The Last Guardian – Review

Platform – PlayStation 4
Developer – GenDesign, SCEA Japan Studios
Publisher – Sony
MSRP: $59.99 USD

(Editor’s Note: This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4 with the game copy being provided by Gaming Instincts.)

Introduction

The wait is finally over, after 9 years of development hell, Team Ico’s third and seemingly final game is out for the PlayStation 4 and it certainly delivers. Carrying on the pedigree of fine titles such as ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian tells an emotional journey between a boy and his flawed but very loyal beast companion named Trico and their struggle to escape a giant fortress filled with brain-teasing puzzles and enemies. Now you might be wondering, does this game really delivers, is it worth a rental or avoid like the plague. Find out more about it in our in-depth review of The Last Guardian.

Story

Now without going into spoilers here, the basic premise is that the game starts with the boy suddenly waking up in a fortress looking place known as “The Nest” and next to him he finds a spear-wounded dog-cat-eagle looking creature who is at first very hostile towards the boy, however, the boy manages to nurse the beast back to health and the beast starts taking a liking to the boy and then the journey begins.

This game has a seemingly peculiar way of telling you a story, it mixes a few narrative elements and environment storytelling, such as the boy grown up narrates a bit of the story in first person while giving you hints to solve puzzles and telling you a bit about the environment you are in, at the same time, the game allows you to experience moments that makes you imagine what is going on, such as the way Trico behaves when you encounter certain objects in the game or when the enemies are trying to grab you, the game never explicitly tells you about why the boy was brought there, it just leaves it to the player’s imagination to figure out what’s going on. This ambiguity was also present with the previous Team Ico games and it reflects on the kind of storytelling that Team Ico’s game designer and director, Fumito Ueda likes to employ when designing his games.

Gameplay

Those who played Ico back in the day when it was released on PlayStation 2 will immediately feel back at home with this game, this is what I would consider a true spiritual successor to Ico in both the way it plays and the way it feels. The world itself is like a Zelda dungeon on steroids, it’s a big environment filled with puzzles and dangers to overcome. The boy has the ability to move around freely in the environment, climb structures, go through narrow passages, crouch into tiny holes, basically things that the Beast cannot do on its own. The boy’s controls are smooth and responsive, complemented with some of the greatest animation cycles to grace gaming, this game is certainly a pleasure to control when it comes to the boy.

Trico, on the other hand, is completely controlled by AI behavior, and I dare say this is the main highlight of the game, Trico’s AI is probably the most natural looking AI behavior that I have experienced in any game, the moment you begin playing, the game makes you feel that the beast is really alive and it’s paying attention to everything you do, it remembers how well you take care of him and it reacts to it as well, depending on how good you take care of your beast, the behavior from the beast to the player will either be more or less responsive, if you have been a bit neglectful with your beast, he may not listen to you nearly as much as he would if you took good care of him and pet him constantly when the beast was in pain.

You are given commands to control Trico throughout the game, roughly telling him what to do, for example, you can command the beast to cling on a higher ledge just so you can climb the beast and reach an area which otherwise would have been impossible for you to reach, or when you are stuck with a door that looks like it can be broken, you can command Trico to headbutt that structure and get it open for you, or you can point Trico to go and climb a certain structure that you would not be able to reach and he would attempt to get to that structure while you are clinging on Trico. The game is packed with puzzles that involve the beast itself and pretty much what kind of commands you need to give to the beast in order to overcome certain obstacles.

The game does have enemies whose objective are to grab the boy and take him away to a light-filled door, and if they are successful, it’s game over for you. In order to prevent this, you have to pretty much mash buttons until you can get away from the enemies and start running near Trico so he can defeat them for you. The boy does not have the ability to defeat the enemies on his own in any way, the most the boy can do is to push an enemy to stun him and allowing Trico an opening to smash them. There are moments where you are separated from the beast and you have to pretty much either escape the area or try to have the beast enter the area by activating a switch that would open the door for Trico to help you out; all while escaping from the grasp of your enemies. It works well, it creates moments of stress for the player as they are trying to figure out a way to get the beast there to help you or escape, and also some of these moments are filled with amazing scripted events that will end up leaving you feel satisfied with the outcome, the game does a very good job in making you feel a bond with the beast as you both struggle to overcome the dangers ahead.

Now we go to the issues that are present with the gameplay itself, sometimes the world doesn’t seem to be modeled to be too accommodating to the boy’s movement, often you would see that the boy gets stuck on little cracks that would impede his running, when you climb on a rope, is really hard to have the boy jump to the direction you desire and I often found myself dying cheaply due to this flawed mechanic, and sadly this pales in comparison to what is, in my opinion, the biggest issue with the game, and that is the camera, which is, to put it bluntly, dreadful, especially in areas where you are packed tight with the beast next to you, it is almost impossible to manipulate it, and sometimes, the camera would reset itself countless times to try to accommodate itself to focus on the boy. This clearly was one of the struggles that the developers tried hard to overcome and failing at it miserably and to be fair, it’s not the worst camera out there, for what the game tries to do, it works, but you will have moments of infuriating frustration when it comes to dealing with the camera.

