Ico

After beating Shadow of the Colossus (see my earlier post on that amazing game), I decided to pick up Ico. Colossus takes place before Ico, but Ico was made first, and tells the "story" of a boy trying to guide this girl out of a castle. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not really, because while Ico (the boy) can easily climb and swing on chains and push blocks around and do everything most videogame characters can do, Yorda (the girl) is basically capable of falling down a lot, walking in circles or into walls repeatedly, and sometimes getting kidnapped by shadow people, thus causing the game to end. Getting her up a single short step is a chore of holding down the R1 button while she stumbles around in a circle trying to step up for 5 minutes as you yell at the screen. You can imagine how difficult it is to navigate Yorda out of this huge castle. And sometimes, when you're trying to complete a puzzle, she'll just randomly run off in an arbitrary direction. It really is annoying.



There she is. Doesn't she just look stupid?!

In fact, upon reflection, she's about as smart as the horse Agro in Shadow of the Colossus.

When you're riding him, all is great, for the most part. In Ico, you can lead the girl by the hand and she'll go whereever you want. Works fine. Animations look great, feels realistic. Now, in Colossus, when you aren't riding Agro, it's common that he'll just wander around, or sometimes just start galloping away at breakneck speeds in some direction for who-knows-what reason. Getting the horse to maneuver up simple steps or in tight spaces is also a chore. Well, so it is with Yorda in Ico. In fact, saying that Yorda is as dumb as a horse is an insult to the horse, because Yorda is in fact dumber. Sometimes, when you call her, she won't even move. She's also incapable of climbing simple ropes. You can't direct her to do anything. When you want to climb up a ladder, and she's at the top, she'll sometimes just start climbing down the ladder, blocking your path. She won't start going back up, oh no, that would be too smart, she just keeps going down until you're forced to backtrack down the ladder, wait for her to get off at the bottom, then go up.

Oh, and god forbid you leave her in a single place for too long, because then the bad ol' shadow people will get her. Yeah, this is about the most frustrating part of the game, and of course it isn't helping matters that Yorda is dumber than a pet rock. Basically, it boils down to this: after finishing some puzzle section (i.e., what comprises most of the game), some portals will open and these shadow people will jump/fly/crawl out of them, and try to nab Yorda. You get to fight them off with a stick. If they capture her, they'll carry her back to a portal, at which point the game ends. Sometimes they knock you down, too, and grab her while you're still recovering. It gets pretty cheap, and often takes a number of tries to get through these sections. Also, the darn shadow people just keep coming! They don't freaking stop for 10 minutes! You're literally standing next to Yorda, pressing the square button furiously, and trying to avoid being knocked down because you just know that if that happens, you'll simply lose. Since these "defend the dumb girl" sections are separate from the adventure and puzzle-solving, they could have easily just removed all of these and made the game just that much better. And just to reiterate, while this is all going on, Yorda will sometimes just run off, at which point you need to chase her down and lead her by the hand to a corner or something so that she'll stay put! I swear, a pet rock would be better than this dumb girl. At least then I know it would stay the heck where I left it.

Ok, so it sounds like I've been trashing the game this whole time. Truth is, I do like Ico. A vast majority of the game is taken up solving some fun puzzles involving the environment. There are lots of "ok, how do I get Yorda over there?" moments, and figuring them out is fun and rewarding. When Yorda does what you want her to do, which is a lot of the time, the gameplay works great. The visual and storytelling style is very much in line with Shadow of the Colossus, which is to say it's awesome. Not that there is much of a story, but the way it is told is just great.

So, my impression of Ico? Unique, worth a play-through, very artistic, pretty fun. Not as good as Colossus. And Yorda needs to DIE (I'm crossing my fingers for the ending of the game).