Jawbreaker
Member
The press got to play a 30-45 minute demo of The Last Guardian at Tokyo Game Show, so we're slowly getting new previews. I've read through a few of them which I'll add and quote, and I'll include any new articles when I have the chance.
Game Informer
USgamer
Gamesradar
The Verge
Polygon
Kotaku
IGN
Wired
16 Minutes of Gameplay
Part 1
Part 2
20 Minutes of Gameplay + Commentary
Link
18-Minute Famitsu Gameplay
Link
For fun, spot the ways in which the creature behaves and reacts across the available footage. It will give you a good sense of how fantastic its AI is.
Discuss.
Game Informer
Fittingly enough, I discovered a game experience that also requires patience, but not in a frustrating way. Instead it’s more serene as you slowly discover how to get around in this strange world with your only ally, a mammoth beast. The Last Guardian isn’t a game that you just tear through without a second thought, and that’s what makes it special.
The controls take some time to get used to; they’re much more responsive and fluid than in Team Ico’s past games, but it’s hard to train your brain to use triangle to jump, and pointing Trico to an area of interest using the camera and holding two buttons at once can be tricky.
This world is dangerous yet beautiful. Solutions are around every corner. Most of them involved Trico to some degree, but often he’s helping you as much as you’re helping him. For instance, at one point I push a huge barrel off a ledge as a way to prop open a gate so Trico can get through. I feel a sense of accomplishment when I figure out ways to get through every plight, and Trico is there at every turn. As you fly through the air on his back, it’s just like echoes of Atreyu riding Falcor in The Neverending Story. I can already tell this is the start of something special, and can’t wait to see what’s in store when I can play the entire game.
USgamer
It's essentially Ico 2, but with an AI companion much more intelligent and necessary than Shadow of the Colossus' Agro. Granted, it's slightly disappointing that Udea didn't forge ahead with an idea as bold and unique as Shadow, but only because he's set the bar impossibly high for himself.
Thankfully, you don't need to babysit Trico at all: He generally knows when to follow you, and most of the instructions you give him (in the demo, at least) involve very specific interactions with the environment. Like Agro, he's mostly on auto-pilot until you need him.
While 30 minutes of The Last Guardian isn't nearly enough time to draw a comprehensive conclusion—I didn't fight a single enemy, for instance—my time with it definitely had me walking away happy. Most importantly, it didn't feel like a last-generation project hastily refurbished to make back some of its development costs: What I played doesn't look astoundingly different from its seven-year-old E3 trailer, yet it also doesn't look like a remastered version of a PS3 game.
Gamesradar
Trico's disobedience could very well frustrate impatient players, but I find it to be one of The Last Guardian's greatest strengths. It helps sustain the illusion that Trico is a living, breathing creature with his own quirks and behaviors - a believability that will surely be at the heart of The Last Guardian's emotional adventure. At one point during my demo, when I needed Trico's help to reach the higher platform he was sitting on, he lumbered away until he was completely out of my sight, despite my cries. For a moment, I was overcome by loneliness, until Trico suddenly reappeared as though he had merely been distracted by something in the distance. And I firmly believe this brief abandonment wasn't scripted; it felt akin to the kinds of powerful sensations of bonding or desertion that arise in the similarly unpredictable Journey.
The Last Guardian's camera has an almost impossible task: trying to frame shots that let you clearly see the tiny boy you're controlling, and the colossal beast that may or may not be nearby, at the same time. To make things even more difficult, the camera has to constantly swivel within the confines of the temple walls whenever you're in an enclosed space - an issue that never hindered the wide-open fields in Shadow of the Colossus, which imparted a similar sense of scale.
The Verge
When the interplay of puzzle-solving and emotional bond comes off, The Last Guardian is exhilarating like nothing else. Trico is an astonishingly realized creature, with subtle animations and sound design helping you figure out what it’s feeling. Sometimes it’s frustrated, sometimes it’s playful, sometimes it’s scared — but it’s with you for the adventure and wants to help you out. This leads to heartstopping moments where you place your life in Trico’s hands and vice versa, as the creature’s idiosyncratic personality makes you never quite sure what’s going to happen.
