids into your cloud whale while you have a rider. Your riders are pretty much required for every other interaction in the game though so you have to drop them off, grab the liquid, use it, go back, pick up your rider, and then do whatever task they have up ahead.

The rider shuffling gets more and more annoying as the game adds more mechanics to the puzzles and areas. If there are little fruits you need to spit out at objects to break them or blow them, your whale must once again set aside their rider to inhale these and use them briefly, the act of executing the rider drop off and pick up not only a chore but asking more of you than even using the fruit since that is dealt with comparatively quickly. Some levels have you balancing more than two allies from the people of Okabu, meaning you’ll need to ditch one only to later find them and get them back on board for a new puzzle. There are checkpoint trees at least, the player able to fly a circle around them to teleport any riders or important puzzle items like workers or animals over to that location, but the trees also have a downside. If Kumulo or Nimbe take damage while a rider is aboard, the rider falls off and teleports to the last checkpoint tree. You don’t have to worry about dying at least, but many enemies are tedious to deal with. Sometimes you can fry their circuits by raining on them, but this requires the rider ditching, water finding, and then not getting hit by shots as you approach a foe who can easily see you coming. If a rider is involved in some capacity like trying to guide a charging bull to ram the robotic minions of Doza, you can often get hit by either the enemy or bull while you try to set the path correctly and lose the character who can properly guide the animals.

 

Already the game is going to be slow as you need to constantly backtrack or shuffle around important characters and objects to make progress, but the way some abilities work only make things even more sluggish. Captain Monkfish has a plunger you can shoot at things to carry them with you or open them, but sometimes when you’re trying to save a worker in a cage who will help you, the game resists your efforts to open it with the plunger. It can look all the way open but then it snaps shut until you finally corral it properly, and sometimes you might think you found a solution to a puzzle only to make a level unwinnable. In a forest level there are some sleeping characters you need to wake up, and I managed to do so by hooking them with Monkfish and dragging them to the nearby water to wake them up. They did get up and start moving, but this wasn’t the intended method as you are meant to rain on them instead, and since my method did not trigger necessary dialogue it became impossible to make them do their required task and I had to repeat the slow level over again. Similarly, one of your riders named Roki has the power to control Doza technology, and this can often manifest by driving around a giant gizmo that can magnetize objects to its front radar dish. Not only do the physics show that objects really don’t want to be carried this way as they easily fly out of your grip or spin into arrangements that make placing them properly difficult, but if the machine flips over that’s a level you’ll need to restart and its driving is rather choppy even when done carefully.

Not everything in Okabu is a barely held together mess, but there are still more issues to mention. Picolo’s power is to guide the characters and animals you find in a level around with your sound, and they are all naturally quite slow due to this game’s commitment of dragging things out. However, even if you guide a creature to their spot, you can’t guarantee they’ll behave properly. A bull is used to break a lot of barriers but sometimes will charge into them head-on without breaking them, creatures that eat plants might not detect the bush nearby properly, and your followers in general can get hooked on small bits of level geometry since you’re flying over it but they can struggle with a little corner. Kat’s use of her little fuzzball of a pet comes out the cleanest mostly because you send it out and have full control of its movement as you do so. It can power mechanisms and enter small holes but most importantly nothing complex is asked of it, although those mechanisms can sometimes take their sweet time even in areas where you can’t. Enemies might be placed next to a vital object or area and you won’t be able to kill them until you perform a puzzle while potentially in their line of fire, meaning the slow process might be interrupted by damage and rider retrieval. This can be especially bothersome as some machines completely remove your ability to move your cloud whale while operating them, meaning unless you disengage you can be attacked while working on the objective.

 

It should be noted the first area of the game is fairly mundane despite its relaxed pace, and the issue at first seems like everything is going to be doing similar basic chores for different sets of villagers. In fact, the opening seems outright designed to assure children this is a game they can play, but the later worlds do start to punish mistakes with repetition far too often. Getting new riders does very quickly add to the complexity of what’s asked of you. Luckily the level completion medals are all optional since trying to find the hidden eggs, complete the level in a reasonable time, and collect enough berries to hit the quota all feel like they ask too much or lead to things dragging even more, and in levels where you might need to reset due to a problem with the physics or puzzle design, it’s easy to lose motivation in that regard.

 

Perhaps the saddest part about Okabu is this cute and colorful world with some nice tribal-inspired music is held back from realizing what could have been some serviceable puzzle designs. If so many things weren’t plodding, prone to error, interacted oddly, and relied on backtracking either out of necessity or as a result of cheap damage than many of the puzzle concepts would sound fine on paper. Manipulating enemy technology to move objects around a map or build bridges, using Kat’s orange fuzzball to swap the wires of machines to make them work when desired, guiding animals to areas they could be useful in, or even just using Monkfish’s plunger gun to have a better hold of objects like exploding fruits all are skills that could be fine enough puzzle ingredients, but there are often times where the puzzle wouldn’t even be hard if the game didn’t have you constantly backtracking when things don’t go to plan or you need to do a sequence of events with your cloud whales that slow down this slow game even further. Considering this game has a button you can hold to fly faster and it still feels so pokey and repetitious, it becomes really hard to enjoy the moments where Okabu is doing something like providing a straightforward puzzle that doesn’t demand so much busywork.

THE VERDICT: Slow and repetitive are a lethal combination, and Okabu’s cute world and rhythmic sounds can’t hide how sluggish the game feels. Many elements seem designed to force constant backtracking to grab items or shuffle around your riders, areas recycle puzzle designs that can be prone to catastrophic errors that force a reset, and even when things are working as intended they’re often mundane or tedious. While some simpler moments avoid being a slog, most of Okabu is about puzzles that are chores to solve and moments where small errors can lead to repeated frustrations.

 

And so, I give Okabu for PlayStation 3…

A TERRIBLE rating. It definitely says a lot about a game when you find yourself looking back warmly on the moments when the game was merely boring and sluggish rather than filled with content that is aimed to draw out the experience without providing anything too new with their design. The game really didn’t need certain touches like having an injured cloud whale teleport its rider back to the nearest checkpoint tree, and while proposing the idea of multiple riders on a cloud whale would mean certain puzzles wouldn’t be as challenging as they are in their current form, the fact the challenge comes mostly from futzing around with items and people left all over the place means they’d be worth missing out on. The game could definitely realign some of its button inputs to make every vital function with the whales and riders available without too much hassle, but the hassle is the backbone of the experience. Getting the right characters and items into the right spot is often key to the action and puzzle solving only for it so easily going awry in a way that adds more time plodding through this game’s lethargic pacing and unexciting stage layouts.

 

Okabu isn’t a trainwreck of a title because it does manage to stay safely on the tracks. Problem is some of those train cars are definitely leaning too far to the side, the train barely manages to reach any speed, and it makes such frequent stops it makes horrible time even if you do try to go as quickly as you can. Take some of the ideas and put them in other decent action puzzlers and they’d be fine additions, but in this unimaginative game with its systems that often fail to interact properly you’re not going to see those concepts realized in an entertaining or engaging manner.