Imagine you've been trapped in a castle for the whole of your life, not knowing the pleasure of company or the freedom that waits outside. Then along comes a boy, speaking in another language, he brakes you free – but you don't know whether to follow him or not. Longing to break free from this eerie castle you follow reluctantly – almost being dragged. This sets the tone for ICO, the game is all about the relationship between the two main characters and their struggle to escape the castle. Neither of the characters speaks English, so you will just have to imagine what they are saying, it's like a 3-way language problem and it encapsulates you and forces you to deal with and sympathise with the characters problem.
Throughout your life you will never see a game that's perfect and ICO is no exception – but I have to say that it makes up for it. ICO is a fairly basic game and yet the experience is so unique that I'm finding it hard to compare it to other games.
As soon as you watch the opening scene you just know this game will be special, even the sound effects at the menu screen are kind of a strange sound that I'm not sure your conventional range of instruments can even make. It's kind of a light alien melody sound – haunting would be best word to describe it. Whilst you may think this is a very small and trivial thing, this kind of attention and small perfections prevail throughout the game. The fact that I and subsequently you notice these things is a real throwback towards the developers and the effort involved in making it.
It's a good thing ICO has brilliant sound effects, because there's no music throughout whole of the game. Does it suffer from this? The answer is that it really doesn't, the serenity of the game really suits the little sound effects of the birds tweeting and the wind gushing. Every sound has an echo effect, really making it feel like the sound is bouncing of the empty castle walls. The game really does go out of its way to make you feel alone, therefore you pay more attention to the girl you're looking after.
The level design is what really makes Ico stand out from the competition. Never will a game impress you as much with its sheer scale and beautiful scenery. You're not just in a castle; you're in a castle suspended miles above the ocean with mountains surround you. It's quite funny, if you had played the "sequel" Shadow of the Colossus then you would expect goliath creatures to be walking past the mountains – it's amazing how they transferred what seemed to be the scenery in this game, into the actual game world in another. The puzzles themselves are on a grand scale, forcing you to scale buildings and swing from chains in order to reach your goal. You will have to work with Yorda to complete the puzzles as she is the key to getting out of the castle. Yorda is a lot weaker then you and you have to look after her, she can't quite make the jumps you can, she can't climb ropes or pull herself up platforms.
Whilst it may seem like a hindrance at first, it's what makes the game so great. A straight foreword puzzle game would be boring and far too easy. To make life even more difficult, there are shadow monsters after Yorda and if they manage to drag her back to their portals then it's game over. Often you will face a bunch of them at a time, the portal will only close after you've defeated all of them – but if you take too long then more creatures will come spewing out. So this is the problem, if you get to a section where Yorda can't go then you've got to move quickly to find a way around this obstacle for her before the shadows take her. The shadows are under Yorda's mother's control, the evil ice queen who only had a child so she could use her young body. But as long as you grab Yorda's hand before she's taken into the darkness then she'll be fine.
Quite often this will seem like a juggling act, with Yorda repeatedly being grabbed as you try to kill the shadows as they re-spawn. From the sleepy little game it was it transforms into hectic experience which will require quite some effort.
The shadows look brilliant, each animated perfectly with exaggerated human moves. The also make a strange sound, much like the menu screen it almost sounds like music. The characters animation is just as brilliant, Ico himself runs not like your average hero, but more like a child and he runs as hard as he can. When he jumps he puts all his body weight into it and his legs bend as he thrusts foreword. Yorda is the complete opposite, her dainty movements show you just how weak she is and she walks almost with a royal presence. At first you will have to hold her hand to get her to move, because of the lack of trust, but as you repeatedly save her life she gradually will trust you and follow you every time you call out her name.
Not only does her trust grow – but her strength grows as well as she gets more adventurous. Instead of you helping her jump gaps all the time she will try to do it on her own, you still need to be there because she will often need a hand pulling herself up. When playing Ico you should really watch out for all the small things in the game, like when Yorda wanders off by herself, rather then just shouting her back go and see what she's investigating.
If you have any kind of a heart you will love Ico and it will charm you as much as it has charmed me. Now it's been re-released there's no excuse in not buying it, this really is an essential game that I guarantee you won't regret buying if you give it half of a chance. The only bad thing about ICO is that it ends so quickly leaving you wanting more.