Curiosites Vol. 15 - Ohenro-san (Gamecube)

"Walking Simulator" is a disparaging name often given to non-violent, narrative-driven games, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly. Though the term didn't really exist in 2003 when Ohenro-san Hosshin no Dojo was released, it's a mantle that fits the game perfectly. Ohenro-san is literally a game about walking across Japan and visiting temples and that's it. It's meant to come with a special controller with buttons for left and right steps, as well as a pedometer so the walking you do in your day-to-day life can be transferred into the game, but I had neither of those things, so I was just pushing forward on the analogue stick to progress.

Because this was meant as a substitute for a real pilgrimage, aimed at the old and infirm who couldn't make the journey themselves, everything is represented as a slide show of photos of the real locations, rather than being a polygonal rendering for you to walk through and explore in real time. Of course I understand why it was done in this way, but it's not very impressive, and it really doesn't give the impression of walking from place to place: when I say it's a slideshow, that's all it feels like, there's no sensation of movement at all.

Once you're at a temple, you can do various things like light a candle, get a talisman, do some reading, and so on, but really, that's all there is to this. It's not a game, and it's not intended to be played like one, and so it wouldn't be fair to judge it as one, either. I'm just posting about it because it's weird and obscure and there's probably not many people who know about it.

The nature of this thing is that recommending it or not recommending it is kind of meaningless, though I will say this: unless you can read Japanese and you really, really love seeing photos of Japanese temples, I can't imagine how you'd get anything out of this at all.

Toshinden (Wii)

This game's existence is a bit of a mystery: the Toshinden series isn't exactly fondly remembered, and the only reason it was every really popular at all is because it was one of the first 3D fighting games to come along. So why then, a whole decade after the last Toshinden, did Tomy decide to not only release a game using that name, but release a game with no other connection to the series. It doesn't play like the others, it has none of the characters, and it's not set in the same world. It doesn't even have the same developers as the original series! (Those were developed by Lunatic Obscurity stalwarts Tamsoft, this is by Dream Factory, of Tobal and Ehrgeiz fame, and could very well be their worst game!)

So, if it doesn't play like the other Toshinden games, how does it play? Well, it's an odd one. You can use the analogue stick to run around the arena in all directions, and you only have two normal attack buttons: weak and strong. Rather than special move motions, you have a special and a super, each mapped to a button of their own. I'm not normally a fan of these kinds of super-simplified fighting game controls, though can sometimes work, as in the Senko no Ronde games, or to a lesser extent, the Playstation 90s anime homage festival that is Evil Zone/Eretzvaju. In this case, though, the best thing you can say about the controls is that they're not the worst thing about the game.

The actual worst thing about the game is a decision so stupid and antithetical to the nature of fighting games that I can barely believe they did it: all of the playable characters start out with weak, puny movesets, and you're expected to grind in single player to earn points to buy their moves and combos. To make matters worse,  despite this being a game that never had online play, there are only two single player modes: story mode, where you can't pick your character, and surival mode, where you endlessly fight randomly-selected opponents on randomly-selected stages until you lose. It's barely a step above Bomberman Act Zero on X Box 360!

Now, this game isn't completely worthless: I will admit that it looks great, with the character models and textures being particularly appealling. But obviously, that's not enough to make up for how much of an absolute chore it is to play, so obviously, I'm not going to recommend that you bother with it. It's a shame, too, I was really hoping this would be a nice little unsung hero of the Wii's library.