Okami, exhibit A in the case for video games as high art, stands alone atop the artistic achievements made in the medium, a document destined for a future filing in the Library of Congress, is a stunningly well realized collaborative project between true artists.

It has visuals, audio, interactivity, and narrative that out paces nearly everything else in the gaming world, and it is loads of fun. First released over year ago for the PS2, Okami has found a new home on the Nintendo Wii, where it fits right in among a plethora of Wii games that stress original art design and wider appeal. This game has that wow factor that makes it irresistible to even total non-gamers, if only as a thing to sit down and watch for a moment or two.

Okami is about a blighted Japan, cursed by the powers of Orochi, an eight-headed serpent of evil. It is up to Amaterasu, a deity in the form of a sleek white wolf, and his friend, Issun, a talkative glowing bug, to restore vitality to the land.

You travel far and wide using y our magical powers to turn dark to light, death to life. You expel the evil from the land with a flash of a brush, literally painting the world anew, freeing it from the pestilential miasma that has blanketed it for years. It is a wondrous tale tale of good versus evil, a battle betwixt the gods of another land that has the future of the world at stake.

The most striking component of this game is the art design. It is bursting with unique character renderings, landscapes, and interfaces. You meet chatty humans, dangerous monsters, and others along your journey through a gigantic game world of both great beauty and grim desolation.

There are mountains ranges, coastal towns, rivers, forests, bogs, and more. The great variation in terrain gives the game world a feeling of immense size and complexity. All of this is pretty standard in the best games of today, but no other game have the magic of Okami.

With every gallop of the white wolf, you leave a trail of vegetation, blooming flowers, grass, and a spray of loose petals. With a wave of the Wiimote you can restore life to a whithered tree and return it to the splendor of nature’s potential, turn whole areas of sedge and decaying matter to a fertile meadow bustling with life.

It is a refreshing experience to rejuvenate the land when so many other games simply focus on laying waste to one’s surroundings. The exquisite grandeur of the whole enterprise is astoundingly satisfying.

As much as I could say about the visuals, the audio is nearly as impressive. The variations in setting and action are perfectly paralleled by the score, which includes vast arrays of musical instruments performing appropriate musical pieces for the given circumstances.

At times it is almost Peter and the Wolf-esque with the voicing of certain melodies and instruments for characters in the narrative. It never comes across as gimmicky or unnatural, but the very opposite. The music has an organic feel the entire time, even when segueing between tense battles with demonic hordes and the care free romping through the countryside.

Aesthetics aside, Okami plays great. It is easy to pick up and never gets frustratingly difficult. The battles are relatively easy and can mainly be avoided, the puzzles are fun and logical, you never feel as if you have to stumble upon the solution to advance, and the innovative use of the central game mechanic, which is the ability to paint symbols with a “celestial brush” on the screen that execute some kind of action, adds a lot depth to both the battles and the puzzles.

You get over a dozen symbols that you can pint over the course of the game, and they all come in handy at some point or another. Some you will use again and again, like the ability to draw a line through an object to cut it in two, or the sun symbol that turns night to day.

It is almost surprising that this game did not debut on the Wii since the painting seems specifically made for the Wiimote. It is exactly the kind of innovative and functional game mechanic that best benefits the Wii.

With the kind of curb appeal that Okami has, it would have been easy for the game designers to offer up a bit of eye candy, a nice score, and a new game mechanic, then call it a day. People would still pay for it and be impressed with the package enough to not regret their purchase, but Okami delivers far more.

Okami is a very long game that rarely drags. The main story line lasts over 30, and playtime could easily extend much longer if all the secrets and extra side missions were completed. It is the length of serious action RPGs that have stood the test of time, those that sell for a small ransom on Ebay a decade or so after release. Okami is that sort of game.

If you did not get a chance to get Okami for the PS2 when it originally hit the shelves, do yourself a favor, please, and pick up this title for the Wii. It may even be worth getting for the Wii even if you have it on the PS2 thanks to how well the Wiimote works with the celestial brush and the wide screen support. Okami will age slowly and gracefully, and will always be relevant to serious gamers for its innovative visuals and game play.