For the Love of... Ico

In the build up to the launch of PlayStation 2, someone at Sony decided the console's graphics processor should be called the Emotion Engine. It was exactly the sort of daft moniker you get during the hype in the run up to a launch. However, there was at least one game that lived up to the sentinment of emotion in game. This was Ico, and it really did play your heartstrings like a harp.

The game has a wonderfully simple concept. You play a young boy, Ico, imprisoned in a sprawling and long-abandoned castle. Here, he meets the ghostly Yorda and together they try to escape. The only other inhabitants of the castle are shadow creatures and their Queen. Let the great escape begin!

While the characters had strong personalities, the player knew very little about them and many critics argued that the castle itself was the game's strongest character. Corridors lead into store rooms, through windows onto gantries, with balconies to rooftop gardens, then back down through chapels and graveyards to vast empty halls.

The whole place was deserted, hinting at the grandeur of those who had lived there decades or centuries before. Every wall, floor and arch is beautifully detailed. It feels like the developers laid each brick individually and then left it to build up dust which Ico kicks up with every step.

This attention to detail in the environments carries over into the gameplay too. You might walk past three windows as you scale the outside of a wing of the castle having seen those windows an hour earlier in the distance and maybe an hour later you find yourself in a vast chamber lit by those same three high windows. There is one small tower near the start from the top of which you can see the entire game, on a second play through you will recognise features of every bit of roof. The developers achieved this by building an actual model of the castle to ensure that it all fit together perfectly before starting to build the virtual one.

Ico's connection to this world is just as flawless; you can feel every footfall and every landing from a jump. Yorda shares your fascination with the world and in any quiet moment she will run off to explore a corner lit by a sun-beam or to disturb a bird sitting by a pond. Never has a virtual world felt so close.

Ico can run, jump, climb, solve puzzles and fight monsters but you have none of the clutter that you might find in similar games. There is no health bar, if you get hit by a shadow creature you get knocked down, the only way to die is to fall too far. There is no inventory other than the stick or sword that Ico is currently carrying. Combat is as pared-down as it could be with one button to attack and only a couple of moves possible. Some people have said that this simplification is Ico's worst feature and they could be right; however it does keep the game accessible and it ensures that the combat sections don't overshadow the rest of the experience.

Yorda is every bit as vital to the game as Ico, and she was a revelation at the time. She and Ico speak different languages so they can not talk to each other, instead they communicate through movement and touch. Every time Ico pulls Yorda up onto a ledge or out of one of the shadow holes, every time that they approach one of the castles ancient magical seals which break before them. Every time that you call Yorda and when she gets close you hold the button and Ico holds her hand as they run together where ever you guide them. You feel every jerk on Ico's arm through the most subtle use of dualshock rumble yet seen. It is this connection between the player, Ico and Yorda which makes Ico far more than the sum of its parts.

Ultimately what you have here is a game that takes the template laid down by classic fantasy adventures like Zelda or the original Prince of Persia and it strips out all the fluff. Epic in scale yet personal in intent. Ico takes you on a fantastic journey and years later you will close your eyes and find yourself wandering those halls again.

Ico was Fumito Ueda's first project as Lead Designer and it was his vision for the game that made it so special. He initially intended it to be a PSone game and the demo reel that he made to show Sony what Ico could be was kept to as a design plan even after the team decided that the PSone simply couldn't handle it. Ueda's team went on to make Shadow of the Colossus, another ground breaking PS2 adventure with many similarities to Ico even though it wasn't a direct sequel. Now they are working on a third game, this time for the PS3, information on this is scarce to say the least but even after just two games Team Ico has a lot of fans dying to see what they can do with the power of the PlayStation3!