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Lunchbox's Ico (PS2)
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| [October 13, 2006 05:31:48 PM]
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My last and final go at Ico (at least for this assignment). Sadly this was a brutal session. I was told by a few people that this game was hard but i think i must be extra retarted. I speant the first 15 minutes getting to an area that i would spend the next hour trying to get past but couldn't. My lack of knowledge for the button combinations seems to still be going strong. There was one part where theres elevated ground you need to get up to and a chain hanging down. I first tryed jumping from the chain to the ledge but it was too far, so i wandered around for a while looking for other ways to climb up the wall, but kept comming back to the chain. Of course all this time i was thinking the moron could just swing on the chain, so of course if you hold the action button while on the chain you can swing on it (must of missed that in the manual). As far as the characters go Ico is still his spaztastic self, but began to notice subtle personality traits in Yorda. For instance she has an almost heavenly aura about her, and not just because they gave her a glowish look in the game. If you leave her alone for a while she will eventually walk towards the sunlight rather than stay in the dark, and the last point a made it to there are doves flying around the area. Yorda will linger and stare at the birds as the fly around. She is also very timid. She will not climb anything tall unless its a ladder and when Ico hits a wall or a block with his weapon she will gasp in addition to running to him when attacked. The most intricit detail that i though was the best about Yorda was she is afraid of the water. Theres a little pool of water in which Ico can swim directly out of or enter if you wish, but Yorda will not go in. Even if you grab her by the hand and try and drag her in with you she will let go and almost frightenly back away. Now if only i could have gotten up that damn windmill. I hate windmills.
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| [October 13, 2006 12:49:56 AM]
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Alright so its round two for Ico. When i stopped playing last time i had just gotten destroyed by a very large group of the black mist creatures, but with enough swings from the beating stick they eventually go away. The fact that I was only given a 2x4 to defend not only myself but Yorda as well actually pleased me. Not only is it pretty amusing beating the monsters with a plank, but it also allows you to feel more for the characters. I myself feel slightly helpless having to beat on smoke for 15 minutes with the block of wood, so i know Ico and Yorda who seem to be trapped alone in a castle have it bad. The lack of strong melee also helps balance out the fact that Ico could pretty much take on Spiderman when it comes to acrobatics, and the game isn't centered around fighting as there are much more puzzles than there are enemies. The monsters, in terms of mechanics, are there just so you can't just cruise nicely through the castle, theres actually the feeling of desperation and unease as you're walking around. The puzzles are mostly eviromental which i like because it is more realistic (you blow support beam, crap above falls down). So after going through a few more these i was introduced to a new character today, the Queen. She just kinda came outa nowhere in the courtyard after slamming the gates to the exit in my face. She claimed that she was Yorda's mother and that I couldn't take her away yey the Queen didn't try and take Yorda her monsters (i assume theyre hers) do, which i found very odd. Unfortunately my session was cut a little short today because Prof. Bogost made an apperience and the people who ran the lab had to go to a lecture so i had to take my nap with Yorda on the couch to exit out. All in all I adapted more to the character Ico today after slowing it down a bit. He doesn't randomly leap off the world now as often, and found a few more things out about Yorda. It seems she can long jump pretty far but cant climb a rope. Oh, and Ico must be on steriods because appariently he can carry a bomb the size of his body one handed while holding on to Yorda's hand and still throw it like fifty feet so the village must of fed his some good cow.
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| [October 11, 2006 06:49:41 PM]
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This is my first entry so of course for this session i started the game Ico. Not wanting to miss anything i watched the opening sequence. Aside from being beutifully rendered it has a unique quality to it. The opening for Ico is very vague and mysterious but at the same time it is these qualities that draw you into trying to figure out what exacctly is going on within the world. It is during this sequence that you're introduced to Ico (the main character), a boy with horns, faceless (hooded) horsemen who trap Ico in a stone prison, and in the vision that prompts Ico to escape you catch a glimpse of the princess Yorda of whom you find trapped in person shortly after. So after I broke out of the stone tomb i took a few minutes to orient myself with some of the controls and procedded to climb the tower where Yorda is hanging in a cage. On a funny note i thought it was annoyingly amusing that to get to Yorda you spend five minutes climbing the stairs to this tower, so of course she gets released all the way at the bottom, just so you get the pleasure of climbing all the way back down. Ico himself is slightly sporatic in movement, on occasion randomly dashing in different directions. I believe that his curious movements are partway due to myself not taking my time in what is obviously a slowpace game. So of course when I finally free Yorda she is attacked by these shadowy things and they try and suck her into a hole. I of couse let her die five times (all five times my strategy consisted of having Ico swing his stick retartedly around), before consulting the manual to see if i missed any special controls when dealing with the girl. Appariently you can grab her hand, so thats a huge help. When you do get her out the shadow things attack you and this is the first time i really got frustrated with controling Ico. It seems the enemies have smarter AI than you do weapons control. For example there is no way to focus on one enemy, nor is there any way to move towards the enemy while attacking unless you were already dashing before you started to attack (this one really pissed me off). In the case of the latter I would have Ico standing there like an idiot swinging and hitting nothing while the shadows would just roll around to my back and hit me from behind, and then of course grab Yorda. So my first few tastes of fighting were not the most pleasent (although i do find it awsome you just beat things with a stick). The few puzzles i went through on my first go weren't all that hard but i didn't expect the first ones to be. On one last note it is extremely funny that the save points in the game are randomly placed couches in this broken down castle on which Ico and Yorda sit to save. When the game loads you 'wake up' with Yorda sleeping on your shoulder, so you can see that while not a lot of the story is given there are some hints at some sort of relationship that may develope between the two.
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Lunchbox's Ico (PS2)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 11 October, 2006
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