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Oni.PC.Game: A Classic Third-Person Action Game from 2001



Oni is a third-person action video game developed by Bungie West, a division of Bungie, and published by Take-Two Interactive. Released in 2001, it was Bungie West's only game. Gameplay consists of third-person shooting with hand-to-hand combat, with a focus on the latter. Originally planned just for the Mac OS and Windows, a PlayStation 2 port was concurrently developed by Rockstar Canada. The game's style was largely inspired by Ghost in the Shell and Akira and shares the same genre, being set in a cyberpunk world.




Oni.PC.Game old pc game



The events of Oni take place in or after the year 2032. In the game, Earth is so polluted that little of it remains habitable. To solve international economic crises, all nations have combined into a single entity, the World Coalition Government. The government is totalitarian, telling the populace that what are actually dangerously toxic regions are wilderness preserves, and uses its police forces, the Technological Crimes Task Force (TCTF), to suppress opposition. The player character, code-named Konoko (voiced by Amanda Winn-Lee), full name later given as Mai Hasegawa, begins the game working for the TCTF. Soon, she learns her employers have been keeping secrets about her past from her. She turns against them as she embarks on a quest of self-discovery. The player learns more about her family and origins while battling both the TCTF and its greatest enemy, the equally monolithic criminal organization called the Syndicate. In the game's climax, Konoko discovers a Syndicate plan to cause the Atmospheric Conversion Centers, air-treatment plants necessary to keep most of the world's population alive, to catastrophically malfunction. She is partially successful in thwarting the plot, saving a portion of humanity.


Oni is a third-person action game, focused on melee combat mixed with some gunplay. The player can punch, kick, and throw enemies; progressing into later levels unlocks stronger moves and combos. There are ten different guns in Oni, including handguns, rifles, rocket launchers, and energy weapons. Power-ups such as "hyposprays", which heal damage, and cloaking devices, which render the player invisible, can be found scattered throughout the levels or on corpses. Since the player can carry only one weapon at a time and ammunition is scarce, hand-to-hand combat is the most effective and common means of defeating enemies.


The game's universe is heavily influenced by Mamoru Oshii's anime film Ghost in the Shell, with some additional influence from Akira and the works of Kenichi Sonoda.[4][5][6][7][8] The original plan was for Konoko to be a cyborg like Ghost in the Shell's Motoko Kusanagi. The explanation for her superhuman abilities was changed to be more organic with the addition of the Daodan Chrysalis concept by design lead Hardy LeBel.


Oni was originally expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 1999. Advertising was targeted towards that shipping date, and the game won E3's Game Critics Awards for Best Action/Adventure Game in 1999. However, development difficulties caused the release date to be pushed back continuously. The acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft in 2000 then led to the transfer of the Oni IP to Take-Two Interactive (which owned 20% of the studio prior to Microsoft's acquisition). Since Bungie's employees were moving to the new office location in Microsoft's headquarters or leaving the company, work on Oni had to be completed as quickly as possible. Due to a lack of time to resolve issues with the multiplayer code and to finish the levels intended for use by multiplayer mode, this functionality was omitted from the released version.


Half of the music was composed by Martin O'Donnell in collaboration with Michael Salvatori. Other tracks in the game, which had already been implemented before O'Donnell and Salvatori joined the project, were composed by the music company Power of Seven, which specialized in electronic music genres such as techno and ambient. The Power of Seven team consisted of founder Paul Sebastien, as well as composer Brian Salter and Kim Cascone, who served as a sound designer for the game;[11] the team had previously worked together at Thomas Dolby's audio technology company Headspace. O'Donnell, who served as the game's audio lead, decided to keep the tracks Power of Seven had already composed, while composing roughly the same amount of music himself.[12][13] Select tracks from the game were made available on MP3.com in 2000, a year before the game was released.[14] A soundtrack CD of the game's music was bundled with purchases of the game at Best Buy.


