|
Ico PS2 SCEI - 2001 I have never been so worried about reviewing a game. I don't know if any words can do this game justice. Wait a minute, wow, whoopee, yay, sob, tear, cauterize, uhhhhh . . . nope, no words that I can think of. But I must try to review it so, here I go. First, the story: the game opens showing Ico, the main character with the horns (which are real, not a hat), being escorted through the woods on horseback. Ico is then locked in a stone capsule, one of many in the room. After the escorts leave, there is a small tremor which knock Ico's cell off its pedestal. When it falls, it breaks open and Ico is freed, sort of. Actually, he is stuck on an island with a magically sealed gate and a retractable bridge. This is where you take over. You guide Ico around this enormous castle with no real purpose in mind. After a few rooms, Ico meets Yorda, a sort of white silhouette girl. She is trapped in a cage and Ico feels he should free her, a reasonable response. After freeing her, Yorda spouts some ridiculous things in her crazy moon language, which Ico takes to mean, "grab my hand and drag me all over this *^#$ castle," not a reasonable response. Well, the rest is history as Ico basically rips Yorda's arm off pulling her all over the place. Meanwhile, Yorda keeps telling you stuff that you can't understand, but it probably means "let go of my arm, you big jerk, or my mom's gonna whip you good." Despite the ridonculisity of that story, it is a very touching game. Ico performs countless feats of bravery to protect the helpless Yorda and her speech impediment. He must battle countless smoke monsters that try to drag Yorda into very dark and scary hole in the ground. Ico also climbs to the highest towers of the castle and scoots along tiny ledges at risk of life and limb. And not just his limb! Yorda's, too. For, as she is pulled around the castle by one hand, the other arm flaps in the breeze like a paper doll, liable to rip of in a bloody and tragic spectacle at any minute. But does this phase Ico? Noooo. He just keeps on pulling at her because he nobly assumes that she, a damsel, asked him to do it: she was just too distressed to speak straight when she did, but Ico understood. But let me get past the tom-foolery and the wise-cracking to the heart of this game: devotion. Ico shows the utmost devotion to his illiterate friend. And why not, she's like a dog. She does anything he wants and comes running to calls like "Oom-PAH" and "BLAAHH." Who wouldn't love to meet a girl like that? What I liked: Basically everything. More specifically: the characters. I have never felt so attached to any characters in any game. This is amazing because the cut scenes, though moving, are few and far between. Also, you can't even understand Yorda. Somehow they really conveyed the emotions, though. I would have given my right leg, left arm, and both ears if it had been necessary to save Ico and Yorda. I also loved the gameplay. The puzzles ranged from very simple to very hard, but were always fun. The castle itself was even cool. The enemys looked great and were pretty scary. Although they were frustrating, they kept you moving and gave you a sense of urgency. My favorite thing was probably the music. It was kept to a minimum: there was some very quite music for cut-scenes, but not much more, certainly no grand orchestral pieces. For most of the game, you just heard the sound effects, which really helps you get into the game. Finally, the ending was among the best ever. What I disliked: You couldn't understand Yorda. Although she has only a few lines, and you can guess about what she said, I would have liked to know for sure. The Japanese version gave the option to replay the game with Yorda's lines translated. Unfortunately, this extra didn't make it to U.S. shores. What to expect: The most immersive gaming experience ever. The sounds, backgrounds, characters, and story are all conspiring to make you cry. You WILL get into this game, heart and soul. If you don't, you are a heartless bastard whom I hope it is never my displeasure to meet. Also, expect some frustration with the harder puzzles, they can be a real mitch. You will probably get stuck at some point in this game, although, Ari and I were often stuck because we had forgotten we could pull Yorda up (nudge nudge wink wink). What not to expect: Long, involved cut-scenes. The plot is bare bones. It may not have the cinematic feel of Final Fantasy, but it is a spectacular story nonetheless. Also, don't expect the grand score in most plot driven games. There is little music and very subtle sound effects. This is a "less is more" game. What sets it apart from the genre: It has a much greater focus on puzzles than most 3rd person adventure games. It also puts more emphasis on the characters than other adventure or puzzle solving games. Ratings On: Controls: 9 - I never had a big control related problem beyond forgetting what I could do. Sometimes it was hard to line up with switches though. #1 thing I hate about this game: That stupid puzzle in the chandelier room. I mean, honestly, who notices the enormous, conveniently located chandelier? by Sundu
