Review: Ico

Close your eyes and think about the strangest dream you've ever had.

Got it?

The fear and confusion over the unknown. The wonder and mystery of a corner unexplored. The rush of excitement from seeing something you thought impossible. This is what Ico manages to create for you. And it is a joy to play.

Story

This development team loves the light handed approach to storytelling. However, they are by far the most effective storytellers in the medium of video games.

You are Ico. You have horns, and these horns are considered a bad omen by your village. You're sent to a fortress prison where you're destined to starve to death in captivity. A stroke of luck allows you to escape from your cell and you shortly come across another prisoner - a ghostly, almost other worldly looking girl named Yorda who speaks an indecipherable language. Freeing her allows the two of you to explore the castle together to try to find the exit.

Ummm...what?

The rest of the game is all "environmental storytelling". You and Yorda form a visible bond, punctuated by the fact that you often have to hold hands or lead her across hazardous areas to get her through to the next room. When the two of you are separated, Ico can call her and there is an audible panic in his voice if you two are far apart.

The final element to the story is the shadow creatures. Periodically throughout the game, a group of these dark beasts bubble out from the stone floor of the fortress. Their single-minded goal is to capture Yorda, only attacking you if you're in the way. And with Ico being an underpowered boy armed only with a stick, Yorda is easily captured most times. If they pull her into the black hole they came from, the entire world turns to gray stone, Ico included. The fact that these creatures only go after Yorda makes the bond between you and her all the stronger. You are forced to bravely defend her at all costs, and when you rescue her from the clutches of one of these beasts you can feel the emotional closeness between the characters.

The Shadow Monsters.

Ico's story is one that exists mostly in the mind of the player. With no translation for Yorda's speech and minimal dialogue, you fill in the holes about the history of the castle, who the queen is, why she won't let you leave and so on. The ending definitely provides some closure, but the joy of the story lies within your own imagination.

Gameplay

The best way to describe Ico's gameplay in today's market is to first reveal what it does NOT do.

- There is no tutorial level
- There are no secret items to collect or side quests to complete
- There are no achievements or trophies
- There is only one enemy type
- Your only weapon is a stick for the majority of the game

The genre that Ico would fall into would be environmental puzzle game. Think Portal without portals. The goal of each area is to reach an exit that leads you to the next area. This is done through various combinations of climbing, jumping, moving blocks, flipping switches and opening doors. The solution is always staring you in the face, but it's up to you to figure it out - and often when you do, you have the all too familiar "Oh DUH!" moment. The puzzles are devilishly simple, and if you find yourself trying to pull off a series of daring acrobatics to progress, you're likely doing it wrong.

 

The iconic windmill puzzle.

What Ico essentially boils down to, however is a six hour escort mission. You and Yorda must escape the castle, but while Ico himself is generally nimble and quick and able to traverse the many traps and pitfalls, Yorda is kinda stupid and weak and really slow. So you are forced to wait for her or call her back to where she was supposed to be standing or make her wait while you go around and open an alternate path for her or literally drag her by the hand to get away from the dangers of the castle.

This is where most gamers would check out, and likely why I got frustrated in my first playthrough. But if you take a step back and realize that Yorda's slowness and forgetfullness are very much intentional on the part of the developers to not only give her a sense of  her own identity (i.e. not just an inanimate object for you to move from point A to point B), but to force you as the player to slow down and take the game at the pace that it was designed to be played at. This is not a balls out, rugh through it kind of game, the dev team wanted players to experience the architecture and appreciate the brilliant simplicity of the puzzles. And forcing you to wait for Yorda made me do just that.

Ico is an odd bird in the gameplay spectrum. Where most games set out to fulfill some sort of adolescent power fantasy, Ico seeks to make you feel completely powerless. The fortress is the powerful one - but this makes you feel all the more powerful for overcoming the wildly unfavorable odds, making for an extremely satisfying conclusion.

Presentation

Ico's presentation is one of the finest on the PS2. Not because of it's polygon count or framerate, but because the developers knew what they had to work with and made the best of it by employing a unique art style. The slightly overblown highlights and glowy nature of the pictures above are present throughout the game, even furthering the dream comparison.

Like I've said before, the presentation only gets poor marks from me when it takes me out of the fantasy. Corny voice acting or a blatantly awful texture or character model will kill it for me, but Ico does everything with such grace and style it's impossible to knock anything about it's looks.

Audio is sparse and once again this is intentional. The desired effect of solitude and being stranded is only compounded by the fact that the only sounds are the wind whistling through the castle and the clap of your own footsteps. The only bit of music comes when the shadow creatures appear and this is only single, dischordant piano notes, just giving it that little creepy edge that those scenes needed. 

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Ico is a fantastic experience that should not be missed by anyone who cares to venture outside the annual Madden and Call of Duty dribble. It won't get the adrenaline pumping, but it just may change your outlook on games in general.

Review in Ten Words or Less: 
A dream-like, wondrous slow paced puzzler.