I've completed Ico, SOTD and Last Guardian and I love the work of the studio, though each game has taken me time to really get in to. I've had this game since not long after launch! Looking at this thread, I restarted from scratch on this about a year ago, so I haven't exactly blasted through it, but I wanted to finish off the experience. My preferred method of playing was a small chunk of hours occasionally, though I put about 10 hours in this week (SheSprout is playing Hogwarts on the PS5).
SOTC was for me, more fun and varied, but the relationship between the boy and Trico was what made this one, a touching and a fairly unique connection in gaming. When my cat jumped in front of the screen whilst playing yesterday I was reminded how I felt the similar connection between these two, though in a different way. Whilst a pet gives love, it is dependent on it's owner, whilst in this game the relationship would be better described as equal partners, with both reliant on each other, but also with the love between the pair that pets and their humans hold.
The number of puzzles they managed to create from the mechanics was impressive. I probably used a guide for about 5 to 10% of the puzzles as some were tough to figure out. Towards the end of the game, I had to move Trico's tail to use it as a rope to slide to a level below, but I'd ran around confused for a while so went to the guide. It's very rare that I do this for games and I think some would find the puzzles too hard and off putting, but this studio has always made games like this, with tough puzzles and limited combat and the exploration is so well done. I swear, the whole game is worth playing for just one of the many set pieces. Some of the scenes were absolutely stunning!
Sprouty wrote:...with tough puzzles and limited combat and the exploration is so well done. I swear, the whole game is worth playing for just one of the many set pieces. Some of the scenes were absolutely stunning!
It sure was a gem and perhaps a bit bit of a surprise considering the protracted development issues. It's not gonna be a game that everyone enjoys - but then again, what game is? - but personally I class it as a classic.
I have been meaning to go through this again, now that I’ve forgotten it all. I have it digitally, but the unpatched 1.0 version runs at 60fps on PS5 so I might look for a disc copy.
I bought the disk just for that, but it keeps updating to a newer version which reverses the 60fps. So I kept having to try and keep the PS offline (I couldn't work out how to stop it auto-updating the game, if you can at all) or uninstalling and re-installing etc.
In the end I just turned on the TV's Motion Smoothing/Interpolation which had basically the same effect! And the little input lag doesn't affect a game as weighty and sticky as TLG, I thought. (I also used this for TLOU2, and BotW looks like something else with the smoothing on, though with the latter I think I reverted to the - suddenly unbelievably janky looking - OG version for the control snappiness)
