About 5 years ago, Ico was the most amazing game ever. Well, it was if you read the right reviews, anyway. Lots of people have told me that I can’t be a proper gamer if I’ve never played it. Almost everyone seems to say it is fantastic, a real experience, and one of the best games ever made.
So today, I played it for the first time ever.
You know, in all the time I’d read about Ico, I never really knew what it was about. Guy with horns needs to escape from castle meets girl puzzles happen… that’s it. Oh, and there’s no HUD or anything. That’s all I knew.
Two of the things I hate most in games are crate puzzles in games that are not crate pushing games (so Sokoban = Good, but in Broken Sword 3 = Bad) and escort missions.
Within ten minutes of starting Ico I had this nasty sinking feeling. I found the girl, and now have to escort her. Everywhere. For the entire game. And, with some crate-pushing (but not puzzles – yet) already, things do not bode well.
Other problems: the combat is meh, the fact the girl can’t do anything for herself is annoying as you have to drag her everywhere (and when you have to leave her for a few seconds, she gets nabbed and you can’t get back to her quick enough), and there’s some strange hazy pixel effect on everything so it looks like an old MegaCD Cinepak FMV game. Yeah, the graphics are great, but you get the feeling the pixelly thing is covering some sort of hardware limitation.
Oh, and when you die, you got back miles and have to do tedious crap again.
So no, I’m not enjoying it. I spent an hour on it and didn’t really like any of it. I’ve been told on rllmuk that if I don’t like it yet, I’m not going to, so I’m thinking I might just give up now rather than sit through the rest of the game. Probably.
And triangle for jump just seems wrong.
I have to say it, I just do. Apologies in advance.
Y.H.N.S.
I thought Ico was supposed to *provide* the soul? So far, it has only provided frustration and death.