Ico - Had to be there?

[Margalis]

So I just beat Ico, had never played it before. I'd heard great things about it but I'm at a bit of a loss.

The art design was great, the graphics were good (great for 2001 I guess), I liked the feel and the character interaction but the gameplay itself was pretty lame. I got stuck for an hour right towards the start because I couldn't tell that an object was a bomb, it looked like a random pot. Reading online I see many other people mention that part as well.

The game is frustrating. I didn't die often but when I did it was often due to the camera fucking up my jumps, and dying, reloading and repeating the same junk you already did gets very old very fast - wait for Yorda to climb a ladder, wait for Ico to handwalk across a long rail...once you've figured out what to do it's just going through the motions and having to redo *any* amount of progress feels tedious because there's nothing to it. I started greatly resenting every death.

Also the last 10 seconds of the game retroactively killed my appreciation for the ending.

I appreciate the game's sensibility and what it was going for but the core gameplay itself was just bland. In a way I almost wish it was shorter - the part where you light the second gate was essentially a repeat of the first, and appeared added just to stretch the length. Portal had about 4 hours of gameplay in it and was 4 hours long - perfect. I feel like Ico also had about 4 hours of actual gameplay in it but was 6 hours or so.

Did people who played it when it came out have different impressions? I picked up Shadow of the Colossus as well.

[schild]

Shadow of the colossus is superior in every way and has more awesome hidden shit then you can shake a stick at. I didn't know the lizards mattered til 3 runs through. Also, best time attack mode ever. I f theres a game that demand a high def remake, this is it.

[ahoythematey]

I agree with Schild.  Ico really was a game that you sort of "had to be there" to really enjoy it like people talk about it.  Some of what made it so magical was how the game made you feel like you were in a truly foreign land, how most players built a genuine feeling of care for Yorda as the game progressed and specifically how that was done.  It showed a different way to blend storytelling with a videogame that wasn't really seen much before, and that really resonated with people, or at least it did for me.  I remember beating it and hoping to hell there would be a sequel because of how much promise that game showed and how I wanted to see where else this team could go with games.  They got to make another game and we got what is possibly the best example of games as art in Shadow of the Colossus.

With that said, your criticism has a bit of weight to it, I can't deny it.  I loved the game in spite of it's flaws, but I can see a lot of people being frustrated with it.