Pay No Attention To This Stall Tactic

Still no comics. Considering phone call to store tomorrow. Considering checking with post office on chance "We have a package here for you!" note was somehow lost by one of numerous housemates who also check mailbox. Still feeling mellow though, listening to something called "Avant Garde Jazz/Free Jazz", which has featured a lot of Coltrane so far. Not sure I "get" it, as in what I'm supposed to be taking from it, but I'm finding it's good music to sort of randomly bob my head and make piano playing finger motions to. Yes, I fail music appreciation, I know.

Well, that's not substantive enough to suit me, so let's talk about a game. It's been awhile since I did any sort of actual game review. So, Ico.

Ico was made by the same people who made Shadow of the Colossus. Though Ico was released several years earlier, it's actually set some time after Shadow of the Colossus, in the same universe. The games are similar and yet different. Both have a rather straightforward premise, but the goal is different. In Shadow of the Colossus, you kill colossi to gain favor with a god so it will revive someone important to you. In Ico, you're a kid with horns trying to escape a castle with a princess before you wind up sacrificed. In both cases, there's nothing that distracts from that goal. They're both puzzle games in a sense, but where the puzzle with SotC is how to reach each colossi's weak point, with Ico, you travel through the castle, figuring out how to get from Point A in the room to Point B, and also how to get the princess from place to place as well, since she is not as nimble as you are.

It mostly involves climbing here, swinging from that, pushing a box, maybe flipping a switch or two. In that regard, it's a very refreshing game, because there isn't any b.s. about collecting x number of "special" {insert noun} that you need to accomplish {insert task}, where the collecting requires you perform numerous smaller tasks*.

Nothing but puzzles might get a bit tedious though, so there are sporadic fights, where you have to protect the princess from odd shadow creatures that emerge from portals in the floor, and hope to drag her back with them. Though they look like shadows, they are solid, since you can whack them with the stick Ico is carrying around**. The fights serve to add stress, as the princess is kind of useless. Honestly, I wonder if she isn't drugged or something. This is her mother's castle, but you find her in a cage, and she doesn't seem to be all there. If you don't take her by the hand and lead her, she can just wander around the room, and when the monsters attack, she stands there. Jeez, at least run to a corner or something, where we can limit the directions they can approach from. I'd lead you there myself, but I'm kind of busy whacking the 3 man-sized shadows with wings and vulture necks that are encircling you right now, kiddo! She does come in handy, since she can open these odd doors throughout the castle you'd never get past otherwise. So she has that going for her.

Something I find interesting is Ico is the least monochromatic character in the game. The shadow creatures are all black. The Queen was a dark spirit with a bright white face the last time I saw her***. The Princess (Yorda) is very pale, almost ethereal really, so that at times it seems as though Ico is leading a blank, person-shaped space around. Which kind of makes her the opposite of the shadow creatures, really. They exhibit the absence of color, she exhibits all colors. Then there's Ico, with his horns, red shirt, poncho thing, shoes clattering on the ground. He's the one who tends to make noise also, everybody else seems disconnected from the proceedings somehow, maybe like they're part of the surroundings, so their movements don't disturb the castle.

My major quibble with the game is the camera won't move as much as I'd like it to. There are times I want to look a particular direction, and it won't allow it, or I'd like a closer look at something, but it won't zoom in sufficiently. This is frustrating because the instruction booklet encourages you, when you first enter a room, to survey said room, to understand what you'll need to do. That being the case, a button for shifting into first-person view might have helped, but there doesn't seem to be one.

I'm not making particularly swift progress, since I've decided to play from one save point to the next, and save points are nice and plentiful, at least so far, thus I don't always cover much ground before I call it a night. Still, I'm not about to complain about lots of save points. Better too many than too few.

* It's strange, because in some games this type of thing bothers me, and in others, it doesn't. I'm going to spend some time trying to figure that out.

** I think I'll be getting a sword soon. That'll be nice.

*** She opened the castle gates for me and offered to let me leave, but told me I'd better leave her daughter behind, which was when I learned who the princess who, if not why she was in a cage.