The Last Guardian, A Beautiful Disaster

I had been waiting for The Last Guardian to be released so I could play for what felt like ages. When I got my copy, I was ready to get started. The opening for the game is quite pretty and the introduction of the boy who was mysteriously kidnapped and left in a mysterious castle called the Nest and the beast he befriends called Trico is interesting. The boy notices spears in the side of Trico's body that he removes. He also removes the chained collar holding him there. This gives you a quick tutorial of the games controls before you start your adventure.

The boy and Trico meet.

 The boy and Trico must work together to escape the castle. Much like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus there are a variety of puzzles to solve ranging from climbing to jumping. This is where commanding Trico comes in. The boy can have Trico stand up on his hind legs so he can reach high ledges or ride on his back and have him jump across broken bridges. It's all about teamwork throughout the entire game.

 The environments in The Last Guardian are beautiful as well as the game itself. Everything appears like a lovely painting and the musical soundtrack complements the elements of the game as well. Trico is very cute and his budding friendship with the boy is quite endearing. That is why it is so disappointing that The Last Guardian is a beautiful disaster. I need a game to be more than pretty. If the controls are terrible to the point of making the game frustrating, that sucks the fun out of it. The big thing was the camera. Many times the camera angles would be terrible and there were times where it would suddenly spin uncontrollably depending on where I was standing or moving. For the first time, I actually got motion sickness from a third person view game. I had to take frequent breaks from playing because of it. 

Trico gets stuck and looks cute doing it.

 The controls themselves are terrible. It kills me to say that because I did like the story and the characters, but when the controls are this clunky for a game it detracts from it. Sometimes the controls are slow to react when commanding Trico. I didn't mind that it took a few tries to get Trico to listen; he is a wild animal after all. I did mind that the controls were so difficult to deal with that at times I would miss a jump, or mashing all the buttons was a solution. It lacked finesse and I found myself incredibly frustrated often. Clunky controls and a bad camera made The Last Guardian suffer as a result. 

A touching moment with the boy and Trico.

For all the struggling with the camera and the controls, there are a lot of great emotional moments in the storytelling. The friendship with the boy and Trico is a wonderful thing and I did enjoy the mutual bond that grew between them as they worked together. I stuck it out until the end and I'm glad I did because the story itself is a good one. I just don't feel that playing through it again is an option. One round of frustrating game play is enough. I wish I loved the game because I waited for it for so long and the artwork and music are beautiful, but the execution is lacking. There are some people who might like the game and there are some who may want to try it out.  Everyone is different, but this game was not for me. If you do try it out, wait for it to go on sale because it is not worth paying full price for.

I want to make one thing really clear, because a couple of people have mentioned it. I have played a ton of games in my life. I love gaming, it's something I enjoy a great deal. I love talking about games with fellow gamers and Mother Gamer is something I am proud of because it is something that is a labor of love for me, celebrating things I'm nerdy about and the biggest is gaming. I try to be conscious of sticking to talking about my gaming experience in every single Mother Gamer post I've ever written. I will never tell anyone that they should or should not buy a game no matter if I liked it or not. I may tell you that a game is worth having in your gaming collection if I love it or tell you to wait for it to go on sale if it wasn't as good as expected, but that is all I would do and it is all I do. Ultimately, it's up to you dear readers to decide if you want to check out a game or not. I've played a couple of games that I have really not liked and written about that others have played and loved. As I said when I first started Mother Gamer, these are just my opinions based solely on my personal gaming experience, no one else's. I made a promise to myself that I would never lie and say a game was good if I personally felt it wasn't because there's no point in writing a great review for a game I did not enjoy. I write this blog because I love gaming and I enjoy sharing that passion with other gamers. I know some may not agree with every single review and that's okay, because we're all different. That's what makes gaming so much fun. There are a variety of games for all types of gamers and it gives us a lot of options to explore and enjoy. That's a wonderful thing. Until the next blog post, happy gaming everyone!

Trico splashes in some water.

*The Last Guardian is available to play on the following platforms: Playstation4