ICO! - September 25, 2001 - Brooke Bolander
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Blow up the outside world. Don't say we didn't warn you. Let me tell you a little something about some of you guys hating my guts and wanting Drew back - I DON'T CARE. You're supposed to be sending me letters about games, not whinge-fests about how you want your daddy back. He's here on the weekends, I take care of the weekdays - get used to it. Now, with that out of the way, we can get to the interesting stuff - ICO! This game is so damned pretty that it shouldn't be legal. And I have to wait until Friday to get my copy because I've been sick and can't get to the local Software Etc. until the weekend. Fate, you are a cruel, cruel bitch-goddess. Hey-ho, let's go. | *CRY* | | ICO is almost as cool as a game based off Tonberries would be! And it isn't coming out tomorrow, it's coming out today, in fact it came out at my local EB this morning. And i went out and bought it before school :) YAY! I love this game. It's so..........damn perfect, in every way. The lighting: perfect; Character Interaction: perfect; everything else: perfect. As soon as I'm done writing this I'm going back to playing it again. I really don't have the words, probably due to my extreme headache, to describe this game. I'm sure by now it's getting bashed by every "Hardcore Action Gamer" out there but they can go screw themselves. ICO is damn good and as far as I'm concerened, a work of art. ::Evil Grin:: Silent Hill 2 also came out today...... I don't plan on playing till late tonight. PS: For ICO, I suggest lowering the brightness on your television and in-game because the environments become much more realistic looking. ~Subtle Silence, who is super glueing his eyes open and ass to a chair so as to not run away from the TV tonight while playing Silent Hill 2 | Let me get this straight - you got both ICO and Silent Hill 2? ..... ...... ...Stop gloating, dammit. You're making Baby Jeebus cry. People who have jobs and money make me sick. SICK. | ...And then I met a guy with no feet. | | Brooke, I'm a poor student trying to save up for some expensive plane tickets and hotel reservations. Stop talking about ICO, damn it. -The Neocount of Merentha, has some chemistry lab partners he needs to murder brutally. | ....Okay, okay, so some people are even worse off than I am at this point. Forget what I said about the last letter, okay? Then again, I can feel your pain. There are waaaay too many good games and systems coming out in the next couple of months, and when you're a broke college student with no job begging off your parents, too many good games coming out at once isn't as wonderful as you would think it'd be. | It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine. | | Satan's elderly grandmother knits sweaters, bakes chocolate chip cookies for the boys. Air force bases nation wide are hammered into the primordial ooze from which they came by the almighty hand of the whiny animal rights hordes, shortly after several mysterious airborne objects veering dangerously close to the White House get blasted out of the sky, and are revealed to be porcine in nature. The pope, when investigating Jesus' failure to cleanse the world on schedule, found the deity passed out in Lazy Boy chair, immersed in beer residue. Stephen Hawking commits suicide after miserably failing his eight grade basic standards test. God is found in bed with a prostitute in a the latest shocking celebrity scandal. Virgin Mary files for divorce, claims "Lord of the Heavens, who 'knows all and sees all,' didn't know how to be any good in the sack." All of which are but footnotes on the tabloid's front pages, dwarfed by the single monumental fact, just today stripped naked for the whole world to see. And fear. A game has arrived. A game bursting at the seams with naught but unabashed lever switching and block pushing. A game sharing many a common trait with the typical Tomb Raider, simply sans the ever redeeming bulging bosoms. And it doesn't suck. In fact, by the account of many, most of whom are neither drunk nor stoned, it may even rock. Be afraid. Be very afraid. - Talen | Hey, if it is a sign of The End Of The World As We Know It, I just hope God gives me enough time to play through before the world explodes into chaos or whatever. Maybe even twice, if it's as short as people are saying... | It's not how long it is, it's what you do with the length you have that counts. | | Interestingly enough, I was thinking of ICO as a quality purchase....that was until I heard that it has some large length issues...namely the fact that it can, and probably will be completed by the average ("Savvy", according to all knowing EGM) gamer in less than 7 hours. For an RPG, that's not just silly, that's pathetic. In regular console release land, against games like Red Faction and the upcoming Max Payne, 7 hours may seem like an adequate amount, but when stacked against other RPGs, or even other adventure titles, 7 hours is rather ridiculous. But maybe I'm wrong. STILL trying to download the new LOTR trailer... - Chris S. | Yes, except it's not really an RPG. In fact, I don't see anything that would make it an RPG. There's no battle system, no towns, no random battles or armour/items to buy...it's more of an adventure game, really. I still wish it was longer, because I'm afraid I'm going to zip through far too fast, but I can deal with it. Heart Of Darkness was a beautiful game, but it was way too short - I hope ICO is more of a challenge than that lil' gem. | Amen. | | ICO is one of the games I am looking forward to the very most this year....more than FFX, more than even the next Metal Gear, more than, well, just about anything I can think of right now. The reason for this devotion is, well, emotion. Now ICO is not without some problems, I can see this just from having played the demo to death, much less researching the details of the full game...it will likely be a bit too short, it will likely lack as much overall depth and complexity as it deserves, and I have a reasoned fear that the ending will not be entirely satisfying. However, all of these potential failings pale in comparison to what it achieves....something precious, something rare, something that is at the core of anything that could be called Art. ICO communicates