Buried Treasure: Ico

After my Ode to Ratchet and Clank, I decided to make a series of posts dedicated to the promotion of more obscure games. Some of these games have been marketed rather well (Ratchet and Clank's marketing was actually quite good), but for some reason, a shameful amount of players have never played them, and some have never even heard of these games. This is how the "Buried Treasure" series was born, and its first OFFICIAL installment will cover the absolute gem that is Ico.



Ico is an "action puzzle" game that features a young boy with horns. This boy was banished from his village and left in a "castle of traps" to die. Escaping from his cell, Ico finds a white girl named Yorda and they decide to work together to find their way out of the castle. The puzzle elements in this game come from this relationship. Ico can jump, hang from ledges, and pretty much anything else that's standard in Tomb Raider/Prince of Persia-type games. Yorda, however, is practically crippled in comparison. You literally have to take her by the hand and drag her behind you as you make your way throughout the castle.



She can jump across short gaps and climb on boxes, but only when you're there reaching out your hand to help her. There will be MANY instances in the game where you reach a new area, and can make your way across with the greatest of ease, only to stand there and ask yourself "How the hell am I gonna help this girl get all the way HERE?" And you need the her to open doors for you, so it's not as if you have the slightest chance of making your way out alone. The camera can be controlled to let you examine the environment. You can even zoom in when you think you see something interesting, and the zoom feature comes in quite handy in some of the larger, more breathtaking sections of the castle.

The combat in Ico is more cosmetic than strategic. As they travel through the castle, Ico and Yorda will often be ambushed by mobs of monsters made up of some sort of "shadow liquid". These monsters always appear from a black portal, and their goal is to bring Yorda back through this portal. Ico spends about 80% of the game fighting these monsters with a wooden stick (the stick is necessary because many of the puzzle elements require lighting something on fire). Ico cannot lose through actual combat, but whenever the monsters knock him down, they take Yorda and drop her in the portal where she slowly starts to sink. If you can't make it to her in time to pull her out, the game is over. This may seem stupid and simplistic, but it fits in well with the rest of the game, and provides a nice change of pace from the exploring and puzzle-solving you'll be doing. And considering how simple the combat is in this game, it's amazing how the creators managed to make the final boss battle so thrilling. Let me rephrase that just to reinforce my point: The final boss in Ico is AMAZING, and well worth the trip.



The main attraction in Ico is the atmosphere. The creators do a WONDERFUL job of drawing you into the story, and the whole experience emanates an aura of mystical wonder. The world they've created feels so real that they didn't even need background music. There's music during some sequences (and all of the fights, if I remember correctly), but for most of the game, the only sounds you'll hear are the wind blowing, the characters' footsteps, and sometimes some birds will sing in the background. Somehow, THIS DOESN'T GET OLD! I still can't understand how they managed to pull that off, but they most definitely did. It's like 90% of your brain is trying to solve a puzzle, and the other 10% is just in awe, thinking about the breathtaking nature of the castle. There's nothing left to worry about music anyway.

All in all, Ico is a tremendous accomplishment, and an absolute masterpiece of a game. You should definitely check it out if you get the chance. Sadly, this isn't an easy game to obtain, but if you're not a huge action junkie, you'll feel that whatever you went through to get a copy of this game will have been worth it.

Electronic Arts signs exclusive 50-year deal with air

EA announced this afternoon that, after weeks of negotiation, they now have exclusive rights to make games featuring air. This is a devastating blow to all companies who have one or more successful series taking place on land, or underground. Companies who built their franchises on flight simulators will most likely never recover.

This is the FOURTH installment in a series of aggressive tactics employed by EA as of late. First came their 5-year deal with the NFL granting them exclusive rights to the highly successful license. Then they announced a 4-year deal with the Arena Football League. EA then continued to ride the wave of aggressive takeovers by announcing just yesterday that they signed a whopping 15-year deal with ESPN, and now they've taken away the rights to air. Rockstar Games has responded by defiantly announcing the location of their next GTA game, which will be called "Grand Theft Auto: Atlantis".

All jokes aside, I can see why the gaming community is uneasy about EA's recent takeover of the sport-simulation genre. The first announcement didn't bother me, since I prefer the Madden series anyway. I agree that choice is always a good thing, and that's the only aspect of the deal that I found negative. The AFL announcement is a GOOD thing, because it gives the league more exposure, and gives gamers the opportunity to experience a different brand of football. Now that the ESPN license is going over to EA too, I'm now convinced that all the premature comparisons between EA and Microsoft were in fact accurate.

The only good thing that can come out of this is such a longshot it isn't even funny. As soon as the AFL deal was announced, I knew that the Canadian Football League is now the only brand of football available to other companies. Having a CFL game MIGHT increase interest in the league, which MIGHT in turn increase the money in the league, which MIGHT finally lead to the CFL having more than NINE FREAKING TEAMS! A guy can dream, can't he?

