Ico / Shadow of the Colossus

i really like where the story went. wow. it kind of makes me want to play the game again.

Ico sounds cool tho. its more platforming? i like the Tomb Raider-style levels in SOTC

What is the best way to play this game? Has PC emulation caught up or do I need to track down a PS2 and a legit disc?

If you have or would prefer to have a PS3 (which I would recommend), the remastered SotC and Ico have been released as a twofer disc and are also available for download individually in the Playstation store.

Apparently my boyf's brother has a PS3 that he doesn't use bcz there is now a PS4?? and SotC/Ico is $20 on amazon!

Yeah, I think that's roughly equivalent to what the digital versions cost collectively. Pull that trigger!

Just be forewarned that there isn't any swearing and you can't run over any old ladies in a car. These are definite deal-breakers according to most GameStop employees.

Ico sounds cool tho. its more platforming? i like the Tomb Raider-style levels in SOTC
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, February 27, 2016 2:08 AM

its more puzzle platformer with some crap action fighting here and there but similar atmosphere as sotc. i think dragon's dogma is also out for pc now. its not made by team ico but its game mechanics are really good, like a mashup of elder scrolls, dark souls and some sotc-like climbing huge enemies to hit weak points

My 30 minutes of hands-on time with The Last Guardian was not bad, exactly. The game looks beautiful, its environments are stunning, and its puzzles are clever and satisfying, often with multiple layers to figure out. There's a core gameplay loop around solving a puzzle to get to a new room, then figuring out how to get your bird-dog friend to follow. That loop is strong, and it helps reinforce the relationship between the protagonist and the pet.

For as much as The Last Guardian nails the broad feeling it's going for in this demo, it whiffs on the details. Specifically: It feels awkward as hell when it comes to actually controlling the main character. The protagonist doesn't walk so much as he lurches in whichever direction you've pushed the analog stick. Much of the demo focuses on platforming, but his jumps have a stickiness to them, a sense of inaccuracy that could be played up as realistic weightiness in the right game but just feels frustrating here.

sounds... exactly like ICO/SotC then...

we have a thread for last guardian right? i was just thinking about how i bought my ps3 explicitly for that game back in 2010! It's the gamer Chinese Democracy at this point; there's no way it'll reach expectations.

sad but sounds accurate, uly

Chinese Democracy exceeded my expectations by ever appearing - I would question the sanity of anyone who expected it to be good.

As cozen says, this sounds like more of the same good good stuff.

Fiddly controls are what we grew up on dammit AND WE LOVED IT

this looks pretty damned good in 4k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GV-OmR1Vo8

Yesssss!!!

ugh I still have yet to play this game :-/

*this games

yeah this is one of the greatest 3D games ever. everything about the game is incredible. every boss fight (and every journey to the boss fights) feels epic and grand. the gameplay is seamless, smooth, non-intrusive. no need for maps, markers, quests, NPCs, etc. you have a sword that you can hold up and the light it reflects shows you where to go. just follow the light. it is that easy. brilliant.

jeez the remake is astonishingly good-looking huh

have you got it? I'm going to give Rime, which seems to be in a similar vein, a play-through before taking the plunge. I never played SotC on the PS2 so am looking forward to it.

yeah, started playing it this morning and took down the first three colossi as my wife looked on in horror at my savagery

it’s pretty remarkable tbh - it’s a total remake rather than a remaster but it plays just like the original, only at a silky 60fps* rather than the notoriously juddering ps2 version

(* on PS4 pro)

and it’s less than £25!

By 'plays like the original' do you mean 'has a camera like a lazy eye which seems much more interested in a random patch of grass than the giant you're supposed to be focusing on'?

well, yeah

The most Terrence Malick of video games

I am psyched to play this, loved the original. Will probably wait until I’m bored with Monster Hunter, the other, way different game of killing giant monsters.

sounds great BG, looking forward to it

The Last Guardian (long intended for the PS3, thanks for the bait and switch Team Ico) is still pretty much the strongest argument for me to eventually buy a PS4, so this just the cherry on top.

hate to tell you but last guardian was all but unplayable imo. i lasted three hours.

psvr last guardian is great tho

you just get to hang out with trico for a bit and feed him snacks while craning your neck to look into his big beautiful eyes

it’s all i ever wanted from the base game tbh

yeah Last Guardian looks great but is unplayably janky I think. Trico is cool though!

adding one more voice to say that the last guardian was bad - there are some interesting concepts in there but it's mostly boring and unattractive and a pain in the ass to control. but i didn't really like ico or shadow of the colossus that much either.

i should point out that i think shadow of the colossus was one of my all time favorite games! and i bought a _PS3_ for last guardian. the gameplay is just SO bad.

finished last guardian recently, enjoyed it. controls weren't too bad just annoying that the kid stumbles around like a drunk

Ico is all-time for me, I definitely enjoyed Shadow Of The Colossus as much as I could considering that it's a game where you're frantically and randomly grasping at patches of fur

Ico tho wow

An entire game devoted to the pleasure of architecture and space

Ico’s one of the few games I ever played co-operatively - a friend heard about it and liked it and came over to play my copy, handing off the controller to me for the hitting shadows with sticks bits.

SOTC was good to play and complete once, and I’d consider the remaster assuming it’s got the hidden secret fruit thing from the original, which I heard about after I finished it. But it’s a very different game.

Hidden secret fruit??

it's a game where you're frantically and randomly grasping at patches of fur

FINALLY

(i mean finally someone gets it, not finally a game where you're frantically and randomly etc etc)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/924364-shadow-of-the-colossus/faqs/58447

Right?

Good game! but I think I played it around the same time as Grand Theft Auto and the gameplay is reallllllly repetitious

Ico is perfect tho, perfect game, want a remaster, want a sequel that’s the exact same game but in an enormous tower built into a wintry mountaintop.

I’ve never felt an unique a pleasure as being somewhere in Ico and seeing a parapet or a windmill that I’d struggled with hours earlier, way off in the distance

Oh the soundtrack to Shadow Of The Colossus is hilariously bad imo, this dramatic James Newton Howard in top gear bullshit that completely doesn’t suit the slow motion climbing up a snuffleupagus

Hidden secret fruit??

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, February 15, 2018 2:43 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I have the PS3 upgrade and I was baffled when I looked through the list of trophies you could acquire for a number of things I had no idea you could do in the game.

Huh... interact with fish and turtle...

I tried to interact with the birds a number of times on the PS2 but the camera made it kind of a nightmare and I gave up.

One nice thing about the PS3 version (that I THINK was absent from the PS2 although I might have just never utilized it) is the ability to remap your buttons and tweak the camera movements in several ways. I assume that carried over to the new remaster?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQNeYbBiCKw

!

That was pretty great. I made it 16 minutes in before I suspected there could be significant spoilers (which the video impressively avoided before that, for the most part), but when I finish the game I'll definitely finish the video. I love the idea of game designers hiding things that are bigger than mere jokey easter eggs (almost as much as I love posters being citing by their dumb screen names). One of the best aspects of Breath of the Wild was all the substantial stuff you could do or get lost in that was completely irrelevant to the completion of the game. I suspect people are still figuring that one out, too.

That was amazing, thanks so much ulysses!

really, really good video