Ico

Platform: Ps2

Release Date: 24 Sep 2001

Genre: Action, Adventure

Developer: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Disc ID: SCUS-97113

Languages: English, Multi Language

Size: 669 Mb

Plot :

Ico a horned boy, is taken by a group of warriors to an abandoned castle and locked inside a stone coffin to be sacrificed. A tremor topples the coffin and Ico escapes. As he searches the castle, he comes across Yorda a captive girl who speaks a different language. Ico helps Yorda escape and defends her from shadow-like creatures. The pair makes their way through the castle and arrive at the bridge leading to land. As they cross, the Queen, ruler of the castle, appears and tells Yorda that as her daughter she cannot leave the castle. The Queen destroys part of the bridge; although Yorda tries to save him, Ico falls off the bridge and loses consciousness.

Ico awakens below the castle and makes his way back to the upper levels, finding a magic sword that dispels the shadow creatures. After discovering that Yorda has been turned to stone by the Queen, he confronts the Queen in her throne room, who reveals that she plans to restart her life anew by taking possession of Yorda's body. Ico slays the Queen with the magic sword, but his horns are broken in the fight and at the end of it he is knocked unconscious. With Queen's death the castle begins to collapse around Ico, but the Queen's spell on Yorda is broken, and a shadowy Yorda carries Ico safely out of the castle to a boat, sending him to drift to the shore alone. Ico awakens to find the distant castle in ruins, and Yorda, in her human form, washed up nearby.

Gameplay:

Ico is primarily a three-dimensional platform game. The player controls Ico from a third-person perspective as he explores the castle and attempts to escape it with Yorda. The camera is fixed in each room or area but swivels to follow Ico or Yorda as they move; the player can also pan the view a small degree in other directions to observe more of the surroundings. The game includes many elements of platform games; for example, the player must have Ico jump, climb, push and pull objects, and perform other tasks such as solving puzzles in order to progress within the castle. These actions are complicated by the fact that only Ico can carry out these actions; Yorda can only jump short distances and cannot climb over tall barriers. The player must use Ico so that he helps Yorda cross obstacles, such as by lifting her to a higher ledge, or by arranging the environment to allow Yorda to cross a larger gap herself. The player can tell Yorda to follow Ico, or to wait at a spot. The player can also have Ico take Yorda's hand and pull her along at a faster pace across the environment. Players are unable to progress in the game until they move Yorda to certain doors that only she can open.

Escaping the castle is made difficult by shadow creatures sent by the Queen. These creatures attempt to drag Yorda into black vortexes if Ico leaves her for any length of time, or if she is in certain areas of the castle. Ico can dispel these shadows using a stick or sword and pull Yorda free if she is drawn into a vortex. While the shadow creatures cannot harm Ico, the game is over if Yorda becomes fully engulfed in a vortex; the player restarts from a save point. The player will also restart from a save point if Ico falls from a large height. Save points in the game are represented by stone benches that Ico and Yorda rest on as the player saves the game. In European and Japanese releases of the game, upon completion of the game, the player has the opportunity to restart the game in a local co-operative two-player mode, where the second player plays as Yorda, still under the same limitations as the computer-controlled version of the character.

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