Prof Plum, good to see you again. I love how you just seem to show up time and time again, it's the strangest thing.

Yes, pick up HL2 on the XBox. If your PC doesn't have the guts, then go for it. It is a game that needs to be experienced to get a glimpse of what we can expect from virtual actors in the game (all animated by hand, no mo-cap. and the facial animations are the best you'll see in ANY game) and the useage of physics engines in future games. It's such a fun game. The visuals on the box look good, but obviously are far from the superiority of the PC. Unfortunatly, I'm not sure if the Xbox verison has multiplayer.

I too have heard the Ico rumor. Can anyone tell me about that game? After shadow, I'm very interested in checking it out. Is it as detailed and beautiful as Shadow is?

i really LOVE the sound of this game - you sell it very well Lynx! why must it be PS2 exclusive??? *cries*

quote:

Originally posted by UglyPhil: why must it be PS2 exclusive??? *cries*

...um, because Sony makes it? :P

Oh, by the way Lynx, I meant to bring this up earlier, but they actually did do some mo-cap on Agro. It wasn't the final product, though, they either used it as just a starting point or as a reference for when they did the real animation. I can't remember. But it definitely wasn't like typical mo-cap, i.e. you record the movements, transplant that into a polygonal model, slap on some textures and call it "animation". I really hate that, it totally destroys the level of creativity.

Oh, and I haven't played Ico yet, but I do know that SotC and Ico are connected in very mysterious ways...

Btw Lynx, how many times have you beaten the game so far? (I'm almost done with my second play-through)

quote:

Originally posted by SausageMan23:

quote:

Originally posted by UglyPhil: why must it be PS2 exclusive??? *cries*

...um, because Sony makes it? :P

Oh, by the way Lynx, I meant to bring this up earlier, but they actually did do some mo-cap on Agro. It wasn't the final product, though, they either used it as just a starting point or as a reference for when they did the real animation. I can't remember. But it definitely wasn't like typical mo-cap, i.e. you record the movements, transplant that into a polygonal model, slap on some textures and call it "animation". I really hate that, it totally destroys the level of creativity.

Oh, and I haven't played Ico yet, but I do know that SotC and Ico are connected in very mysterious ways...

Btw Lynx, how many times have you beaten the game so far? (I'm almost done with my second play-through)

EDIT - One more thing, the Ico rumor is indeed true, at least for Europe. It'll come out at the same time as SotC over there.

Aw man, if only I had a ps2 in my room...no, I'm not going to buy a ps2 for ICO and SotC, I'm saving my money for the Revolution. But it's hard to resist, I want these games. Do you have any idea what a torture it is not to be able to play these games, being a serious gamer? It really hurts me.

quote:

Btw Lynx, how many times have you beaten the game so far? (I'm almost done with my second play-through)

Only once, I don't own it - yet. My suitemate at school does, so I bum it off of him

quote:

Originally posted by Denden666Piek:
Aw man, if only I had a ps2 in my room...no, I'm not going to buy a ps2 for ICO and SotC, I'm saving my money for the Revolution. But it's hard to resist, I want these games. Do you have any idea what a torture it is not to be able to play these games, being a serious gamer? It really hurts me.

Well, you could download an emulator, get a good controller, buy the games, and run them on your PC. It's perefectly legal, it's how I play my PS1 games now that it's broken, only without a gamepad, so I can't play some.

Arent Emulators illegal? Or is it just the ROMs? Its so confusing! Maybe its different in the US than it is in Europe.

quote:

Originally posted by Thunderpants1:
Arent Emulators illegal? Or is it just the ROMs? Its so confusing! Maybe its different in the US than it is in Europe.

Emulators are legal, as they don't actually break any laws themselves. The downloading and distribution of commercial ROMs on the other hand, is extremely illeagal. Downloading and sharing "homebrew" ROMs (that's ROMs made by regular people, ie not companies) is legal, though.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=172



oh and Emulators are great... i just wish they had mouse support. i think i mentioned this before, i tend to buy games for the consoles and then download them so that i have them for the Laptop as well, thus allowing me to play the games anywhere! that's cool. i should probably buy a £10 broken PS2 from eBay and then download all the games and just buy the games that i want... cos then it's all legal of course .

I have played ICO.

CURSED

Ico is cursed and is blamed for all the troubles that befall his village. The cursed kids are sacrificed in a castle nearby, when they get 12 years old. The last words ICO hears, are: "Don't hate us. It's for the good of the village". Then he is locked in a big sarcophagus.

SOMEONE LIKE ME

By chance I escaped from the sarophagus I was locked in. The game started. I noticed, that one of the buttons made Ico cry. His voice was echoing off the walls of the tomb and I figured out that he's calling to see if there's someone else like him, someone alive like him. I kept pressing the button, but noone answered my calls.

