Ico

Ico is an action-adventure video game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. In 2011, a high-definition remaster of the game was released along with Shadow of the Colossus for the PlayStation 3 in The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Beautiful and breath-taking graphics and environments for its time.
 * 2) The game supports Dolby Pro-Logic II and Progressive scan.
 * 3) Swift and smooth gameplay that runs at steady 60fps.
 * 4) Good voice acting.
 * 5) Ico introduced several design and technical elements, including a story told with minimal dialogue, bloom lighting and key frame animation.
 * 6) You have to solve puzzles in order to progress within the castle and they're really good.
 * 7) Awesome soundtrack.
 * 8) Despite being a game that's mostly an escort mission, Yorda's AI is really good and protecting her isn't an issue since she always does what the player wants her to do.
 * 9) You really grow to care about the characters despite having hardly any dialogue, which is impressive.
 * 10) After beating the game, you can play New Game+, which translates Yorda's dialogue, allows you to get the shining sword (lightsaber) from where you would get the spiked bat, and you can get a different ending by carrying a watermelon to Yorda, which will then show Ico and Yorda eating it.
 * 11) Great and relaxing story.
 * 12) Most enemies don't really kill you but would kill Yorda instead, and you need to protect Yorda or both of you will die.
 * 13) Some of the gameplay (such as combat and puzzles) are inspired by The Legend of Zelda series.
 * 14) A remastered version for the PS3 was released, improves the graphics and framerates a lot, the difference is extremely noticeable and also fixes some problems in the game (see below).

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The NA PS2 version had one of the worst game covers, which led to poor sales in that region, which is very similar to what happened with the original Mega Man.
 * 2) The water wheel section is unnecessarily difficult due to the small window of time you have from jumping from the water wheel to the ledge.

Reception
Ico was critically acclaimed for its art and story elements and received several awards, including "Game of the Year" nominations and three Game Developers Choice Awards.

Ico received strong reviews, becoming a cult hit among gamers. The game has an aggregated review score of 90 out of 100 at Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu magazine scored the PlayStation 2 version of the game a 30 out of 40.

The game is considered by some to be one of the greatest games of all time and is listed on several overall game lists, and is considered a work of art.

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