Another Tekken 5 rant

I've spent a bit more time playing Tekken 5 at my local arcade and I can definitely say I'm hooked. I'm not hooked enough to travel downtown where the REAL competition hangs out, because getting to that arcade from my home is a hassle, and 0.75$ a game is too much. I like T5, but I don't like it THAT much. Fortunately, I've had afew sessions with some players who post on tekkencanada.com and wanted to capitalize on the savings. T5 costs 0.50$ for the first game, and 0.25$ to continue. Basically, after two people make an initial sacrifice, it becomes a 25-cent machine!

During the first of those sessions, I started fooling around with Jack-5 and I fell in love. I just LOVE playing with big damage characters that still make you work hard for the win. Jack-5 fits that description to a tee, since he's probably the lowest ranked character in the game. His strategy seems to revolve around taking gambles. Jack-5 seems to be the first Jack character in Tekken history who can juggle like crazy, but most of his interesting moves get you killed on block. That means you have to poke and hope to annoy your opponent into letting you launch them (I haven't gotten the hang of Jack-5's throw game yet). Of course, since 90% of the roster can out-poke Jack-5, that's when the wins become harder to rack up. You HAVE to capitalize on ALL of your openings to the fullest or else you'll lose.



During the second session I had, the only wins I got were with King, and I spent most of my money on Jack-5 just trying to survive Paul and Anna's rushdown. And failing. Tonight however, I learned that I can consistently beat a Law masher with Jack-5. It may be insignificant, but it's still SOMETHING since Law is fast as hell. I was also surprised at the length of the juggles this guy could mash out once he had me in the air. Obviously, when you gamble, it doesn't always work and I ate a couple counterhit combos that ended up launching me. But in the end, even with my bottom-tier character, I ended up being KING OF THE ANTHILL!!

I can't wait for my next session with good players, because I don't see myself going downtown before the console release...

I wanna be a real smasher!

Over the holidays I had some visiting nephews who spent afew nights sleeping over here. I made the best of their visit and spent some "quality family time" with them playing games on my Gamecube. One of the games we played was Super Smash Bros. Meelee, which is the sequel to Nintendo's fighting game for the Nintendo 64.



Now I was a big fan of the original Super Smash Bros, but sadly, I was the ONLY fan of Smash Brothers among my friends, so we never really played it that often. We'd rent the game every now and then and have some 4-player, Time-Limit madness with all the wacky items adding their unique spice to the fray. When I bought my Gamecube, I knew that I'd have visiting nieces and nephews coming over on occasion, so I knew it would be worthwhile to invest in some Mario games that I could play with them. Super Smash Bros. Meelee obviously found its way onto that list.

So over the holidays, I ended up having quite afew time-limit battles with 3 other kids. I'd also let them play by themselves while I had real conversation with my brothers and sisters. It felt GREAT to play that game against humans after having spent so much time unlocking all the characters by myself. After afew days I decided to try something a little bit different. I had my first one-on-one fight with my nephew. 3 lives each, no items, no time limit. I was shocked at the impact those changes had on the overall feel. It ALMOST plays like a completely different game. The strategic elements become much more apparent to the point where it feels like some sort of "Mario Tekken" where you can only win by Ring Out. The one-on-one experience with no items shows how, just like Mario Kart, Mario Golf, and Mario Power Tennis, Smash Brothers Meelee is a deep game with a very colorful, kid-friendly wrapper. Now I understand why the Smash Brothers message boards are so active today. Four years after its initial release, I can ask a question on a message board and have 3 people answer in 20 minutes.



For one thing, since there are only two fighters in the level, the camera actually gets the chance to close in on the action instead of being so far removed that you can't really see yourself. The absence of items forces you to pit your movelist against your opponent's to get the kill instead of waiting for some Pokemon ball, or bomb. What happens when a given tactic fails actually MATTERS. On the other hand, I also learned how bad I suck at Smash Brothers, because after afew wins, my nephews started catching onto my tactics, and I couldn't counter-adapt in time.

That's when I remembered why I always insisted on time-limit matches back when we were playing on the N64: I'd almost always lose first and I didn't like sitting there watching the others play. Now that I'm an "educated fighter" who's actually willing to LEARN how to get better, instead of changing the game to make it easier for me, I'm really feeling the sting of having no competition for this surprisingly deep game.

When I tried introducing my friends to the game, they thought it was a pretty dumb, childish game and I can't blame them. Right now, we're in a period where we're tired of playing multiplayer videogames whenever we're together, and we're trying to do other things. Once we start playing videogames again, you can be sure that I'll force them to play afew life-limit games to see what they think. If all goes well, I might actually have some competition, which would get me one step closer to being a REAL smasher!