ICO is a game for the PS2 developed by Team ICO in 2001. It’s a difficult game to describe, but if I had to, I’d say it’s a puzzle platforming action adventure escort mission game. It’s very unconventional, but it gained tons of critical success when it was released, leading some to even call it one of the best games of all time. Can it really live up to that reputation? Or is ICO a relic of the past? Let’s find out in my Mighty Review of… ICO.

So this game is strange. It starts off with a bunch of people going to an ancient castle to place a boy inside an egg because he was born with horns, making him evil and ripe for sacrificing. After they leave, the stones give way, allowing the boy to escape. He wanders through the castle until he frees a young, glowing girl named Yorda. They work together to escape the castle while dodging smoke monsters, solving puzzles, and holding hands. They also have to get away from Yorda’s crazy mom who disapproves of her daughter’s new boyfriend.

That’s pretty much all of the story for the entire first 90% of the game. It’s a simple premise told in a convoluted, but unique way, making for an acceptable setup. The characters don’t talk to each other while playing since they both speak different languages, but if you’re going to play this game, you better love her two sounds because you’re gonna hear them A LOT in the 6 or so hours you’ll be playing this game. There’s very little music outside of the cutscenes. Instead you hear the footsteps of the kids and the sounds of animals outside. It’s very peaceful and relaxing and it fits the game very well.

Unfortunately, the characters of ICO and Yorda are practically non-existent. The whole game’s emotional impact hinges on the player feeling some connection between the characters and I felt nothing for these two. Clearly you don’t need dialogue to make strong characters (just rewatch the first 10 minutes of Up if you disagree), but these two don’t even act like kids. They don’t smile, or laugh, or show any emotion throughout most of the game. You might as well replace ICO with a piece of cardboard and Yorda with a key for the doors because that’s all I saw them as. This makes the climax of the story that much less impactful, and for something commonly called one of the “best games of all time” I guess I just expected more.

The gameplay of ICO is simple. When he’s not yanking Yorda around trying to dislocate everything in her arm, ICO can run, jump, climb, swing on ropes, pull and push boxes, and swing his stick around. The end goal of most parts of the game is to get Yorda to a spirit door so she can open it up and let you continue. Yorda herself is useless aside from this one ability. She can’t defend herself, she doesn’t even try to run from the monsters, and she is the slowest god damn ladder climber IN THE WORLD! For the PS2 era, her AI wasn’t terrible, but she’s not as responsive as she needed to be for this game to fully work, making me wonder if this this game should’ve been released later on when AI technology had improved.

Most of the puzzles are great, but I do have some issues with them. While trying to solve puzzles in a game like this, exploration is key. But since you can’t leave Yorda alone for more than 5 minutes without monsters coming to kidnap her, you’re forced to limit your exploration to make sure she isn’t captured while you’re gone. This is a major issue because the design of the game tells you to explore, but the mechanics tell you not to. It’s really frustrating. The designers created a beautiful and interesting environment that I want to discover, but I can’t because I’m stuck babysitting. This mechanic can be useful since if the player is on the wrong track to a solution, the monsters will usually attack. And while this could have been a great way to ensure the player stays on the right path, the save points are sometimes so sparse that the punishment for simply taking a wrong turn is much more irritating than it should be. If the game had autosave points more frequently this wouldn’t have been an issue, but with Yorda’s slow movement and Ico having to climb everywhere, having to redo large sections of the game becomes incredibly tedious after only a few failures.

Another element of the game is combat. This is stupid. The shadow monsters come out of the ground and take Yorda to one of two holes. You can stop them by hitting them with your stick until they fall over. If Yorda is captured and dragged underground, you have a few seconds to go over to the hole and grab her out. While I do appreciate the different forms of enemies and their different attack styles, the combat is too shallow  to justify just how many of these battles there are. They’re rarely a threat and sometimes even show up when Yorda’s not around which makes no sense because they can’t kill ICO, so the entire attack is non-threatening. 

It’s shallow, repetitive, and goes on for too long and I honestly think the game would have been a lot more memorable if it was just ICO and Yorda trying to escape. Or better yet, why not make them unable to fight the creatures? Just have them show up in certain segments and make the kids run from them. This would create a greater sense of fear, remove the terrible combat gameplay, and Ico would still be useful since he’s the one who can climb. In fact, playing through this game I felt like Ico did everything while Yorda just walked around opening doors. If they took away Ico’s combat abilities, it would seem like a more equal partnership.

The final element of ICO’s gameplay is platforming. This is a mixed bag. ICO can climb like Nathan Drake, swing from ropes, and jump immense gaps, all while taking Yorda with him. The platforming itself is just okay, with some jumps being difficult to place thanks to the perspective of the game, but at least the camera is on point most of the time. The platforming overall is nice, but I always felt unnecessarily rushed because I didn’t want to leave Yorda alone, in case she gets captured and forces me to lose my progress. However, the platforming does help to show off the game’s strongest point- it’s visuals.

Now obviously the game is older and even remastered in HD, the textures don’t quite hold up like they used to, but damn if this isn’t one of the most breathtaking views I’ve seen in gaming. Being one of the first games to take advantage of bloom lighting, the lighter scenes really are beautiful ,even if the darker areas can sometimes be a bit too dark. The castle is massive and expansive and for the PS2, you can go pretty far without hitting a loading point. The set pieces are magnificent and the whole castle is connected, making you feel like this is a real place you’re exploring. It all just makes me wish that I didn’t have to babysit Yorda the entire time I play. I understand that the developers were going for a symbiotic relationship, but they neglected to give either character an identity or unique personality, which for me, makes it a good game instead of a great one.

Overall, I’d say ICO is a game with a ton of potential, but far from one of the best games ever made. It’s competent, but misses the mark on a few too many occasions in my opinion. If nothing else, it does have me excited to try out Shadow of the Colossus and eventually The Last Guardian, but for now, I’m giving ICO for the PS2  7.5 dislocated shoulders out of 10. I hope you all enjoyed this review. Be sure to subscribe for more reviews and to see next week’s Nifty Recipe based on this game, and as always, have a mighty nifty day today!