Trico sometimes gets a little bit too unresponsive for it’s own good, especially towards the end where there are heavily scripted scenes, you would give commands repeatedly for Trico to do something and it would not do it, you technically had to re-position yourself and try again until he finally does, this especially started occurring towards the end of the game. There was a moment where a bug occurred in the game that caused the rig of the beast to completely twist his head and his spine, I had to turn the game off and turn it back on in order to fix it, but it certainly shows that the game itself is struggling to run fine but often fails.

Total Length of the game may vary; if you know from top to bottom what to do in every section, it can last around 7 hours, and if you are playing it without knowing what to do, it can easily last more than 10 hours, the total hours of my first play-through was around 12 hours worth of gameplay, which is a very good length for a game of this genre, however, after the game is done, there is not much else to do or discover, other than gathering all of the trophies in the game, which is a bummer, but this game is all about the experience, and that alone makes the game worth playing.

Visuals

Team Ico’s past games were marveling sights of pristine visual spectacle. The first time I saw Ico running on a PlayStation 2, I was completely astonished. Keep in mind, Ico launched during the beginning days of the PS2 and I think it was the game that definitely showcased what the system could do, it was a marvel to both look at and play as well. Then Shadow of the Colossus came out, which, in my humble opinion, that game gave a run for it’s money to all other ps2 games in the visual department, yes, God of War 1 and 2 included, and not for the amazing draw distance that no game could achieve during that time, nor for the amazing dynamic lighting effects that the game boasted, but how well it moved. I come from an animation background and I really do appreciate when developers take special care for the animation of a game, and Shadow of the Colossus was a game I enjoyed just running around with my horse because it was so good to look at.

The Last Guardian visuals, on the other hand, are a mixed bag, the game boast the same lighting effects, amazing animation cycles and the eerie ambiance that previous Team Ico titles were known for, however, as far visual fidelity is concerned, this is a very pretty PlayStation 3 game, and to be fair to the developers, this game was in development for the PlayStation 3 and intended to launch on that system until the developers realized that the technical issues simply could not be overcome and decided to move it to the next gen platform, the PlayStation 4, and believe it or not, the game sometimes struggles to run and keep a steady frame rate on the PlayStation 4.

The texture resolution is low for a PS4 game, like I mentioned above, it was meant to be a PS3 game, however, the developers did rework the lighting engine to take advantage of the PS4 hardware and it does show, certainly the only times that you’ll be wowed by the visuals is when you step outside and you see the insane lighting and shadow effects coupled with amazing attention to detail. Also it’s worth noting that the game is taking place on a really big static environment that is not affected by load times, all of the events of the game are taking place in that massive fortress, when you are running around, you can see far away places that you will eventually be when you get to that stage, and you can look back at the places you’ve been before; it certainly adds a lot to the visual experience.

Now the biggest issue with the visuals is the framerate. You’d think that this being originally a PlayStation 3 title and then transitioned to PlayStation 4 would at least give you a solid 30 FPS… I’m afraid to tell you that the frame rate on the original PS4 version is very inconsistent, and at times it can go as low as 20 FPS. While this issue didn’t get in the way of my gameplay, it was certainly annoying to experience such a sluggish performance on my PS4. I researched that the best way to play the game with a consistent frame-rate is to get a PS4 pro and play it on 1080p resolution to get a solid 30 FPS performance, as apparently playing it in 4K causes frame rate issues and it can go as low as 24 FPS, but still is nowhere near as bad as the original PS4.

To end this section on a high note, probably the best aspect of the visuals is the art direction of the game, this is top notch stuff and the attention to detail that has been put to the presentation of the game, the character designs, monster designs and the environment art itself is of the highest quality possible, it truly feels like a breathing living world that’s ready to consume you if you don’t do something to escape it.

Sound

The sound and music department get a complete high-five from me in this regards, amazing sound effects and beautiful orchestrated music that really gets intense in the most desperate moments of the game and to put the icing on the cake, the game also has some beautiful piano scores that play during the moments when you step outside at the fortress gardens to marvel the magnificence of the environment and making you feel at ease with the game.

The voice acting is good, suited to get the best feeling of the game, especially when the beast makes howling noises when you step away from him, letting you know that the beast is sad and alone, or when he starts growling like a lion during the face of enemies or objects that the beast doesn’t like, all perfectly created to make the beast as alive as it can possibly be and the developers definitely did a good job on that. The voice acting on the boy is average at best, he speaks a fictional language and mostly to give commands to the beast. I’ve never been a fan of the fictional languages used in all Team Ico’s games, but that’s just a personal thing. Overall the game offers a great sound experience that will just get better if you are playing on a Dolby surround setup or with very suited up soundbars.

Final Verdict

The Last Guardian is an amazing game, plain and simple, it is an experience that any gamer that loves adventure games and owns a PlayStation 4 needs to enjoy, it’s not a perfect game however, frame rate issues and slightly dated visuals coupled with irritating camera controls, lack of replay value after completion other than trophy hunting and occasional bugs that occur can hinder what would otherwise be a one of a kind experience that hardly any other games offer, in fact, there is no other game like this out for the PS4 or any other platforms and if you can forgive the flaws I mentioned before, you are in for a treat that will leave you wanting for more when it ends. Sadly during the development of this game, Fumito Ueda stepped away from Sony to form his own game design studio called GenDESIGN and worked with SCEA Japan on a contractual basis to finish The Last Guardian before moving on, so it looks like that this may be the last game in the Ico universe, however, I certainly look forward to seeing what’s to come from this talented creator.