The Last Guardian

Team Ico is perhaps one of the most groundbreaking games developers working at the minute. Though they have only released two games up to this point, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on the old Playstation 2, both were immensely entertaining, thought-provoking, and above all, good games that validated videogames not just as idle amusement but as art.

Ico is a game where you try and help a totally useless princess escape from a malevolent dark force, but though the game should be irritating because the girl is so useless, its compelling story and great puzzles make it a cut above other games. Shadow of the Colossus still remains my favourite game ever; a minimalist exploration/battle piece with a genuinely a heart-wrenching ending.

Well, two games in 9 years isn’t that much but in The Last Guardian, tentatively scheduled for the end of 2011 on the Playstation 3, we have on our hands possibly another classic. It’s set in the same world as Shadow of the Colossus – at least the ambient atmosphere and dulled grey lighting is very similar – and you take control of a boy and his “guardian”. What animal this guardian actually is can be up for debate; online commentators have been caught between calling it a “dog-chicken” and a “gryphon”. In any case the trailers have been making a great deal of the boy’s relationship with the creature. The animal can strike strange stone-like guards aside with a single swipe of its talons, but when the boy climbs onto its feathers it purrs.

What has been stressed through the development process of this game by Team Ico is making the creature behave like an actual animal, rather than a poorly digitalised one. (The horse Agro in Shadow of the Colossus was not a hairy car like most games, but a very expertly released horse.) The trailers seem to act out this belief very thoroughly; the creature shakes its feathers, stretches from a slumber and skids to a halt in a way that recalls my old dog. Aside from the guardian the game looks to have the traditional Ico elements. The young boy will hardly be an adept swordsman so avoiding enemies is a must, scurrying and hiding using walls. I hope they bring back that grip meter in Shadow of the Colossus, as footage seems to correspond with such a mechanism. Also this game seems to have adopted Ico’s use of extensive platforming and puzzles, which seem as though they require an adept partnership between boy and guardian to be solved.

In an industry where releases of hackneyed first person shooters and regurgitated FIFA franchises are now the norm, The Last Guardian looks like a breath of fresh air. I feel like the ultimate hipster having written a sentence like that, but the game does have an entrancing beauty that is visible from seeing the trailer alone. The crux of the game though will be whether the boy’s relationship with his guardian is deep and solid enough and does not come across as a bastardised co-op system. But going on Team Ico’s previous record, here’s hoping it won’t.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.