Isn't Okami basically Zelda with a wolf and a cool renderer?
I played maybe 4-5 hours of it, and while the visuals were striking, the gameplay was on the verge of boring - silly minigames, repetitive battles and a gesture system very unappropriate for the thumbsticks. To me Okami is proof that despites all the whining how we are tired of graphics and need new and fresh gameplay ideas, exactly the opposite is true: the market and the critics are willing to embrace a game with good graphics and "just OK" everything else.
Can you think of ANY action/adventure or RPG game that isn't fairly monotonous in those first hours? (Most of that time being story and world exposition, of course.
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The "silly minigames" portion is the only part of Okami that carries forward throughout, but the battles are only as "repetitive" as you want to make them (since you can avoid/leave the majority of them anyway), actually get more diverse and tactical than most games (you don't see much diversity that short into the game since you haven't gotten that many brush powers and probably only, like, one extra weapon).
Also, I'm also not sure how the gesture system is "inappropriate" since
everything any game has done since the N64 has basically been put on those sticks, and the only new bundled control method has come out this gen--after Okami's release. And I'm not sure how uncoordinated a gamer's thumb would have to be to have trouble with "line," "circle," and "swirl..." But since you're paused anyway, it's not a big deal how quickly, slowly or inaccurately (unpause, then pause again) you pull it off, and when you use it enough it becomes second nature.
The complaints I assume most have about DR in relation to Okami and TP is simply that while it does the "action" part very well, freshly, and extremely fun, the "adventure" part is pretty "meh"--not to mention short. Okami and TP, meanwhile, do the action part extremely well (if not as "new"), while their adventure is compelling, intricate, long, and varied.
To me, Okami is proof that people recognize an excellent overall game and don't let their expectations get ahead of their enjoyment. (And also show an appreciation for art in games, because it is even more unexpected and eye-popping from an artistic perspective than DR was "new" in gameplay.)
Meanwhile, I also share misgivings about UMK3, as "well-handled online implementation" does not make MK3 a good fighting game.
Oblivion might be more proof that people are still fixated on visuals, though, because as eye-popping as those are, Bethesda still has trouble getting their "levelling mechanics" to make sense and not require metagaming, and it's not much of an evolution over Morrowind in other than graphics and world scale. FFXII, at least, ends up being much more of a change for for the FF series. (Along with its' own excellent graphics--certainly amazing art direction--and a better storyline, new takes on party control and experience gaining...)
I'd also put Mercury over Exit in the puzzler arena, because while Exit is a nice revisitation to old puzzle games and mechanics (and is stylistically nifty), Mercury does not have as exacting and punishing a control scheme and allows for attrition and recovery (rather than "misthink/mishit-button once, redo board"), and lets you aim for more in the way of better scoring than "do it exactly again, but faster."
