Category: Columns

For context, The Last Guardian‘s development team, Team ICO ¹, and its designer, Fumito Ueda, previously created games that are largely considered artistic masterpieces of gaming. For those of you who haven’t played ICO or Shadow of the Colossus, I’m just gonna leave this here. I played both of these when they came out, and I will wholeheartedly say that I cannot recommend them enough. What the studio was able to do with minimal dialogue, a creative art style, and relatively small casts is mind blowing.

When they first announced that they were making a new game for the PS3, I was ecstatic. Then the game was hampered by delay after delay, a console generation change, and the departure of most of Ueda’s team when he left (although he was contracted to finish directing the game.) Finally, the game was set to release in late 2016. We were given a date. Then it got delayed again…but as of December 6, 2016, The Last Guardian finally saw its release. I bought a copy, thinking that the reviews for it were decent, and as much as I loved the other two games, it was worth a shot.

The Last Guardian is a game nine years in the making, and boy, does it show. Spoilers behind the cut.

I should preface this by saying that I absolutely love RPGs. They’re my absolute favorite genre, and they probably always will be. That said, Atlus makes some really good RPGs, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions is no exception.

Minor spoilers for Tokyo Mirage Sessions below

When I first heard about Ready Player One, it seemed like a book that would be right up my alley. As someone who writes about video game history in the 1960s-1985, an avid gamer, and an aficionado and fan of 1980s pop culture, this book seemed tailor made for me.

Then I read it.

Spoilers below for Ready Player One