Okabu Review

Okabu has been associated forever with The Ziggurat in my memory, so it has that much going for it, at least!

Beneath Okabu’s cute, fluffy exterior, lies a demon who finds great pleasure in torturing the player; the avatar. It has two formidable torture devices under its command: the Glitch and the Physics. But it is not a complex demon at all; often the most simple of creatures find pleasure in suffering (we are all born sinful after all and only through acquired complexity are we set free) and the simplicity of their desires, their emotions and their actions can make the torture even more unbearable.

But these cute, sinful, and sadistic creatures are just as endearing they are terrifying. They float as if angels, picking up a troupe of unsuspecting natives under the guise of fighting industrialisation. Of course industrialisation is merely an extension of the Doza’s sin: a dirty bureaucracy that spreads oil like seed and destroying nature in the eyes of the primitive natives rather than enriching it. Conversely, the natives spread seed; water it and cultivate it as if nurture is nature, but this is an inherent contradiction: if you nurture nature you manipulate it, and if you create nature through concrete and oil it is still nature that you have nurtured (manipulated) to create the “unnatural”—I suppose it’s all about degrees!

To fight the spread of sin the natives must use their very limited skill-set in a guerrilla style fight back. Monkfish (a simple fisherman, and one of the troupe) has a plunger for a spear. As primitive as it is, it is still a technological device, and the rubber must surely have a substantial carbon foot print; a fact made worse as one could only assume that using a plunger to grab onto and drag pretty much anything must cause quick degradation thus requiring the rubber to be regularly replaced.

The moral questions do not stop there: being devils the clouds themselves are not above violence and can utilise both water and exploding fruit as weapons. In the case of the latter Monkfish must shake exploding fruit down from the exploding fruit tree for one of the cloud devils to then suck up. Monkfish is not directly involved in the violence, but surely bears much of the responsibility! Without his rubber harpoon the clouds could not have helped themselves to the exploding fruit; a fact worth remembering: devils do little work without busy hands (and clouds have no hands).

Another of the simple natives is a pied piper who can blow an intoxicating tune that causes all around him to follow him blindly, though they stop short of walking into flames, oil or water (but Monkfish can drag them into such dangers with the use of his plunger). Among the animals that he can hypnotise with his dark sciences include bulls and goats, both of which have a lust for violence just as strong as the clouds and make powerful weapons against the Dozabots.

But it is here where we find yet another form of torture. The Dozabots are formidable advisories employing the use of homing missiles, and while the goats and bulls have some homing abilities they are not very accurate and to make matters worse neither is God’s vision, and often off-screen Dozabots can easily take the unsuspecting natives riding clouds by surprise.

When a cloud is hit it coughs up some cloudberries, and drops the native it was carrying. Not a high penalty for death, but a terribly frustrating one for if a bull was your only weapon you must fly all the way back to the trees from which the natives are reborn (no serpents in sight, though) and then go back to the bull and Dozabot in question for round two. Only to die again because God left the camera behind at the tree.

In their own form of bureaucracy (and what greater torture is there than bureaucracy?) the natives grin and bear the fact that the clouds refuse to carry them with air or ammunition in their bellies despite the fact that this means that they must engage in a torturous juggling of supplies, abilities, and power that is never fully resolved by God—forgive me!—’s foolishly designed placement of watering holes, ammunition and resurrection trees and the Doza’s mechanical placement of oil and vehicles—not to mention Dozabots!

This back and forth is stopped only when one of the cloud devils is feeling particularly sadistic and floats into a trap from which there is no way out, save to start the level again from the beginning: the Glitch in all its glory. Soon you come across a traitorous Doza who is not above using the Doza’s own weapons (and of course it turns out it’s all a plot for the throne; take note hopeful soldiers: you fight not for ideals, but man, or at least that is what the myths say) against them you will find yourself driving Doza vehicles.

But perhaps the true danger of the Doza lies not in pollution, but their poor craftsmanship and design for the vehicles veer this way and that on their own accord, and throw themselves about in a sadistic display of the Physics. But once more we find busy hands to blame: if the Doza had only added wheels to the rooves of their vehicles then such devilry would pose no threat.

As such it is ironic that perhaps Okabu’s greatest sin lies in idle hands! Few times are the natives given much of a challenge beyond surviving Physics and Glitches. Over the course of their journey mechanics are introduced slowly, and with little variety. The natives that take part are changed now and then, yet only at the very end are they all utilised at once and it’s no coincidence that the very end has some of the most interesting moments!

So idle hands do as idle hands do: they try and find something to busy themselves with. Simple collection (be it of cloudberries or eggs) offers little reward for the cloudberries don’t taste very good and are in abundance, and the eggs are kept only as souvenirs to look at and not enjoy and are easily found indeed. Lust for violence offers no enlightenment for hollow is the man that finds satisfaction in death, and foolish the man who finds it in destroying himself: violence begets violence.

But God must test man so that man has a chance to prove that he is without sin, and here we find Okabu’s one moment of mercy: time limits. Rushing through a level to prove oneself to Father Time means that hands cannot be idle, but nor can they try fruitlessly to find business in fruit! Glitches and Physics are not so frustrating when you rush past them before they have a chance to sink their teeth into one’s flesh, and the cloud devils enjoy it as much as the natives: they are certainly not Christian devils intent only on torture. Truthfully they are more misguided and mischievous than malicious. In short: they are Oriental devils; the spiritual personification of monkeys. Or Monkey.

But it is untrue to say that they have no Christian influence. Ironically they can be compared to Robot Satan himself for they fly only to tunes of the highest quality; though even that is not an entirely true statement. No, they fly to the tuneless power of percussion, and what drums are better than those of the Dozabot? Rhythm is understood by machinery: machinery is rhythm so it is only fitting that the cloud devils are most at home when in the deepest recesses of the Doza Fortress: mechanical drums made organic by the busy hands that control the machines, and for a few moments at least the natives are allowed to enjoy the ride.