After spending nearly 10 years in development mired with numerous delays and technical difficulties, The Last Guardian is finally about to land on PlayStation 4, billed as the much-awaited follow-up to PlayStation 2 cult hits Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Was its lengthy stint under wraps too long or was its decade-length gestation did itself a huge favor?
Several reviews have already been coming in for Fumito Ueda's latest masterstroke, and here are their thoughts about the PlayStation 4 exclusive.
Trico
The Last Guardian is an action-adventure game about an unnamed boy and a lofty but adorable giant beast named Trico. The two partner up to traverse ruins and evade looming virulent guards that are after them. A major stake of the gameplay hinges on the relationship between this boy and this beast. It paves the way for the story, the puzzles peppered throughout and the world.
As much as The Last Guardian is an action-adventure title, its core objective is to run up and down the emotional scale needed to bolster the bond between Trico and the boy. Trico's design, according to The Verge's Andrew Webster, was excellently put together, tiptoeing the fine line that separates Trico's supposedly imposing size to its puppy-like behavior.
"Trico is the most convincing video game creature I've ever interacted with — at times funny and adorable like a puppy, other times ferocious and powerful like a wild beast," Webster wrote.
The World
The game as a whole, however, feels flimsy and needing of an extra polish. Webster notes that it feels "brittle and broken," in a way that the player needs to muscle through frustrating moments to experience everything the game has to offer. That said, The Last Guardian doesn't shy away from astounding environments and breathtaking graphics that justifies its shift from the PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation 4.
Storytelling And Gameplay
Storytelling is spare in The Last Guardian, Webster noted. It's often chaptered by bouts of narration as a subtle way of hint-giving. Additionally, cutscenes litter the narrative, but there are only a few in between. The story is exposed primarily through gameplay instead of staple cinematic turns.
The Last Guardian combines elements of puzzle and platformer titles, implementing puzzle-based mechanics in order to move from A to B. The challenges are often designed around to figure out how to get Trico through tricky places too small for its size.
Players have no formal control of Trico — the best way to urge it to move is to bribe it with a strange substance that it eats or employ other makeshift methods to nudge it forward. Often, this is where the problems occur.
"The problem here is that there were countless times where I'd mentally solved a puzzle and knew exactly what to do, only to find that Trico stubbornly refused to go to the spot I needed him to get to," IGN's Marty Sliva wrote.
The Last Guardian excels in subtly coercing players to invest in the boy and Trico's relationship, but getting to that point involves ambling vexingly through sloppy controls and askew in-game physics, with barrels taking the worst toll. Barrels would bounce across the scenery and would often roll right back from where it was thrown.
Controlling the boy is also a challenge. Polygon's Philip Kollar noted that the character stumbles when he runs and often has trouble holding on to Trico's feathers with both hands. Both of these are intentional, of course, as a way to render the boy realistically, but the realism isn't enough to forgive flimsy controls, especially when players will invest considerable chunks of time dealing with it.
Conclusion
But not all of The Last Guardian is frustrating. To its merit, the game features fun mechanics, visually splendid set pieces and an impressive map design to boot. For Kollar, these and the high emotional points are the best aspects present in the game. Despite this, Kollar opines that The Last Guardian doesn't quite live up to the standards set by its forebears, likening it to a rough and unpolished PS2 game.
Inferring from all reviews of the game so far, it seems that The Last Guardian's strongest knack is thanks to the progressive relationship between the game's two titular characters, but this alone isn't enough to cover its faults.
"What The Last Guardian accomplishes with Trico and the player's investment is impressive, but it never fully overtakes the game's weaknesses," Kollar wrote.
The Last Guardian comes out Dec. 6 for PlayStation 4.
Have you tried out The Last Guardian? What do you think of the game so far? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
