I liked Onimusha but I certainly wasn't waiting with baited breath for a new Onimusha. In some ways, in all the ways that matter perhaps, it seemed as though Capcom had onimooshed its last.
I don't know if I mentioned it in detail before, but when I was in Japan a couple years ago on a trade mission we talked to all kinds of people and I think about it all the time. Through my translator Sa-Chan, I was able to learn that the government people in Osaka were very keen on extracting all our knowledge about conventions and videogames. They lamented that the Kansai Region had no notable developers to speak of, almost as if it made them a bad host. I wasn't sure how to respond; Capcom was just down the street.
Capcom by itself is such a powerful player in videogames that they could do a con just for them! You could call it "Capcon." They have a ridiculous pedigree, a literal Great Old House, and not for doing just one thing. Just to widen the aperture of your mind, the same fucking place makes Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter. It gets weirder from there. Literal Handsome Devils. Robot boys, or "roboys." Fuckin', like… dinosaurs. I had to give a speech once to Polish and Japanese developers, and people from the latter were genuinely surprised to learn how much of a young person's psychology
They are aggressively interested in being as Japanese as possible. I don't even know if I could define it, but much like pornography one instantly knows when they are in its presence. I feel like I know when the systems start to rise around me, precision almost as an aesthetic, highly detailed detail, mechanical greebling. Who knows.
Gabe is losing it, he says it is absolutely great. He knows that I am obsessed with parry and counter systems, and he says that this new one is PArry And Counter Systems: The Game, where the timing stuff is commingled with different paths out of the block that you can use creatively. He also says it's hard - but that it's possible to receive help from unlikely, Swayze-inflected demons. I feel like this last part may not be in the game but I haven't played it so I don't know.
(CW)TB out.