By Hawke I'm not sure I would call Ico "Game of the Year." Sure, it is a well-made, extremely pretty game, but there are a few things that just detract from the overall gameplay. Let's go over them now. Here we go: 1. Ico scares me. It scares me more than any game ever has. That also includes Resident Evil, for those who are wondering. For while RE has genuinely scary Zombies and focuses on creating an atmosphere where the player can feel the anticipation and shock when a zombie bursts thru the window, Ico had a different type of "Scary." When you go to the store to buy your game, you know ahead of time that RE will scare you senseless. It says so on the box. But Ico? It's a puzzle game at heart. Since when has a puzzle game scared anyone? (Chu Chu Rocket commercial non-withstanding.) Yet as soon as you begin playing the game, you create an attachment towards the little boy and that princess. When you free her from her cell high above the ground, you genuinely feel worried if she hurt herself. You run down the stairs to see how she is. After stealing her away, and trying to escape the castle, you feel every tug of her hand as you wretch it out of her socket, when you turn left, and she, like a heavy rag doll, pulls you slightly as she turns as well, now there is something I'm not used to in a game. While the characters don't look extremely human, as the boy has horns, and the girl is, well, she looks like that Fish-Girl on Blue Sub 6, there is an emotional attachment created that was way deeper than any attachment in any RPG, Square-made or otherwise. Sure, who couldn't help feel for Cloud as he forgot his past, but the plot was so conveluted in Final Fantasy 7 that you never reached this level of attachment. Squall from FF8? Err, nevermind. Next Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy 9? Never much liked Zidane, X? Tidus was probably the worst character in that game. So no, I never really made much of an attachment to any RPG character. But Ico somehow makes me feel for the characters. When the princess is captured by the black mist enemies, I will charge Ico at them with all my might, swinging that stick wildly, for I geniunely feel scared that she will be taken into that black pit of doom. It's not a scared feeling that when she's taken down, the game will end and I will have to redo all those puzzles, it is a fear for her life. Call me a freak, call me broken, I genuinely feel terrified for the characters. The fact that you never get a very detailed close-up on them, but keep the blockly-yet-stylish graphics they have throughout the game may help, as, just like in older, (snes) videogames, you don't know exactly how your characters look, and can, in your mind, picture them however you want, with limitations of course. Ico will always be a skinny kid, but his face is never fully defined close-up in the game. Same with the princess, whose face I never really got a good view of. Since the camera always stays far off, this helps the idea. Another reason is the fact that they all talk in another language. For the same reason, while you can see what Ico says, you don't know what the princess replys, and can descide in your own mind just what you want her to say. This last reason I believe is the real reason i grew such an attachment so quickly to the characters. The game is a puzzle game, yet has a plot, and focuses on exploration of the castle, and solving puzzles that MAKE SENSE IN REAL LIFE. There is the reason this game was a success. While most games, rpgs or action/adventure games make your find a key hidden on one end of the dungeon to open a door on the other end, Ico focuses on using cranes to move blocks or the princess to different parts of a crumbling castle. While in the castle, if it was still fully made, it would be easy to walk from one side to the other, it is in the present a partly destroyed castle. The Queen knows Ico is trying to escape, so closes the drawbridge, and locks a few doors. So now Ico must climb, swing, dangle his little body to move a box from one side of a chasm to the other. Why? Because the Queen has sealed off all the normal routes, or they have been destroyed due to decay and destruction, so Ico must invent new and clever routes, then come back and make sure the princess is ok. Okay, well, maybe that isn't a good reason to dislike the game, but, needless to say, I wasn't ready for that kind of a commitment in what I thought was supposed to be a puzzle game. Now, here are my other, if less compelling, reasons. 2. Ico couldn't die. This, while seemingly cool, was annoying, for it made you care more about the princess than your own life. You couldn't leave her alone for a minute without the monsters grabbing her. And if she went into the black pit, never to return, the game ended. So technically you could die, if she died. This made your relationship to her even more important, and thus, scary. 3. The enemies were extremely annoying. This is a genuine complaint. The enemies would keep coming, and you would have to tussle with them, get knocked down, run to save the princess, and then run away, fight, the princess is captured, repeat way too many times. It took about 30 minutes to beat each room of monsters, and this got real annoying fast. Sometimes I wondered if I was supposed to do the puzzle while the monsters would steal the princess away. That is about it. The soundtrack was lovely, for it didn't exist. Instead it was just Ico's voice yelling for Yorda, and her mumbling, and birds chirping. Which was well done, too. So I dug that part. The graphics had a nice style, and the world looked amazingly realistic. There was a bit of fog, although it wasn't there to stop pop-up. In fact, you could see for a while, the fog was there, for there was supposed to be fog in the castle. Understandable. Go to a castle in Scotland and see for yourself. I'm not sure if I would give Ico a 9 for style (this review was written prior to Sundu changing the rating to an 8), due to the fact that, while I count feeling attached to characters rather cool, and a puzzle game where the puzzles made sense also cool, the entire premise of the game was done millions of times. Sure Ico did it a lot better than anything I have seen before, but boy saves princess from castle? That is every game since Mario. Ok, I did like this game a lot. Basically, this review was to write that while I agree with a lot that Sundu said, there are a few things on which we differ. |
