I acquired this game quite a few months ago, together with Shadow of the Colossus (of which I haven't played yet), and until a few days ago I was finally able to finish ICO, a game that, more than a game where its main mechanism is to solve riddles, I consider it an experience to capture large amounts of feelings in the simplest and most visually possible way. I haven't said it in a long time, but when it comes to excellent games, even though a person hasn't played them in their year of release, it doesn't detract from that person's experience with the game. In fact, I think that the more mature a person is, the more entertainment ICO can offer. From the beginning I must say that ICO is not a game for everyone, in fact, I'm sure that a few years ago I would not have liked this game at all and this is due to its mechanics and its rhythm of play.
Mechanically it is a game where we are only going to solve riddles during the whole game, many of them are excellent and we pose very good mental challenges, but others, I think they are a little rebuscados and do not fit very well with the small universe that presents this game, despite that, many of them are very entertaining to solve, but likewise many of them will also cause us a lot of frustration, because sometimes the most logical option is not the one that will help us solve it.
With only the premise of the game, the atmosphere and the rhythm it has, from the beginning, ICO gave me the feeling that it was not going to have a happy ending, it is a silent game, our main character has just a few lines of dialogue and that are orders, (so to speak) that he gives to his co-star, who for a change, does not speak their language, so the level of communication between these two characters is only going to be based on a few words and signals.
And speaking of the protagonists, it's time to talk about the plot of the game, ICO takes us to a universe that could be considered to be in the medieval age, and we embody a little boy, who unfortunately of fate, was born with horns, for the people of his village that denotes as a sign of curse, therefore, as other children who have been cursed by this bad formation, is taken to a castle, where he is locked up so that he dies there. Quickly we see that in the room where the protagonist is taken there are many cubicles, so we are given to understand that previously they have taken other children who were affected by the same curse, so just to start the game, they show a rather sad picture of what awaits all those who have this type of malformation. Once we are in the castle and locked up, an event occurs that causes the cubicle where the child was locked up to be destroyed, giving us "freedom" in a certain way, but this is not the case at all. After exploring certain parts of the castle, we find a young girl, equally locked up, but in a cage, when we release her, we realize that she is very different from us, because of the aura she transmits, the way she communicates and the skills she has, skills that are an important point when solving certain puzzles.
The reason this young woman was locked up is because her mother planned to use her as a sacrifice for personal purposes, so her early release caused us to be chased throughout the game by her henchmen, whose mission is to take her away, but although I originally said that this game was only for solving puzzles, We can also fight with these henchmen, who are like a kind of shadow in the form of very strange insects, so we can use a stick or a sword, that we will later find in a certain place of the castle, so that with that, we can defend ourselves and the young woman.
The level of concern that makes us feel this game with respect to Yorda (the young co-star) is often very great, just listening to the sound that the shadows make when they appear we must immediately eliminate them, because with a simple carelessness and we must start from the last point of guard (which are few), therefore ICO is a game that knows how to create many moments of tension. Regarding Yorda's AI, since we only control the child, which I don't think I said before, but it's called like the game itself: ICO, is relatively good, many times will always do the command we tell him what to do (although there are not many, as we can practically only call to come to us), even if at various times the artificial intelligence fails and this can frustrate many, but I think that's why this game causes tension, since it is not possible to communicate with specific words (ICO and Yorda), that they do so in physical form and that on several occasions they are not understood or simply do not do what they are supposed to do, it is part of what can represent the communication of two people who do not speak the same language or it is I think, I am not an expert either.
To conclude: ICO is a game that conveys seriousness and many feelings, it was a risky bet, because it rethought what a videogame meant some years ago and because of this it is considered a cult game between the community and the videogame industry. In a few weeks I'll be playing Shadow of the Colossus, which is by the same creator: Fumito Ueda and in the same way with The Last Guardian. Seeing how these games are aesthetically and argumentally, just like ICO, I guess they are equally sad games. But for those who haven't played it yet, I recommend ICO 100%, rather than the mechanics and graphics, because of the experience it leaves us.
