Art or no, a game like this unexpected 2006 PlayStation 2 mythical adventure at least deserves the tag “artful.”
Ōkami employs familiar activities (running, jumping, exploring) but in a delicately painted 3D world animated by thousands of quivering brush strokes. As you prowl outdoor climes in lupine form (the Japanese word ōkami means “wolf”) curls of clouds float through the air while calligraphic mountains lie flat against the horizon, giving you the sense of strolling through a Hokusai woodcut.
Ōkami also offered a clever drawing angle: sketch lines to slice rocks in half, scrawl over broken objects to “fill them in,” or scribble on enemies to douse them in ink, temporarily blinding them.