Developer: SCE Japan (Original) / Bluepoint Games (Remaster)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 27 September 2011 (Remaster)
Completed: 30 November 2016
In the never-ending "are games art?" debate, I'd wager few games come up as often as Fumito Ueda's PlayStation 2 classics ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Both games take a minimalist approach to storytelling, but still overflow with complex themes of love and companionship, isolation and loneliness, sacrifice and self-sacrifice. Few games are truly unforgettable, but both truly earn the distinction.
After months of rumors, leaks, and clamoring, Sony unveiled the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD collection for the PlayStation 3 in 2011. Even the most jaded gamers who saw the trend of HD re-releases of last-gen games as quick cash-grabs were excited. If ever two games deserved a second chance to reach a wider audience, it was these two.
I'll confess: I've owned the PS2 version of ICO for many years, but have never played more than 20 minutes of it. It's not that I didn't want to, or that I wasn't impressed; it was just another victim of my expansive backlog. With Ueda's newest game, the long-awaited Last Guardian, on the cusp of release, I figured there was no time like the present to visit his previous efforts.
That means I'm coming into my first full playthrough of ICO with no nostalgia. I'm experiencing it for the first time, which also means I have the seemingly difficult task of trying to remind myself that games were different in 2001 when ICO was first released. It may look a whole hell of a lot better, but was still a 10-year-old game under the hood. It turns out there wasn't much to forgive.
ICO has some flaws. Control feels a little slippery at times, almost like the titular character is running too fast. Your AI companion sometimes reacts, or doesn't react, in the exact opposite manner you hoped, forcing you to stand around and wait. Combat is boiled down to mashing a single button, which isn't very engaging. But I will gladly overlook each and every one of these issues when a game as remarkable as this comes along.
Maybe it's not fair to give ICO a pass for things I'd ding another game for, but it's really a case of a game being more than the sum of its parts. Besides the gorgeous art direction, it's actually a very good puzzle-platformer. The story, visuals, and sound just elevate it to something so completely special it can't be missed.
You play as a young boy named Ico, imprisoned in a mammoth castle for being born different. Ico looks like other boys, save the two horns growing on his head. Shortly after his imprisonment, a tremor knocks his stone casket loose and Ico attempts to escape. He soon meets and frees Yorda, a female prisoner trapped in a cage high in the castle, and the two form a bond, though they speak two different languages.
There is very little dialogue in ICO. What little there is is mostly in a foreign language, and in the case of Yorda, a completely alien one where even the subtitles are garbled symbols. To form such a bond with the glowing princess is accomplished by Ico's ability to hold her hand. Unlike Ico, Yorda is frail and timid, and he quickly adopts the role of her protector. As the player, a sort of transference takes place where you'll learn to care for Yorda as though you were Ico himself. It's a mesmerizing experience, and it's made all the more impressive when you consider the fact that the game is basically one long escort mission.
The world of ICO is, without question, one of the most well-designed game worlds ever created. Taking place in and around the gargantuan castle, the sense of scale is practically unrivaled. I've never, in all my years, seen a game that captures scale so well. Every jump over a yawning chasm left me gasping in anxiety. Every tenuous shimmy along a narrow ledge saw me holding my breath. The heights seem dizzying at times thanks to the brilliantly-placed camera that's pulled back just far enough to keep the action fully visible and maintain the feeling that you are but a small boy in a very large world.
The original PS2 game looked good, from what little I remember playing, but I distinctly recall the graphics looking quite blurry - a common problem for many early PS2 titles. This HD re-release corrects that problem with sharp visuals, fantastic textures, and stunning lighting. The world is brought the life so vividly that even veterans will stop and stare wide-eyed at the beauty of the game. Frequently while playing, I'd stop just to pan the camera around and take in more of my surroundings and found myself forgetting this was originally a PS2 game at all. There are a few telling signs of its age - occasionally pointy geometry on characters, for instance - but by and large, ICO looks like it could have been an early PS3 game from the ground up.
The sound is also given the full 5.1 treatment. While music is sparse, though admittedly very effective when used, the sounds envelop you and further immerse you in the world. The sound of the sea just outside the castle, for example, gives the sense that there is a living world beyond what you can see. It made me feel like, "If I could just get to the water...," and then wonder how I'd cross it even if I escaped the castle's confines. No attention to detail was spared in every aspect of the game.
The controls may take some getting used to simply because their default settings aren't typical. Most gamers are probably used to pressing X to jump in platformers, but here Triangle is jump by default. You can remap the controls if you find you're struggling with them, but I eventually got used to the idea that the top-most face button meant "up" and the lowest face button meant "down." There's one button to attack, and one button to interact with objects, and most importantly, one button to interact with Yorda.
Holding R1 (or pressing, if you change the setting in the options) will call Yorda to you when she's far away. This is how you'll coax her to follow you after you jump, and Ico will reach his hand out to reassure her that he'll catch her. No matter how many times I saw it, it never stopped being touching. When nearby, R1 causes Ico to take Yorda's hand and walk or run together. It's a simple thing, but it creates such an unspeakable connection between the two characters, and thus the player controlling them.
The bulk of the game is navigating the castle, solving environmental puzzles that require plenty of lateral thinking. The world design is utterly superb, forcing you to think in order to progress, but never becoming obtuse or illogical. There are even plenty of red herrings that exist solely to add realism instead of laying out a linear path to follow. There may be corridors and climbable objects that you'll never need to traverse, but they're there because they want you to feel like this is a lived-in world that isn't specifically designed for Ico to get from Point A to Point B. As one might expect, solving each area yields a sense of great satisfaction.
It took fifteen years too long, but ICO has joined my own personal list of the best games of all-time. The pros outweigh the cons by such a massive ratio that there's hardly any sense in even mentioning them. I suppose they might matter to some people, but they didn't to me in the grand scheme of things. ICO is still a must-play, must-own piece of art.
ICO was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.
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