The Last Guardian

If you can forgive the technical issues of the game and if you enjoyed Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, it’s still an interesting experience that is a thoroughly enjoyable and emotional narrative on this console.

The Last Guardian might feel timeless, it did arrive way too late to the party. Even though the game looks great, there are not many reasons to buy this game for the full amount. It just feels outdated.

The Last Guardian is a loveletter to those who loved ICO/Shadow of the Colossus, but also, more generally, to anyone who loves this amazing interactive medium. Unfortunately, the development hell is real, and The Last Guardian does not impress as much as the first games.

Its mysterious world, artful narrative and moving character work is the reason we play games. It’s depressing that its singular vision is hampered by the most basic video game building block — the ability to control your experience — but beneath its finicky handling and aggravating programming lies the same magical hoodoo you find in great Pixar films. It’s fitting, really, that a game this difficult to birth would be equally difficult to enjoy. But if you take the time to love it, it will love you right back.

The unresponsive controls, sub-par optimization and frustrating, extraneous gameplay elements shackle The Last Guardian to the past, while the emotional story and awe-inspiring imagery beg to be unleashed. It succeeds on the strength of its imagination alone, with no help from any other aspect.

Yes, The Last Guardian’s controls are incredibly archaic and at times can be entirely broken, but two days after finishing it, the story has stuck with me. Studio Japan has continued to show how it can do so much while saying so little. The environment, characters and everything about the narrative captivated me. In spite of the controls I still thoroughly enjoyed the game overall. The story is a simple one, but powerful nonetheless.

In The Last Guardian players form an incredible bond with Trico, tested in an adventure worthy of Fumito Ueda's vision. The challenge of not just the puzzle-platforming obstacles, but of understanding this otherworldly creature, creates a connection more genuine than any players are likely to have experienced in other games. Everything that would make the game a beautiful and unique classic to match or even surpass its predecessors is here, but like its captivating star the game doesn't always perform as you'd hope. We hope the developers are able to remedy the bitterly disappointing frame-rate problems, but until such a time they cannot be ignored.

Even if The Last Guardian can sometimes get straight to our hearts, we cannot turn a blind eye to the frustrating gameplay. Its narrative fails to truly immerse the player, as the game mechanics lack to convey emphasis and empathy.

Story wise and visually the game has a lot going for it, but mechanically there are some genuinely troubling areas. Everything works, but it is nowhere near as polished as it should be, and occasionally that lack of polish hurts the overall experience. The Last Guardian is going to be a memorable release; there’s no doubt about that. But its legacy won’t be quite what fans had hoped.

The divide between the highs and lows of The Last Guardian is staggering. For every wonderful moment of absolute beauty and emotional attachment to its lifelike companion, there’s an equal and opposite baffling moment that ruins the mood with frustrating controls and camera angles. But I found myself willing to put up with all of these hiccups if it meant experiencing any of its multitude of incredibly-beautiful moments.

The Last Guardian offers some nice puzzles. However the gameplay mechanics are too outdated. Therefore, the game is not as good as it could have been.

A hugely mixed bag. On one hand, it's fantastic that there's a developer so staunchly dedicated to making games that veer towards the artistic while still retaining mechanics we know and enjoy. On the other hand, this is a game full of design decisions that feel stuck in the past, made obsolete years ago. [Jan 2016, p.60]

The Last Guardian is an interesting and frustrating game that can’t decide if it wants to be modern or retro, and that constant argument brings the entire experience down a notch. While I was willing to deal with the limits of the previous era to enjoy the perks of the current one, I can understand where others might grow weary of the experience.

It was a good idea all along, but even after all these years of waiting and waiting a bit more, this third chapter in the series comes across as the weakest part.

I wish I could say I love the game, that its plagued by only minor setbacks, but I cannot honestly do that. I can’t look back at how much time was spent not enjoying myself, at how much time was spent actively wrestling with the game to wring anything worthwhile from it, and say I played the masterpiece many are going to say it is. Maybe, a long time ago, that’s something I’d have been able to say. Not today though. Not today.

The world is stunning, the bond between the boy and Trico is a beautiful example of love and friendship, and the story is gripping, it’s just a shame there are so many technical issues holding it back.

Somewhere underneath the broken gameplay and terrible camera controls lies a lot of potential for a great game.

More frustrating than it is fun, The Last Guardian wastes its original story and charming creature under clunky controls, questionable design, and poor technical performance.

There’s a lot to love, really – it’s just marred by clumsy controls, one of the worst cameras in recent memory and some odd design choices. Provided you can form a strong enough bond with Trico that the curtain never drops to reveal the rusty old cogs that make the game tick, The Last Guardian is a beautiful and unique experience. But the second anything causes that curtain to budge, it becomes clear that it just isn’t very good at the fundamentals of videogame mechanics, and the beast is slain.

There is artistry behind The Last Guardian's concept, but in stumbles in execution, creating a journey that is far less fascinating than the relationship that lies at its story's core.

While some parts of its narrative had me emotionally invested in the relationship between boy and beast, constantly fighting against the game’s broken mechanics left me unimpressed. My frustrations with Trico often ignoring my commands made interacting with the world more difficult and time-consuming than I wanted it to be. There are moments in The Last Guardian with potential, but ultimately, it’s more flawed than the authentic experience I was hoping for.

Figuring out The Last Guardian's puzzles—like the one in which a broken wheelbarrow must be used as a makeshift catapult—isn't nearly as difficult as getting Trico to cooperate. Timed sections are the worst; miss the narrow window in which Trico chooses to cannonball into a lake, temporarily raising its water level, and it's anybody's guess how long it may be before he willingly does so again. The game also poorly defines its objectives, so much so that sometimes the best thing for you to do is simply climb aboard Trico and see if he'll leap to some new perch, carrying you forward.

The Last Guardian’s story is moving and beautifully told, but the poor execution of its dated mechanics hold it back from the greatness of its predecessors.

The Last Guardian is a beautiful experience that I have no desire to actually control again. If it released a decade ago I might have felt differently...I hate that such a beautiful game is so unbelievably infuriating to actually play.

A potentially beautiful game, crippled by an awful camera, archaic controls, and bizarre, frustrating gameplay.