The Last Guardian Impressions
I played The Last Guardian and I don’t really like it all that much. The Last Guardian is the most recent game from Team Ico who brought us both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus and it certainly feels that way. The game has an aesthetic quality that you would expect from one of their games in character design, level design, overall atmosphere, and even mechanics. From the moment I started playing, it felt like another one of their games.
In The Last Guardian, you play a young boy who mysteriously wakes up next to Trico, you’re larger than average dog/cat/bird/animal companion. After a very brief get to know you session, you and Trico start to work together to get out of your precarious situation. Your teamwork sometimes involves simple actions like climbing on Trico’s back to reach a higher ledge to much more… dramatic combinations. Regardless, it’s really about you and Trico working as a team and less so about you navigating puzzles alone but an animal companion is there. If you take too long to solve some puzzles, Trico may even work his way to the solution and look back at you, confused why you haven’t made it there yourself. Working through the puzzles with Trico as another layer of gameplay is really the name of the game and it often feels like trying to tell a dog how to solve a jigsaw puzzle. You can see the big picture but your dog will be more like be trying to eat the pieces instead.
This is where The Last Guardian ended up feeling very frustrating. The puzzles and level design in general only really lend themselves to one true solution and the puzzle is connecting the dots to get there. Some “puzzles” are quite literally a switch across a bridge but the solution is something between just jumping across or yelling at Trico until he jumps across. Most puzzle games will get frustrating to a point but that frustration is often from an internal inability to understand the puzzle in the first place which is then replaced with a very satisfying feeling once you inevitably unravel the puzzle mechanics. Instead of doing that, The Last Guardian creates frustration by deliberately obfuscating the controls for Trico. You have a button that calls to Trico and he’ll eventually make his way to you but beyond that, the game is unclear about the controls. Different combinations will make Trico do different things but what those buttons are and what those combinations do is a mystery since Trico is his own beast. After a certain point, you can see the solution to a room, staring back at you from the only lit perch in the entire area, but instead of just being able to walk up and pull a switch, you have to figure out what button combination Trico wants or wait for Trico to even be there in the first place. Some people may find charm in what is essentially pointing a giant dog in a direction then eventually solving a puzzle but it translates to me as more of an exercise in frustration as I can see where to go in each individual puzzle but find each room more and more frustrating as the game adds on new mechanics.
The more immediate and pressing concern for me was a more technical one. On a non-Pro PS4, The Last Guardian runs like shit. There’s no other way to put it, really. More often than not, the game is sub 30 FPS which is not only noticeable chopy, it caused a very severe motion sickness like effect for me. I’ve actually never encountered that before from a frame rate problem so it was surprising to say the least. If this happens, I try to account for it by taking long breaks after every hour of play but those breaks needed to be closer to 30–45 minutes instead for The Last Guardian. I’m not one to usually complain about technical aspects of games, especially console games, but this is the first time it’s actually had such a negative impact on me.
Both of these things combined really accounted for me putting The Last Guardian down. As I understand it, I was about halfway through the game when I stopped but my frustration with the game combined with my motion sickness was too much for me. Like other Team Ico games, I’m sure there’s some very crazy, emotional thing that happens in the second half but I’ll just watch a playthrough, maybe. If you’re a fan of Team Ico games, you likely already own The Last Guardian but otherwise, I’d think about it a little more before pulling the trigger. If you own a PS4 Pro, it will perform better so take that under consideration as well.
The Last Guardian was played on a standard PS4 and purchased via PSN.