The game received "average" reviews on both platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[15][16] Some reviewers were unimpressed by the minimal detail of the environment graphics,[40] the lack of intelligence on the part of the AI in some situations,[41] and the plot, which was occasionally criticized as underdeveloped.[42] The game's difficulty in combination with a lack of savepoints was sometimes cited as a negative.[43]


The absence of LAN-based multiplayer, which had been demoed at hands-on booths at Macworld Expos during Oni's development, but removed before release due to stated concerns over latency issues, contributed to some lower scores from reviewers.[33] Some of the game's content was cut as well. This included the "Iron Demon", a large mech shown in-game in one trailer. Also, many of the weapons featured in the trailer and the game cover were not in the game.[citation needed]


On the positive side, Oni received the most praise for its smooth character animation and large array of fighting moves, as well as how it blended gunplay and melee combat.[44] Thus, reviewers gave Oni mostly average-to-good scores in recognition of the enjoyment factor of the game. Jeff Lundgren of Next Generation said of the PlayStation 2 version: "It may have been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait. In fact, in a number of important ways, this is the game The Bouncer should have been."[35]


Approximately three years ago, game developers realized that the unexpected success of the Tomb Raider series could be combined with the action of the console hit Goldeneye to create a new genre of game - the third-person action game. This new genre promised to take the tired first-person games into new territories. Developers envisioned John Woo two-fisted shooting with Jackie Chan jumps and rolls, all made possible through the use of a third-person perspective. Thus, Oni was conceived and born to bridge the gap between action and adventure.


Oni features a futuristic cop named Konoko - you know that already. You won't know that she is supposed to single-handedly defeat the evil forces of chaos and destruction... unless you've ever played computer games before. You also won't know that she runs around warehouses stacked full of crates for the better part of the game... unless you've played the demo. You probably know that Oni is inspired by Japanese anime-style artwork. What you don't know is that there is only one cut-scene in the whole game that pays tribute to this. You also won't know how terribly tedious this game becomes in the later parts.


It is important to inform you up-front that Oni doesn't allow the player to save the game in progress. Instead, Oni notifies you that it has saved the game at various pre-determined points. On the plus side, you won't have to worry about forgetting to save your game. On the downside, the entirety of the game implodes because of this deliberate design flaw. The developers have chosen to build a game that relies too much on the console model rather than take advantage of the unique features of the PC; this is important because the rest of the game is irrevocably tainted by this design paradigm, as you will soon understand.


The most innovative feature of Oni is undoubtedly the hand-to-hand combat system. The third-person perspective allows the player to battle enemies with fluidity and grace. It's almost like playing Street Fighter from a Tomb Raider-esque perspective in that you can execute Hollywood style punches, kicks and throws with relative ease. In that respect, this is one truly innovative game.


This hand-to-hand combat innovation comes at a price. The game obviously showcases Konoko's advanced martial arts skills at the expense of other more traditional perks, such as cool weapons. New combat moves occasionally become available, so as you progress through the game, Konoko becomes more lethal. New combination attacks make Konoko more fun to watch and to play. Of course, if you are just now learning to use the WASD layout, these new moves may not be that easy to learn. Even players that practice these moves won't always find them useful. In later levels, when surrounded by four thugs and one on the rafters shooting at you, there is little time to execute any combination move or throw an opponent. That leaves only two choices: click the mouse with all the fury in your fingers or pull out a gun.


To be quite honest, you're better off without a gun. At least, that's what Bungie has decided. This is the first game that actually encourages players to ignore guns and other ranged weapons in favor of the less efficient five punches, three kicks and a jumping stomp. It appears there was one mandate when the level designers went to work: no ammo; no health; no guns. Compared with the very fun Heavy Metal: FAKK2, which allowed two-fisted gunfights and a variety of cool weapons, Oni features only two useful guns - the basic, inaccurate machine pistol and the rocket-launcher-like plasma rifle. The machine pistol is quite good for taking out a bad guy at close range but only holds enough ammo for one kill. The plasma rifle is quite difficult to use against moving targets but compensates with an extended range. Sadly, it too holds only enough ammunition for a single kill. 2ff7e9595c


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