Team Ico news – HD remakes, and The Last Guardian trailer
By Matt Clarke
September 16, 2010
Tokyo Game Show has kicked off, and the only game I was interested in has already shown its mesmerising-monster-shaped face. There’s been no new news of The Last Guardian for over a year, and the new trailer is as gorgeous and intriguing as 2009’s E3 trailers. It seems to show a bit of gameplay, but is mostly in-engine footage of the big creature and the kid interacting. Having been getting rather excited at the thoughts of the game coming out soon, I now have to calm myself down as the supposed release date will be “Holiday 2011”, according to IGN. I don’t know what this means, exactly, but it’s obviously not going to be out anytime soon! In the meantime, I’ll have the HD remakes of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus to keep me busy, and that’s a fine compromise to me. Click below for trailers.
If you were one of those people, like me, who had never heard of ICO, or Shadow of the Colossus back when they came out on the PS2, but keep seeing them show up in top-10 game lists and whatnot on all the big gaming sites, then you have two choices – buy a used PS2, and find copies of both games on ebay for around 40 bloody quid, and enjoy 2 of the most beautiful games ever created. Or wait for the PS3 remakes in Spring. I’ll be doing both (already did option 1 a few months back). Both games will be released as a double-pack on one bluray disc, which is just lovely.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
You might have heard of Pokémon. I can’t quite believe that date. 1996!? Holy crap. 21 years ago, apparently, I got well into this strange Japanese game about collecting made-up animals, stuffing them into balls and training them to fight each other.
Heavy Rain is more like an interactive movie than a game, and it is mostly excellent. It’s a game about choices and living with the consequences. I played it through twice myself, just to see how different decisions affect the story and its ultimate conclusion, but to say that my first try was emotional would be the understatement of the century. This game almost broke me. I’ll tell you how soon, but first I want to recount the story of one of my friend’s choices… Like I said, watching Heavy Rain is just like watching a movie, but watching your friend play Heavy Rain gives you an amusing bit of insight into their psychology. The results can be hilarious.
Don’t kill people. That’s the ARC’s job. Make no mistake, I ain’t no softie. Just coz I won’t attack you first, don’t mean I won’t defend meself from a rat bastard who likes the look of my backpack! The rustbelt is a volatile place. I’ve seen what it’s done to us. What it does to the mind. But we gotta stick together, fight for humanity, and focus our efforts where it truly matters – FOR SPERANZA!