Will_Ball gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Will_Ball gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
In The Last Guardian, you, playing a young boy, awake to find yourself in a cave with a giant dog/cat/bird thingy (let's just call it Trico). With no way to escape this cave, and with Trico looking hurt, you sympathize with Trico and help him/her. After feeding Trico and tending to its injuries, Trico warms up to you like a wounded animal would. It ends up following you through caves and castles as both of you try to escape this world filled with danger around every corner.
Oh how I wanted to love The Last Guardian. The developer of this game made some of my favorite games (Ico and Shadow of the Colossus). But by the time I finished this game, I had mixed feelings about it.
The things that I love about this game are the environments, the story, and the bonding the boy and his Trico have.
The environments are grand. You really get a sense of the place this game takes place in. At times you can be in tiny corridors and other times you can be jumping and running around in big open areas. The designers did a great job designing this world.
The story and the bonding between the boy and his Trico go hand and hand. As you go through the game, not only do these two characters grow to feel for each other, but you do too. There is a great dynamic here. While this bonding develops you are also given some background on both the boy and Trico, not too much to overwhelm you, but just enough to fill in some backstory and draw you in a little more.
While all that pulled you into the game, the controls and frame rate pull you out of the game. This is what made me have mixed feelings about the game.
First of all, the controls are very frustrating. I found myself fighting the camera almost all the time. I also found myself having a hard time directing Trico. Maybe the developers were trying to be too realistic with how Trico responds to your commands, but for a video game it just does not translate well. You sometimes spend minutes trying to get Trico to do simple commands. It got to the point where you just hold down a few buttons for a while and hope Trico does what you want him/her to do.
As for the frame rate, it varies. Sometimes it is pretty smooth, but other times it gets very choppy. On a PS4 I would not expect this. It feels like the developer should have spent some more time here. I hear it works better on a PS4 Pro, so maybe they left it in as an upsell?
Overall this game had a lot of promise, only to let you down with a choppy frame rate and frustrating controls. I am on the fence between a Meh and a Rad, but will lean towards Rad as the environments and story made me finish the game and somewhat enjoy it.
Oh how I wanted to love The Last Guardian. The developer of this game made some of my favorite games (Ico and Shadow of the Colossus). But by the time I finished this game, I had mixed feelings about it.
The things that I love about this game are the environments, the story, and the bonding the boy and his Trico have.
The environments are grand. You really get a sense of the place this game takes place in. At times you can be in tiny corridors and other times you can be jumping and running around in big open areas. The designers did a great job designing this world.
The story and the bonding between the boy and his Trico go hand and hand. As you go through the game, not only do these two characters grow to feel for each other, but you do too. There is a great dynamic here. While this bonding develops you are also given some background on both the boy and Trico, not too much to overwhelm you, but just enough to fill in some backstory and draw you in a little more.
While all that pulled you into the game, the controls and frame rate pull you out of the game. This is what made me have mixed feelings about the game.
First of all, the controls are very frustrating. I found myself fighting the camera almost all the time. I also found myself having a hard time directing Trico. Maybe the developers were trying to be too realistic with how Trico responds to your commands, but for a video game it just does not translate well. You sometimes spend minutes trying to get Trico to do simple commands. It got to the point where you just hold down a few buttons for a while and hope Trico does what you want him/her to do.
As for the frame rate, it varies. Sometimes it is pretty smooth, but other times it gets very choppy. On a PS4 I would not expect this. It feels like the developer should have spent some more time here. I hear it works better on a PS4 Pro, so maybe they left it in as an upsell?
Overall this game had a lot of promise, only to let you down with a choppy frame rate and frustrating controls. I am on the fence between a Meh and a Rad, but will lean towards Rad as the environments and story made me finish the game and somewhat enjoy it.
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This one is sitting on my shelf. I adored Shadow of the Colossus but I find myself less inclined to dive into this one for some reason. I don’t understand why, but there you have it
I say give it a go. I wish the PS4 told me play time. It didn't seem like too long of a game.