The Last Guardian - PlayStation 4

I have been looking forward to this game for quite some time and I am so happy it was worth the wait. First a warning to anyone who isn't totally familiar with the game, it doesn't have fancy "next gen" graphics and there is no English dialogue, only subtitles. BUT is you like the idea of a heavily story based journey through a fantastic and beautiful world then you have to give this game a chance.I won't go too deep into the story because discovering the story is the whole point of the game, but the premise is you are a young boy who has woken up beside a massive creature called Trico. The creature is injured and chained to the floor and it is up to you to help it, once you have, you will gradually grow your relationship and you will have more control of Trico. Through the game you depend on Trico to help you cross distances that you can't and Trico will depend on you to help it as well. This give and take makes you truly develop an emotional attachment to this creature. I found myself trusting it and doing thing I would not normally try just because I felt confident that Trico would be there to help me. It is truly incredible how the creators of this game hit the nail on the head to make you connect with Trico in a real way.While this game (in my opinion) is incredible and I have absolutely fallen in love with Trico, the game is not without flaws. The first is that the controls can be a little.. finicky, especially with Trico. Now this is either just a slightly flawed AI making it not really listen to you or not doing what you want it to, OR it is the MOST spot on AI I've ever encountered. I say this because I feel like the way I would tell Trico to do something and it would either not listen at all or do something completely different, reminded me of being a pet owner, when you speak to an animal and tell it to do something it doesn't always go as planned unless of course you've taken time to train the animal, and this is sort of how Trico functions. Perhaps I just love this game and am making up an excuse for a bad AI but I sort of feel like it added some character to the game and to Trico. It also adds a bit of difficulty, when you have to really thing and provide the most basic of instructions to make Trico do what you want.Another flaw with the game is somewhat related to the animation, which to start is gorgeous, it looks beautiful and the way the boy moves is very childlike and interesting, but it can sometimes be a bit frustrating, he moves at almost a constant run so sometimes doing more precise movements don't work well or you have to position a jump just right otherwise he will jump in a completely random direction.But overall I genuinely love this game it is beautiful and fun and wonderful, but in truth it is not for everyone. There will be people who will hate this game for any number of reasons, but if you think you make enjoy it then it is absolutely worth a chance, even if you wait until the price goes down some.

So let me start by saying: I gave this 4 stars based on my opinion of the value of the product overall, to everyone. And some people are NOT going to like this game, for reasons I'll go into later.But for me, my experience of playing the game was worth 5 stars, 10 stars, 371 stars... Because I got to have a new adventure in the world inside Fumito Ueda's head. And I love that world very, very much.For those who've played Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus... Well, Yorda's become a bird/dog/cat colossus... And while she can now defend herself (as long as there aren't any stained-glass eyeballs around), she doesn't take direction any better than she ever did, and if the right piece of machinery pulses blue circles at her, she might bite your head with her giant beak. Bummer.The game is every bit as gorgeous as Ueda fans would expect. Everything (EVERYTHING) in this world is beautifully designed and executed, and well worth your taking the time to look at. (Incidentally, some people have reported frame-rate trouble... I had that happen maybe once or twice, for just a moment. NBD.) And the story is a Team Ico story. If you love those, you'll love this one. If you love Yorda and Agro as much as I do, you'll love Trico just as much. As to the controls...Um, the controls. They're not what you'd call... Good, actually. They're probably the worst in the series, in that they just don't always respond properly; occasionally the "climb" button will cause you to "drop," or vice-versa. This is something I can look past, but for some people who aren't as susceptible as I am to the game's other charms, it's going to be a big problem. Likewise the camera, which is about on par with Ico's, and occasionally worse. I attribute that to the realism that Ueda tries to bring to his games: If you really were somewhere with a giant, clumsy beast and a camera was on you, you can be sure that beast would sometimes (or often) get between you and that camera, such that you couldn't see anything else. As well as step on you now and again, which also happens in the game. :)Speaking of realism, what I think will most bother many fans of today's AAA games is the speed at which the story and gameplay move... Which is that of the boy who is the protagonist of The Last Guardian. He stumbles a lot, he can't jump as far as Nathan Drake can, he doesn't have a hyperspace arsenal like Ratchet, and he gets confused and has to figure things out. And you figure them out with him, in real-time. To me, that's immersive and sometimes contemplative. To some, I'm sure, it will seem incredibly boring.I'll end this by emphasizing that I REALLY LOVE THIS GAME. There are a few "auteur developers" whose work I follow: Tim Schafer, Ken Levine, Atsushi Inaba... When you buy a game made by these people, you know that it will have a particular sensibility behind it. Though many people are involved in making them, these games come across as the product of a singular artistic vision, rather than that of lowest-common-denominator focus-group testing. Nowhere is this more true than in games directed by Fumito Ueda. I was blessed by this opportunity to enter his world again in The Last Guardian, and I expect to return many times on future playthroughs.EDIT: I just finished my second playthrough (I wanted to show my family the ending), and decided I had to bump this up to 5 stars. Yes, the controls are crap, and so is the camera. But what the game IS is, and its "soul," if you will, are just SO DARN BEAUTIFUL. My heart brims over.