Down Write Daily – December 23, 2009 December 23, 2009
Posted by Mitchell Dyer in Blog, Down Write Daily, Games.Tags: Ico, Shadow of the Colossus
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I started playing Ico a couple years ago because I’d heard nothing but good things about it. I hated it. Since the release of Shadow of the Colossus, Ico’s pseudo-sequel, critics, journalists and other enthusiasts have been trumpeting the wonder and beauty of Team Ico’s maiden voyage. Everyone I know, whether they’re smart forum-goers or friends in the press, keeps talking about how incredible it is. So I thought I’d take another stab at the renowned PS2 classic.
These people forgot to mention one thing: charm can be everlasting, it can also be overshadowed. I’m writing this having finished two hours and 35 minutes of Ico. And as I write, I’m wondering if I will ever go back to it. The adventure game has me at odds with myself, but I think that one side is outweighing the other.
On one hand, I have an immense adoration at the sheer magic of it – it’s absolutely gorgeous despite its aged graphics, masterfully designed and brilliantly presented. There is no heads-up display of any kind; the hero has no health and can’t die unless he falls; and the main theme of the game, protecting a frighteningly pale and supposedly wrongfully imprisoned girl called Yorda, is quite touching. That aspect of it makes the simplistic combat scenarios terribly tense. As shadowy, inky demon thugs pop out of portals, the tense music drops in as a haunting indicator that now, most of all, is the time to keep Yorda safe from these presumably evil kidnappers.
On the other hand, the little things about Ico are really getting on my nerves, and are severely impeding on my ability to tolerate and play the game. The camera is terrible, and what little control you have over it makes things worse, often disorienting; not having a HUD means that you’re on your own to figure things out – I had to hit up a walkthrough to find out that I even had the option to swing from chains, as there was never any indication; and the puzzles are incredibly complex. Because of the awful camera, objectives are often obscured either by poor positioning or objects in the area. Frequently, I’d be at a loss because what I needed to see was obstructed. Even when I learned I had to explore to find certain things, something would be missing.
Beautiful in every sense of the word... and I don't care.
I wonder how much of this is archaic design and how much of it is me not being able to read any subtle hints that may or may not even be there. Either way, I’m not enjoying myself playing Ico. I’m almost immediately frustrated by every new area because I have to stand in weird spots just to get a view on things. I’ve walked past my fair share of ladders and chains due to a poorly placed POVs.
I don’t have the patience for this kind of stuff anymore. Maybe Ico aged poorly. Maybe I’m not good enough to play it. Maybe people only think it’s good because Shadow of the Colossus is so incredible. I don’t know. And I don’t know if I ever want to return to this enchanting universe, despite knowing that there are some phenomenal story twists ahead. All of these small nuisances pile up and make every second I play an agonizing experience.
Everyone tells me that it’s one of the best games of all time.
I think I’m playing the wrong game, because that doesn’t seem possible. And it depresses me to say that.
I value this kind of honesty, especially with yourself — if you’re not enjoying the experience, you definitely shouldn’t force yourself to plod through just because everyone raves about it.
However, I’m a little stuck on this part: “I had to hit up a walkthrough to find out that I even had the option to swing from chains … ”
Why not just try to swing from the chains? What’s the worst that could happen? One of my favorite things about Ico is the boyish sense of exploration and discovery, which I think you really have to bring with you into the game. So, whereas you may see obscure, complex puzzles, I might have seen new things prod and tug at and figure out.
I do think fighting off the monsters is the most tedious thing about the game, since waving a stick around until they leave is really no more interesting than it sounds.
The chain thing was something that just didn’t click. I could climb them, and my first reaction was to swing… just not by holding the circle button. I’d experimented earlier with all the buttons, and O didn’t do anything at the time. Plus, if you’re just tapping it (say, if you’re trying to find a button to swing, for instance) there’s no reaction.
I appreciate the game’s neglect to tell you anything because it plays into exactly what you’re talking about with discovery and exploration. It just confused me at points.
