Review: Ico

I have been told that Ico is somewhat seen as a gem in the game industry by designers, and that it’s a “secret card” one could pull out during an interview as the game is unique and provides a great experience from its minimalist design approach.

Since Shadow of the Colossus is seen as a “spiritual prequel” to Ico, I was very interested in where the story would continue from where SOTC had left off. With rumors of a sequel to the series coming to the PS3, I had planned to get this game and play it before the next iteration came out. Luck would have it that I picked it up used (in mint condition!) at a GameStop while browsing to kill some time.

Overview

From Wikipedia:

The player takes on the role of Ico, a young boy born with a pair of horns, who must escort a princess named Yorda safely out of a castle without her being captured by the shadowy figures that prowl nearby or being killed by the castle’s numerous environmental hazards.

Overall Reaction (Possible Spoilers Below)

Story
The story itself was an interesting story. From the ending of Shadow of the Colossus, we have a baby boy who has small horns growing out of his head. (Presumably a transformation of Wander.) As the story goes, there were boys who were born with horns every few generations, and that those boys were seen as harbingers of trouble and misgiving to the community. After the boy’s horns had grown large enough, the community thought it was time to sacrifice him. They bring him to a castle, and lock him up. He soon breaks free of this castle, and finds his way until he gets to a spiral staircase in which he had a previous dream about. He rescues a girl, Yorda, whom does not speak the same language that he does. He knows that he needs to get out of this castle, and takes it upon himself to bring Yorda with him along his quest for escape.

The story itself is easy to follow, and there is a bit more dialogue that Shadow of the Colossus, but with only three characters, more dialogue is not really needed.

What I really enjoyed about this game was the minimalism (no GUI), and incredible amount of puzzle diversity when the developers did not introduce much in the way of various tools, or variables to the equation. The game stayed very fresh throughout, without much interaction with similar puzzles from the past.

Lastly, Having played the “prequel” to this game before, I was able to re-enjoy some of the aspects of SOTC, reliving some of the story, understanding some of the puzzles that took me awhile to get not having played Ico (specifically the stick and fire / pitbull colossi), and I got to see the two games to come together complimenting each other really well.

Weaknesses (What I’d Change)

Options
My first issue with the game happened before I even got to start it. I wasn’t able to get my hi-def cables working with the PS2, and I wasn’t able to see the game clearly until I had gone back to the composite cables. This frustrated me slightly, and there were no options within the game to control widescreen, progressive scan, or even controls. I got used to it soon enough, but I generally use an inverted look when playing a game, and it was a pain in the ass to have to remember this each time I needed to look around. (Which happened often enough to remind me of the frustration of the whole ordeal).

Camera
The camera at times provided to be a huge annoyance, as it seemed that the camera anchored itself a good ten feet away from Ico, yet wouldn’t let you look past Ico’s field of vision, which was a perspective you weren’t looking through. In enclosed spaces, close hallways, or when Ico for whatever reason was near a wall when I was trying to glance around, I would find myself moving him just to get a better look.

Colors
I love the coloring in Ico, and the mood it creates, but I absolutely hate the fact that it has created some sort of bland-movement in next-gen games, pushing these games that could break beautiful boundaries of color and vivid presentation.

Controls
This goes hand in hand with some other complaints, but with two unbound buttons (not that all of them need to be filled up), but the lack of customization abilities and camera controls in this game were ultimately lacking

Hints
There was one puzzle in the game, probably about two hours in, that I was stuck on for a good 45 minutes before I gave up and looked up a little help on an online walkthrough. It turns out, I needed to swing on the chain I was dangling from. Having needed no use of swinging previously, and no inclination of how to do that, one would have only found out that such a solution to the puzzle existed by frustratingly looking online for a walkthrough like myself, or having looked through the instruction manual, which had the move listed within the book. (Who reads these manuals anyway?) Thankfully, this information was not in vein, as it was necessary to solve a few more puzzles later on. If there could be some way of detecting when a puzzle was started, and if it was being attempted for longer than x amount of minutes (say, 25-30) that some onscreen hints come away to provide you some help along the way.

Move to Europe
Generally Europe gets the shaft when it comes to console releases, etc, but not this time. The European version of Ico had a multitude of features for more replay value, including:

The second playthrough bonuses present in the EU and Japanese releases are removed, as is the expanded dialogue (the subtitles that were indecipherable runes the first time through are now translated), the option to have a second player control the princess, a secret weapon which resembles a lightsaber from Star Wars, and the option to play the entire game in the “film effect” seen in certain cut scenes. There were also a few changes made to the game itself, such as the shadow generation points and the AI. Most notably, the Waterfall and Windmill puzzles are more complex in the Japanese and European versions than the US version. The original box artwork, designed by Fumito Ueda, is a homage to the surrealist painter de Chirico (compared to The Nostalgia of the Infinite) and helped to add to the minimalist feel of the game.

The box art is much cooler in my opinion, having someone control Yorda could have made some of the puzzles a bit easier/faster/different, and the Windmill puzzle was memorable, but not necessarily difficult.

Animations and the slippery Yorda
Animations in the game were lacking, and this is evident throughout, but especially in the fact that EVERY TIME Yorda jumps after you, she slips, falls, Ico catches her, and pulls her up. In an earlier demo version of the game – Ico has the ability to let go of Yorda when they had made contact with her hands. I know for sure that sometimes I wouldn’t have minded letting go.

Quick Ending
While I’m not asking for the game to be any longer (I think the time was just enough to keep me interested), the arc of the story seemed to taper off pretty fast after you fell from the drawbridge. A few easy puzzles and you were back in the castle, kill the queen, game over. You just spent 6-8 hours getting to this point, and even with the descriptions in the booklet, there are 5-6 “sections” of the game, 3-4 of which you accomplish in the last hour. Since this game didn’t give any sort of percentage complete, or concept of how close you were to finishing the game, I wasn’t expecting for everything to jump into place like it did so quickly.

The game has inspired so much throughout today’s games, and plays a pivotal role in how it presented a minimalist game, great puzzles, and a good story, with the smallest amount of bells and whistles to create an entertaining piece of work. I would list this game as a must play to must own, just so you can get a feel from where some games today are truly coming from..