YORDA

Soon Ico and I found a girl, locked in a cage. She was kind of half-material, half-ghost. She has never got out of her cage. I freed her and then it appeared that both kids don't know each other's language and can't speak to each other (only Ico's language is translated through subtitles).

HAND-HOLDING

Ico is the most romantic game, because it's a game about hand-holding
The button, with which Ico was crying serves to call Yorda to follow you. However, with the same button you can
- hold her hand and drag her around
- help her to climb a high platform by pulling her up
- if the ground under her feet shatters, you can save her, if you hold her hand
- if she can't take a jump, you can catch her from the other side of the pit

Don't get me wrong: Yorda can follow you if you don't hold her hand (she can cross the whole level - ladders, platforms - without any problem if it doesn't require extreme acrobatics). It's just that hand-holding is more fun and somehow makes you feel unbelievable attachment to her.

She's desorientated, never been out of her cage, doesn't know what to do (although she looks at important objects, thus hinting you). She cannot do acrobatics, but she has mystical powers, with which she opens magically locked doors and makes bridges out of nothing.

THE SHADOWS

The shadows do not try to kill you. Instead they try to steal Yorda and get her back to her prison. They try to distract you or slow you down with their attacks, and then grab Yorda and drag her into a small black pool-portal in the ground. You can still get her out of the portal, while she's sinking, if you give her a hand (remember the whole game was about hand-holding?

You must not leave Yorda alone for a long period of time, or the shadows appear and steal her.

SCAR

You see, Yorda's Mother is keeping her in the Castle and tells ICO: "Don't waste your time with my duaghter and leave here
[do i have where to go?]
... She is not from your world, from the world of some boy with horns"
Can Yorda really survive in the outside world? What happened to the other kids, sacrificed before you? What are Yorda's mother intentions?

Shadow of the Colossus has a surprising and crushing ending, which explains how the curse in ICO appeared.
ICO also has a surprising, crushing ending that left a scar in me.

Both game's endings cannot be fully understood if you're not careful and don't know how the japanese think

GAME DESIGN
ICO is a game from 2001 and Jordan Mechner confessees that PRINCE OF PERSIA: SANDS OF TIME has taken a lot of its design. (BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL is also similar to it in the fact that there is often a second friend character around and there are environmental puzzles).

The game is not very easy, what's worse is that the hardest puzzle (it includes bombs and a chandellier) is in the beginning.
The whole game is inside the big castle, just like in POP:SOT. But the castle is quite intricate and coherent and you see areas, you get to them much later, then you visit previously pointless places that get new meaning etc.

PLAYSTATION
I am a PC gamer and I don't like consoles, but I LOVE action-adventure games like BG&E, Prince, Project Eden, Oddworld, Little Big Adventure.

So i was forced to buy a Playstation 2 only for this game (this game and Shadow of the Colossus are the only games I own for PS2, i keep playing on the PC).

It's weird that the gamepad in my hands was vibrating when Ico was falling, hitting a wall with his plank, when there was an earthquake and - ATTENTION - when you are holding Yorda's hand and you're running, you can feel her pulse through the controller! Now this is DETAIL!

BTW - about the legs leveled to the environment - I remember a few games in which this is well done, they are: ICO, TR 6, POP:SOT and Shadow of the Colossus. Of them ICO is the first, I guess.

Nice explanation, I always wondered about what the game is about exactly. It has always been a bit vague, I understand much better now.

I have been wanting to play Ico for over 2 years now. Couldn't, because I don't have a PS2. Wanted to play Shadow of the Colosus, but once again, don't have a PS2....

quote:

Originally posted by Estranged2:
PLAYSTATION
I am a PC gamer and I don't like consoles, but I LOVE action-adventure games like BG&E, Prince, Project Eden, Oddworld, Little Big Adventure.

Ah, great to see that someone mentioned LBA!

LBA, LBA... I never heard of the game until I got on these forums, which shocks me, and now I know it's a must play, and yet I've still never seen it in existance!

SparkyTheDragon:
I have waited more than 3 years to play ICO... I track any game that has such qualities and finally I succeed to play it ...even if this means buying those ****** consoles. Don't give up, you can wait more years, but I'm sure that finally you'll play it.

The problem is that the original LBA (1994) does not run on modern operating systems (Windows), unless you use emulation (the program "DosBox", but this still does not guarantee success, because mounting the original CD is a problem). I wouldn't recommend anyone to try the ripped versions, because they lack music, speech, and pre-rendered animations (even though these things do not make you lose story or gameplay). Paradoxally, the ripped versions are more easy to run and since LBA is nowhere to be found, piracy in this case has kept it for the future generations .