The only issues I had with the combat, aside from the camera, is that the enemies take too long to take down. That incredible tension is lost when you’re pounding away on the attack button going “Alright, just die already…” I’m alright with the simplicity of it, but let’s tone down the length of each, yeah?
Having played Ico when it was originally released, I never had to experience it through word of mouth. Because of that, I honestly can say that I enjoy every waking moment of it and still have fond memories of treking through the game’s 5-7 hours long story. My enjoyment stemmed from the fact that it was a game that ‘pushed’ you into learning through trail and error. We have become too accustomed to recent releases that begin with a tutorial and guide us along the way; we often fail to remember older games that relied on ‘trail by fire’.
By no means is the game perfect; the fact that North American gamers never got to learn what was actually being said is a great injustice in eye. I even found the overall length to be quite short but it still remains one of my favorite PS2 games. Lastly, I think that with so many other games, they are better experienced at the moment rather than years down the road.
I must say, I’m finding a hard time linking your tweets from yesterday and today about being hated on with this article.
In your third paragraph you neatly sum up everything that I loved about Ico, and want to take with me from now on. I compare a lot of games I play to these aspects of Ico – the wonder of discovery, the magic of the twin characters, the well-told and encapsulated story, the setting and its enveloping atmosphere told though vision and the amazing sound design. I think about these things on an almost weekly basis and feel all mushy, Hell, when I visited Pompeii last year and stood in a desolate section of ruin I thought to myself “Man, reminds me of Ico.”
That doesn’t mean I don’t think about the terrible camera, which I usually wanted to pull back about ten feet to get a feeling of the arenas of aesthetic and also puzzle-solving means.
I think about the drawn out combat, and while it showed you the desperation of your hero though his endless flailing it quickly became old about the time of the third set of enemies that would spawn from the same damn portal. There is a rather well placed revelation regarding the shadow creatures towards the end which explains, but does not excuse, their tenacity.
With the puzzles, I have to say that perhaps you are attacking them with an incompatable (not wrong by any stretch) mindset – a lot of the situations in Ico you have to fling yourself at with almost wild abandon. “Can I jump that or use that to continue moving? Well, lets have a look at it, see if Yorda is safe, then take a running leap at it. Either way, I’ll learn something about how I can interact with this world. It’s not like there is much of a death penalty.”
Don’t force yourself to play the game, especially if it is going to detract from the elements you already profess to liking.
I will say that I think you are doing it a disservice by hypothesising “Maybe people only think it’s good because Shadow of the Colossus is so incredible.” – I played SotC first and have never really been grabbed by it (and so have not completed it) whereas Ico took me hook line and sinker. While I don’t like to use terms like “best game of all time”, I will say it is one of my stand-out favourites, and the flaws it has are reasons why I will not replay it.
Oh cack, looks like my thoughts were summed up by LudwigK while I was away from the computer making dinner.
Bah, the more the merrier, even if it is the same sentiment.
The more I talk to people about this, the more I recognize that Ico isn’t necessarily a bad game. This is one of the very rare situations where someone can say “You just don’t get it” and I won’t laugh at the absurdity of the assumption. I really just don’t get it. I realize what makes the game good, and I *do* like poking around these gorgeous areas.
You mention, Elliot, that you won’t play it again because of its flaws. I think what you see about those in hindsight is precisely what I’m struggling with. But other things I don’t like seem to be things that you enjoy — I don’t like having to take the risk of falling to my death and going back to my last save. I enjoy the thrill of making that huge leap of faith, but there were a couple spots where I knew what had to be done, got excited about it, and then died because of flubbed depth perception. Again, I keep falling back on the camera as my safety net when knocking the game, but I think it’s just. Every issue I have with the game seems to have a six-degrees kind of connection to it.
Like I said. I see what people like, and I like a lot about it too. Some things just stand out so strongly that it makes it a game I don’t plan on playing. The ironic part is that the more I talk about it the more I want to see it through.
Like Silent Hill 2, I want someone to play this one for me. I want to experience it, I just don’t want to have to play it.