The Last Guardian (Trico, Ico 3, Shadow of the Colossus sequel, etc.) [PS4]

Haters gonna hate.

This game seems to take the concept of Agro from Shadow of the Colossus and expands it into an entire game mechanic rather than just an element of the control scheme. Not having played The Last Guardian yet I can't speak to the effectiveness of it (unlike the insecure and jealous xbots) but it was an insanely effective experience in SotC.

Does this translate to a full game experience? I don't know. I do appreciate however the investigation and experimentation required to execute it fully. It's an incredible risk but one I'm glad a developer and publisher was willing to make.

I would imagine this game requires patience, and the average gamer might not have as much patience now as they did seven years ago, much less 15 years ago when Ico was released. It probably also requires some imagination. Everyone has some imagination but not everyone will be willing to give in to the immersion.

A lot of highly successful games these days seem to be built on the foundation of repeatable processes that can be exploited for consistent success and reward. I just don't see Udea trying to emulate that and that's OK.
 
bunge said:
A lot of highly successful games these days seem to be built on the foundation of repeatable processes that can be exploited for consistent success and reward. .
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true. and games are much more than just scores, Journey showed us clearly, and tbh, SOTC showed it much before that. Kojima has shown us multiple times with MGS. Games can evoke empathy and emotions and we CAN form relationships in fiction. Ueda lies there and that takes a amazing clear mind to implement! Everyone wont be an audience for it, its the same for movies and books too. Most want a good time from entertainment, some want a memory, a moving experience. Ueda, Jenova Chan, Kojima, Christopher Nolan, etc lie in that category. FOr that audience, it works. it is great that it is working on mainstream reviewers too, because honestly after 10 years and stalling and re-initiation of the project, I was scared the original vision, the soul of the project might have gotten lost along the way. Seems like it not only survived but has made its way into the audience's heart too. Its a miracle that it has come out as intended 10 years ago, I am sure a lot of perseverance and hard work of multiple people, not just the team, is behind this miracle.
 
bunge said:
I would imagine this game requires patience, and the average gamer might not have as much patience now as they did seven years ago, much less 15 years ago when Ico was released. It probably also requires some imagination. Everyone has some imagination but not everyone will be willing to give in to the immersion.

A lot of highly successful games these days seem to be built on the foundation of repeatable processes that can be exploited for consistent success and reward. I just don't see Udea trying to emulate that and that's OK.
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I agree with that. Demo'd my game Adventures a month ago and it didn't go down well as the players had many expectations and no patience to learn new rules and a new way to play. I had to change my ideas a bit (thankfully always intended because the demo was a quick stop-gap coop implementation) and the new demo was well received. One feature was a duck-herding objective, which required patience. This patience was absent and the player was frustrated he couldn't run full speed and have the ducks follow.

As a business, you have to work with an audience that doesn't want to spend time learning new things. If you want to teach new things, you have to introduce them gradually around an existing mindset. I think that's completely different from the 80s and 90s when we got big-ass manuals and loved reading through them. Games like Lair show the economic failure that comes from exceeding people's limits and turning them away before they have chance to learn and appreciate the new mechanic you're offering. TLG could probably only happen as a first/second party title (perhaps with Japan backing) because no sane publisher would invest in a game with an organic mechanic that doesn't fit current gamers' mindsets.
 
Factor 5 simply made the mistake of forcing a set of utterly unreliable montion controls into a game that was already plenty demanding without them. Thanks to some very strict time limits, one wrong turn could cost you an entire mission in that game, so the last thing a player should have to deal with is a bunch of unwanted Immelmann turns.

I played the game once the analog controls had been patched in and I quite liked its fairly old-school approach to game design.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
As a business, you have to work with an audience that doesn't want to spend time learning new things. If you want to teach new things, you have to introduce them gradually around an existing mindset. I think that's completely different from the 80s and 90s when we got big-ass manuals and loved reading through them. Games like Lair show the economic failure that comes from exceeding people's limits and turning them away before they have chance to learn and appreciate the new mechanic you're offering. TLG could probably only happen as a first/second party title (perhaps with Japan backing) because no sane publisher would invest in a game with an organic mechanic that doesn't fit current gamers' mindsets.
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The Last Guardian may fail at teaching the player as this review suggests:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/...-obedience-lessons-embargo-10-am-eastern-125/
 
Camera is definitely weird, it takes a while to break the reflexes of controlling it like a TPS, most younger hardcore gamers will be fighting against the game until they stop trying to micro-manage the camera. Not a big problem so far for me since there isn't much difficult timing or shooting or precision involved. It's a rather contemplative experience, puzzle, adventure, and pet feeding.

L1 to target-hold Trico is working well. I use it all the time.

Maybe they could add a patch with L2/R2 to zoom in/out, reduce the "spring" of the camera smoothing, reduce deadzone and make it more linear than exp, and it would be more traditional. I don't know.

The animation and rigging of Trico is fucking amazing, way beyond anything we've ever seen in a video game.

Music is awesome, great choir.

I'm just at the beginning of the story, but the pacing is nice and consistent so far.

Trico is doing everything I need him to, if I let him enough time and hints to figure things out, not sure why some are saying he's unpredictable or stubborn, maybe it's story driven later on, or it gets more difficult later.
 
MrFox said:
Trico is doing everything I need him to, if I let him enough time and hints to figure things out, not sure why some are saying he's unpredictable or stubborn, maybe it's story driven later on, or it gets more difficult later.
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I've read on quite a few occasions that you also have to read the creature correctly if you want it to do your bidding in a more consistent manner. Now that might of course just be projection on behalf of the people who don't seem to struggle with it quite as much, though.

Either way, cannot wait.
 
Well it seems that the Nuke Dukem curse has been broken twice in the space of two weeks now, both FFXV and TLG are great games that seem to be doing very well in the market too.
 
Games looks stunning in 4k HDR, bit surprised it's wowing me more than FF XV does so far. The animation of Trico is so life like and fluid it's behaving just like a giant dog, thousands of fluttering feathers really look impressive under the sun, sometimes it's almost Pixar like. The camera and laggy control really bug the shit out of me tho, replace that with UC's scheme and it would be perfect. But damn I just can't get over how adorable and life like Trico is, this is truly an unique game that instantly grabs my attention, hope the game lives up to the hype.
 
I played it for 3 hours yesterday. And so far, every time I got myself stuck it was 100% my own damn fault. Trico did everything I needed him to really, and he actually did it quite quickly no less. In many cases he (she?) actually helped me. Similar to Yorda in Ico, Trico will actually point towards crucial points of interest. He's not going to point a finger towards it obviously. But when he's curiously staring at stuff, it's probably important. It's a magical game I think. Shame it runs so poorly on regular PS4s.
 
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Saw a commercial of it the other night, the kid is running away from goons, the camera is overhead so he runs out to the bridge, which is broken.

Kid jumps the gap and the thing captures him. Seeing that thing for the first time on on big screen TV -- it's creepy, some flying giant rat?

But the environment looks like Ico.
 
Sigfried1977 said:
But when he's curiously staring at stuff, it's probably important.
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The boy also turns his head toward areas of interests, but he needs to be close to it.

I played first few hours last night, game is pure delight. I'm having a lot of fun, and Trico is amazing in all technical/gameplay ways I can think of. The programmers of his AI and animation deserve tons of awards.
 
Maaaan, this game rocks so hard. I played way more of it, and it just gets better. Amazing visuals, atmosphere and puzzles. Trico is so damn perfectly made, so quirky and fun especially in one scene that really made me laugh.
 
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