feeling. ICO has strange characters in a strange world who cannot communicate verbally. They would seem to have nothing in common with each other. Yet, playing the demo of this game, I found that in but three minutes of play I cared....I felt for this horned little boy and this ethereal specter of a young woman, convinced not by melodrama, or long dialogue, or by some cliche romance or some great and complex plot. I was moved to care by the most basic, hardwired, animal part of me, the part of my brainstem that decodes body language. The real Art of ICO is not in puzzles or platforming action, not in leaping or climbing or swatting dustbunny shadow demons...though these are all present in the game...the Art is in the fact that ICO is a work about communication that denies the use of words. I am awed...absolutely dumbstruck with wonder...at the incredible eloquence of a young, rough, bull-boy tugging the arm of a ghostlike and frail girl, at how the jerk of an arm, the tentative wavering of a body at the edge of a precipice, the tilt of a head, the position of hands can say more than literally pages of standard RPG dialogue. ICO speaks to the heart more with three minutes of animation than many wonderful RPG's have done in 40 hours of text-laden gameplay. That the designers pulled this off, this wonder of subtle and marvelous primal communication, in what is essentially a platform-puzzle game, impresses me greatly. I want to play ICO not because it will be a grand adventure, but because, in the end, it is perhaps the console game equivalent of interactive nonverbal emotional communication...something never before seen, never before done. The puzzles, the platforms, the demons...these are just there, I believe, to give a background for the play of emotions to occur within. ICO is not an adventure, it is a game of feelings, expressed through action, and that is something new. I look forward to being entreated to care about pixilated characters in a new way, or at least an advanced way, if one considers Sonic the Hedgehog tapping his restless feet to be the parent of such things. I think ICO will give us something both new, and touching. That alone is worth the price of admission, whatever flaws it may -or may not- have. Jennifer Diane Reitz UnicornJelly.com | I think you said everything about it that could be said. I personally enjoy games a lot more if I get emotionally attached. Graphics help tell the story, but if you don't have a good story with heartfelt characters, you'll end up with Tomb Raider. I got a letter right before the col went up saying "whats the fucking deal? It's just Prince of Persia with better graphics!" Well, there's your explanation, right up there. These are characters you'll come to care about, short game or not. Hell, I already care and I've only seen screenshots. And it takes a lot to get me to care. | Some people prefer roast beef. | | Am I the only one who doesn't get excited about a game where you can't die and lead around a blind girl who can't speak your language and can't understand what you're saying? Feh. I guess I'm just freaky that way. I didn't think Vib Ribbon was all that either. Give me Dragon Quest Warrior VII, Hoshigami, or Saiyuki over Ico any day. Sincerely, -Robert Silvers | What can I say - some people don't like new things. All those games you mentioned look quite good, but....eh. I want something new. None of those games are exactly crescent fresh, you might say. ICO looks like a completely new gaming experience, despite being the same kind of gameplay you've seen in Prince of Persia and countless other adventure games, which is why I wanna play it. I like new stuff! | You want a hot-button topic? | | It pains me to see so many projects removing the World Trade Center as if they never existed. It is the most queer form of revisionism I have ever witnessed. I would rather remember the Towers by seeing that they are there, or by their absence from the sky line. But I am afraid that most projects will avoid showing their absense. I am not completely sure which form the removal will take in Metal Gear Solid. Perhaps a scene which establishes the scale of Metal Gear Ray? But, even if it's not something so benign (like Ray destroying the Twin Towers itself) the story teller in me feels that the story should not change. Even if it really happened, it's still not reality. But do I really feel that way? Is my seperation between the real world and the game world which keeps me from becoming a psycho from playing Quake really that strong? Unfortunately, the actual reality of the destruction of the World Trade Center rips us out of what would ordinarily be complete fantasy and ruins the escapism. I dunno what they cut, but a week ago the idea of Metal Gear Ray ripping through New York would have been extremely cool. Now its just horrible. I am sure I am not the only one that wants to return to the fantasy world where such things can never really happen. | I dunno...some of us aren't as sensitive to this sort of thing as others, but then again, I can understand a gamer who has just lost his or her family in the bombings not wanting to see half of NY blown up in a video game. I think a good way to deal with it would be to have both a censored version and a non-censored version out. You pick which one you want to play, and you go for it. Everyone's happy. ...Then again, the game companies aren't gonna want to shill out the extra dough for both copies when they can just edit the games for far less...I'm just not sure. It's a quandry. Closing Comments: I apologize if the last couple of columns have been sub-par and/or I've been snarky, but when you're sick and tired, the last thing you care about is games. However, I'm feeling quite a bit better now, so let's have some fun with that letter above, eh? Is all this censorship in the wake of the bombings a good thing, or a bad thing? Are the game companies doing the right thing? It hasn't taken long for the media to start blaming video games for a part in the 9-11 attack. The hijackers used a flight sim, which has since been taken off the market in some places, and I wonder if this might just be the beginning. Do you think this is going to have a big effect on the industry? I hope that's a doozy enough of a topic for you. Go to it. - Brooke Bolander, a very mean lady. |