This feeling of uncertainty is amplified by the puzzle design and control system, both of which are a lot looser than you’d usually find in a game like this. It usually works in The Last Guardian’s favor, but it’s not always for the better. While I was playing a pre-production build, the controls are pretty fundamentally awkward and the camera seems to have as much of an independent streak as Trico; together with some performance issues, the game is often reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus’ worse traits as well as its best.
... if the final product manages to keep up the pacing and beauty of what I played, The Last Guardian could well be a worthy successor to Shadow of the Colossus and Ico before it. It looks to have all of those games’ heart and delicate touch, not to mention Ueda’s unmistakable hazy aesthetic — those points alone will be more than enough to make The Last Guardian stand out upon its release this December.
Polygon
My 30 minutes of hands-on time with The Last Guardian was not bad, exactly. The game looks beautiful, its environments are stunning, and its puzzles are clever and satisfying, often with multiple layers to figure out. There's a core gameplay loop around solving a puzzle to get to a new room, then figuring out how to get your bird-dog friend to follow. That loop is strong, and it helps reinforce the relationship between the protagonist and the pet.
It feels awkward as hell when it comes to actually controlling the main character. The protagonist doesn't walk so much as he lurches in whichever direction you've pushed the analog stick. Much of the demo focuses on platforming, but his jumps have a stickiness to them, a sense of inaccuracy that could be played up as realistic weightiness in the right game but just feels frustrating here.
Like a real dog, Trico often does what it wants, refusing to listen to your commands until it's good and ready. On the one hand, there's a clever nod to real interactions with pets there that I appreciate. On the other, jamming on a button over and over to get Trico's attention isn't super compelling gameplay.
Kotaku
What I played of The Last Guardian was at times frustrating and at other times fascinating, both due to Trico, the game’s bird-dog AI companion.
In 2011 Ueda had explained that Trico had a mind of its own, and that was very evident in this year’s demo. There were times when I would gesture, holler, and clap my hands to get Trico’s attention. Most of the time he’d respond, but not always. I grew frustrated, then reminded myself that Trico was just a bird-dog thing, so I needed to be patient.
I don’t know if this makes for a good game, but it did make for an interesting experience. The AI seems rather sophisticated, and Trico could very well be the most realistic creature to appear in a video game. While that realism might wear on some players’ patience, it made the game more immediate. You are dealing with an animal and all that entails.
IGN
... the section I played has a lot of the same endearing qualities that made Team ICO’s previous games memorable, but that same segment also shares some of those games’ problems – problems that haven’t aged well.
My time was mostly spent solving puzzles to move Trico from one area to the next, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the segment I played felt like an extended escort mission.
The camera misbehaves about as often as Trico does. It gets caught on objects in the environment, it swivels unexpectedly or focuses where you don’t necessarily want it to, and it loses track of Trico at inopportune moments. It’s distracting, and makes some challenges more difficult than they should be. This is coupled with a tenuous control scheme that’s very reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus, one that’s less forgivable in 2016 than it was in 2005. Hopefully this will be fine-tuned now that the developers have a few extra weeks before release.
That being said, there are genuine moments of brilliance at work here. Moments that will make you chuckle, moments that will make you hold your breath and shut your eyes tight, moments that will hopefully eclipse its annoyances and remind you that the experience might have been well worth the wait.
Wired
In the first room of the demo, we had to figure out that Trico would occasionally jump into a position in the room that would allow us to climb higher and exit the chamber. But since he was wandering around the area, it wasn’t obvious exactly where that position was, or where you should be to take advantage of it. I tried to solve the puzzle by just running around by myself, but it was only when I stood back and watched Trico’s movements that it became clear.
In the demo we played, the boy now holds on automatically until you press a button to drop. On the surface, this may be kinder to the player, but I always felt that having to keep a button depressed to simulate hanging on for dear life was a way of heightening the connection between the player and the on-screen action. Now it’s easier to play, but doesn’t feel as much like Colossus anymore. A good tradeoff? I’m not sure.
16 Minutes of Gameplay
Part 1
Part 2
20 Minutes of Gameplay + Commentary
Link
18-Minute Famitsu Gameplay
Link
For fun, spot the ways in which the creature behaves and reacts across the available footage. It will give you a good sense of how fantastic its AI is.
Discuss.