It definitely helped that Ico launched before Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, a game with a nearly identical focus and moveset, only faster, smoother, and better in the hand. (I don’t want to argue that they’re bad in Ico, either, but they’re economical; exactly what the game needs and not an ounce of fat more)
Last Guardian really damaged perceptions of Ico because by the time it came out the character moveset was bedrock 3d character foundation and the climbing and block puzzles weren’t enough, by then, to sustain the game.
I don’t know that anyone’s making the argument they didn’t care to make their mechanics elegant. I’m only saying they aren’t quite compelling enough in and of themselves divorced from their aesthetics. Shadow of the Colossus did the off center camera view before anyone else and it only worked because it was framing a rider on horseback riding through a beautiful and desolate landscape.
By itself it was technically novel at the time and impressive for it but if it wasn’t framing those scenes and those characters (rider and horse) then it wouldn’t have been nearly as compelling. It’s kind of like prior to GTA IV there was a mod for PC San Andreas that attempted to offset the view behind the vehicle to be in line with what was being described in the GTA IV previews. It had a similar kind of off center type view (it was actually centered on the player even while in a car) and it was creating a different feel for the game. It didn’t really do anything for San Andreas because the game wasn’t designed around that idea (and now I fear I’m defeating my own point here by recognizing this but oh well).
Also the mechanics in the Team Ico games are all tied to the animation. Clinging onto a colossus is basically showcasing their special animation tech for these two characters interacting. It works because they built a concept and whole game around it but you see a similar mechanic show up in later games like Monster Hunter (I think?) or Dragon’s Dogma where it definitely adds something but is only compelling because it’s being added in addition to other, already compelling mechanics in those games.
Whether or not the Team Ico mechanics succeed for you kind of hinges on whether or not the animations aren’t too janky for you or the aesthetics of the overall package suit your tastes. Once you start treating them like game objects to be conquered via speedrun you find the mechanics of the games in themselves often working more against you than for you.
My first playthrough of Ico took me at least double that. Due to getting stuck for an hour or more on several poorly telegraphed puzzles. Again fine-ish if you look solutions up, but I actually didn’t have internet close at hand when I played it around the time of release (was living in Japan which was behind on internet access in 2002).
I might be sounding like I have a relatively negative tone here, but the upshot is I think all of the Ueda games are great if you use modern tech to self-edit the experience. And they were also OK at the time because we had lower standards for how much games needed to respect our time. (Well, I was still irritated at Ico even at the time for just how much I got stuck, but I can believe I happened to be an outlier there.)
I also somehow have not played The Last Guardian despite it being the reason I bought a PS3 and also the reason I bought a PS4. I guess I should get around to it.
ICO is still my favorite modern video game. I did get stuck at one point for a day or two and I probably found that frustrating, but I don’t remember ever feeling bored with either that game or Shadow of the Colossus.
Even now I can’t think of anything else in video games as exhilarating as colossus 5 was at the time. But I remember being annoyed that there was a time attack mode. That seemed to go against the spirit of the game.
3D Prince of Persia is actually a game that I found unappealing. I played maybe half of it when it was new but I found the combat dull and repetitive and the characters uninteresting. Basically, it lacked any of the charm of ICO that made the repetitive combat in that game not an issue for me.
I like Sands of Time and its tone quite a bit but it’s not nearly on the same level as Ico (it’s hard to come at grace and look good). It did a lot, though, to standardize that character moveset: mantling, shimmying, rope climbing/swinging/jumping, the building blocks of room-by-room encounters (discover route, simple puzzle, combat breaks).
Coincidentally, I set up my CRT and was playing some PS2 stuff last night and did 2 hours of Ico; I remembered how much combat exists as an emotional beat more than a skill challenge: the player can mostly only flail, the monsters are horrifying and vague. It’s always desperate and reminds me more of Silent Hill combat, and its purpose, than a Zelda-like.
edit: wait we can’t be talking about this correctly without this in the background:
I have such trepidation about that Sands of Time remake that’s coming. Deeply flawed as it was, it managed a mood that I really liked and I loved all the platforming (the combat was terrible and this is the one thing they ought to work on and just leave the rest alone imho)
Still haven’t played ICO but I have listened to the full length of this exact video in the past. The background slowly scrolls over the course of its entire length. It’s the Desert Golfing of YouTube soundtrack rips.
when I saw it, it made me think about how much Below wanted to bring this mood to a Souls game.
