Ico
- July 23, 2001 16:38 PM PST
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You?re a boy. You were born with horns. Your neighbors think you?re the devil. They lock you in a surreal castle, and now you?re saving a babbling foreign girl from shadow demons. Don?t you hate it when that happens?
Isn?t it enough that Ico?s been locked in a cavernous castle by his fellow villagers for being a demon-spawn? Apparently not. Nope, the fates have decided that?aside from finding a way to get himself out of his ethereal fortress prison?Ico?s gotta take a strange caged girl by the hand and lead her out of the castle, too. What?s worse is that bizarre shadow-demons seem to like emerging from the walls to suck her into some infernal nether-region of unspeakable shade and sadness. Geez, can?t a horned devil-goat-boy ever catch a break?The three key phrases you?d encounter in any description of Ico are ?unique,? ?surreal? and ?puzzle-laden,? and Ico does indeed seem to take a note from such unique, surreal, and puzzle-laden classics as Flashback and Out of This World. As horn-boy Ico, it?s your job to figure out how to get the enigmatic princess past the castle?s 30 levels of myriad traps and clawing shadow-beings, unravel the mystery of the castle?s resident evil, and piece together the unique, surreal, and puzzle-laden farce that is your life. The backgrounds in these screen shots may look pre-rendered, but they?re all generated in real-time by the game?s engine, and the cameras sweep around for an impressive, eerie show. Sounds utterly strange, doesn?t it? Even stranger still?Ico is scheduled to ship at the end of September.