Lynx-0-:
Lynx-0-, I am convinced in the qualities of LBA, but I'm not sure that everyone will like it. LBA is the game, which is shockingly similar to BGE design, but it's also extremely hardcore (especially the first game). There are two places where most of the people give up: The second island where you have to convince the people of the city to trust you and the Temple, where there is one terrible trap, and one very deceiving puzzle (when I'm talking about a temple, do not imagine fantasy, the world is similar to the world of Jade).

LBA 2 (1997) will run more easily on modern systems and is more accessible, but its atmosphere cannot be compared to the pressure that LBA 1 creates (in LBA1 you start the game imprisoned and run as a fugitive through the city. Then you hide in your house, but your girlfriend is arrested instead of you and you have to make it to the port...). For comparison, LBA 2 starts just like BG&E: in your house, and you have to uncover a terrible plot (like in BG&E), but at first there's not a war in the background to create pressure like it is in BGE. SO if you have not played the first game or if you don't get further in this one, I'm not sure if you'll get attached to it from the beginning.

BTW, the similarities are amazing and they are not only in the gameplay: there's travelling to the secret Moonbase, kidnapped children, a close friend - animal-humanoid inventor like Pey'j, 4 rebels gathered around the table in the basement of a suveniour shop, a secret in the basement of your house (this is in LBA 1) etc. LBA1&2 are better than BG&E in the fact that travelling between islands and planets and cities (and some of the cities have jails ...they're just much more detailed and well done. All BG&E has is its pedestrian district that connects the missions, this has to be improved in BG&E2. But BG&E of course is a next generation game compared to LBA - BG&E has more polished and richer gameplay to it, in spite of the fact that all the core aspects of the gameplay are the same) Some fans of LBA say that BG&E is what LBA3 should have been (but it never appeared).

So to summarize, BG&E has things LBA hasn't (detail), but LBA also has things (diversity and scale) that BG&E doesn't have. LBA is more hardcore, though, and people can get stuck and leave it before they uncover a lot of the story. Also, LBA is 2,5D, the engine and controls are quite different. Both games have a dramatic background; both games don't take themselves too seriously, but LBA is definitely more humorous and childish and BG&E is definitely more serious (even though sometimes these things are not so certain).

But enough about LBA, back on topic:
ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are amazing games. ICO is more puzzle orientated and creates an amazing feeling of attachment to the NPC character. Keep it in mind, and after a few years get an old Playstation (I hope that someone will succeed in emulating it until then, though).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Estranged2,

I have played the demo of LBA2, it plays very smoothly. Now to find the full version...

It's sad though what makes the popularity of a game.

In Ico you play a kid, holding a wooden plank in one of his hands and a sad, tall wispy girl with his other hand.
Prince of Persia has a similar concept, but we have a warrior, the princess is definitely more sexy, the puzzles more intuitive.

Ico sold badly, the Prince sold well.

Now we have Shadow of the Colossus. Here the puzzles are disguised in the action, because the bosses themselves are something like an alive level you can climb. And this definitely attracts more attention. When you say "boss fights" - this is something that the general public recognises.

But in spite of this Shadow of the Colossus is original and it is a work of art and I'm not sure if it is going to be successful. I hope it will be. It will definitely be more successful than Ico, is what I mean.

Relentless (aka LBA) will run fine with "LBAWin." This is a modulator specifically made to run the game in Windows (by one of the actual game creators!). Check it out. There's also a mod made by the fans to run LBA2 on XP.

Check http://el-muerte.student.utwente.nl/lba/ for more info.

I am waiting for that emulator to play Ico. PS2 is still around 150$, which is way ridiculous, given it's so old. I might have to rent Ico from someplace, because not very many copies are left.

P.S. Yorda looks much prettier than Farah

quote:

n Ico you play a kid, holding a wooden plank in one of his hands and a sad, tall wispy girl with his other hand.
Prince of Persia has a similar concept, but we have a warrior, the princess is definitely more sexy, the puzzles more intuitive

One of the reasons why Ico is so appealing to me is because of it's unusual nature. You, playing as the kid, leading the princess around (I think I read somewhere that she is blind, is this true, or is it just her disorientation?) by the hand. It's such a unique and cool concept, being her guardian. Which reminds me... there isn't enough princess-saving in games these days. Remember back in the classic days when every game had you rescuing princesses? Oh, the simple life, how it was great.

Rescuing a princess or a damsel in distress is still the single greatest story the gaming industry has ever had. Although I still love the more complicated storylines in games like Final Fantasy VII and Beyond Good & Evil of course.