And I thought, how much is the stillness and mood in Below a latecomer to the current indie scene, and how much of it is Team Ico-derived? And is there a qualitative difference between the mood generated in Ico and modern quiet indies?
Yes, obviously, but it’s subtle: it relies on a consistent quality of art that small games can’t normally maintain, it relies on the player’s trust that the mood is working in concert with the game, and it relies on an original vision – stillness, quietness are easy to copy at a surface level, and the trust that these are new, important observations can be quickly broken. I suppose I could learn more about how slower-moving art criticism evolves but from an outsider’s perspective it’s very similar to the gains made on sand in a field like theology.
There is a disturbing slow rise of people who will come out at any negative mention of that game in public spaces like video comments to defend it to the grave. It lines up well with the timeline of people who would’ve grown up with it. A lot of the arguments are around what the game technically has on paper (and was talked up in the marketing) but really doesn’t execute well on like some non-linear exploration of the castle and very large list animations for attacks that flow into each other.
In addition to nostalgia and flawed memory, I wonder if this is also a function of either:
the dilution/decimation of a (survivorship biased) console game canon after the PS2; or
the relative homogenization of 3D action games following Ubisoft’s 360/PS3 formula
I wouldn’t have thought about it as a parallel to SA2 but
is basically the model for SA2/2006 discourse. The ambition becomes the substance in memory. It’s a little anecdotal but this video essay has the illuminating point that in coping with a bad childhood purchase he learned the bullshit by rote until he couldn’t see the flaws then or remember them clearly. I definitely have games like this and think it’s pretty common for kids to do this (see also: Zelda 1998-2016).
Prince of Persia doesn’t have a sharp 2D throwback entry but if it did I can totally see a resentment of it vis-a-vis what could have been if not for the 2008 reboot.
There’s also a craving for sincere Shonen machismo in the Sonic crowd I could totally see with Warrior Within apologists - strawman: “When I was 13 I played this game and felt secure in my masculinity, then Ubisoft made the [pretty/chill/“casual”] reboot with a Sigur Ros song I didn’t like that ruined the franchise!”
Mid-aughts grimdark stuff is a trip to remember because it was so dang unappealing.
was trying to remember the, like, main one of these nu-metal PS2 games and unlocked a memory of being mortified at/of/for masculinity when someone at school told me about the “sex minigame” in God of War
if you haven’t played the last guardian and you can pick it up, just play it and figure out what you think after. it’s Ico only longer, less understated, a bit more elegant in its puzzles, and with a giant fucking AI dog that follows you for 20 hours in a way you will absolutely never see again. when it doesn’t work it’s slightly frustrating and a bit aimless, when it does work it’s a game you’ve never played before.
ueda’s games aren’t good because they’re masterpieces, they are messy and clunky and weird and barely held together. they’re good because they pried the medium open in ways that were practically unheard of us outside of another world and its ilk. this might be why the last guardian never interested me as much. the medium had kind of caught up with ueda after colossus. I’ll still play it someday I suppose.
even if ico and sotc have aged awkwardly I think they are both completely worthwhile for their atmospheric storytelling alone. they’re just great sensory experiences. nothing else feels quite like them.
and most importantly - i need the creators to allow me to build confidence in their work. sometimes this can be accomplished in an indirect way - i will be significantly more “bought in” upon starting a new From game than a new AAA Sony prestige joint, for example. the sony game is going to have to start from 0 (or possibly already in the negatives…) and prove to me that i should care about any human perspective they have, any insights, mechanical innovations, technical flourishes, narrative arcs. the game must show to me that it is worth my time, first and foremost, before it can be deserving of scrutiny and effort. it’s necessary because i think most games are not worth my or anyone’s time, despite demanding far too much of it
once the creators have expressed something like “competence”, but in a much more holistic, spiritual sense, then i can apply scrutiny and effort into receiving whatever the game is trying to communicate. you can of course be critical of games that fail to meet 1, but i find it’s on a lower bar altogether. “fun” or “not fun”, “too hard”, whatever… these things barely matter if a game has accomplished 1. i’m sort of talking about the “intentionality” and “artfulness” of a game, to some extent, but these terms are yet insufficient
ueda games would be valuable stuff even if value 2 was never even approached, because ueda games have excess amounts of value 1!
