Ico

Wanda and the Colossus appears to be the sequel to Ico. At least in spirit if not in fact - as there is very little revealed about the nature of the game. All we really know is that it's from the same development team.

Ico is one of my favorite games on the PS2. When I got around to selling off a bunch of my older games in order to get some games for the Gamecube, Ico was one of the few I held on to. It was such a beautiful, well realized world that I knew I'd want to spend time there again and again. In a lot of ways it's much like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I think one of the best ways to make an enjoyable game is to know the world you're setting the game in. Even if you don't show off all of the aspects of that world, players can tell that the details are there. Ico didn't give away much about the world you were in, but you could tell it was there from the glimpses of back story you got at the beginning to the castle itself that the game took place in.

It was amazing to look back at certain points in the game and see places you had been or look forward to places you knew you were going to see. The gameplay itself was clever and encouraged thinking and moments of quiet contemplation rather than brute force. True, there were moments of combat and they could be harrowing as you were trying to protect this relatively frail girl that you couldn't understand. But the best moments in the game came as you worked with her to overcome some puzzle that allowed you to move through the castle to freedom.

That's one of the things that really made Ico shine - the little touches. You could tell the team behind the game had a specific story they wanted to tell and they knew exactly how they wanted it to look. In gaming circles there is a lot of talk about when games will be considered art and this game is almost always mentioned as one of the candidates to prove that such an idea is more reality than wishful thinking.

So, if you haven't played it, do yourself a favor and track a copy down. And then look forward to Wanda and the Colossus I suspect the same magic will be there.