Wanda and the motherfucking Colossus

[Popcorn]

A couple of days ago, Fumito Ueda and Crew revealed their follow-up to the wildly brilliant so-good-you'd-be-banned-if-you-said-it-wasn't Ico which everyone here has played and adored for obvious reasons. Posted here for everyone's appreciation (on account of non-appreciation being punishable by being banned), here are some Famitsu scans featuring Ico's successor, Wanda and the Colossus:

http://www.namakoteam.com/wanda/

This is apparently not a direct sequel, but is potentially set in the same universe-- especially if earlier leaked images are anything to go by. You play a guy with a horse (which apparently functions in terms of mechanics a little like Yorda in Ico, with its own AI etc), who traverses reportedly vast playing fields in order to confront enormous lumbering giants. This is all in order to somehow help some dead/soulless/incapaciated/comatose girl-- the Wanda of the title, supposedly. I want it bad and so do you.

[chriscaffee]

I've never played Ico. In fact, I don't really know anything about it.

[Green Gibbon!]

I saw that on Magic Box a few days ago. As I clicked through to the news page, I caught just a glimpse of the title "Wanda and the Colossus" before the news page loaded. And I immediately thought, "Ooh, that sounds cool." Then once on the news page, I saw the screenshots of it and thought: "Wow, that sure does look cool!" Then I read the text and discovered it was from the Ico team, and I thought: "Ah, that explains it."

It will be.... my preeecious...

[Segaholic2]

Hello and welcome to last week.

[Popcorn]

I've been here since last year, actua-fucking-ly; but I felt I had a duty to do here.

[Locit]

Do you suppose that they'll keep the title when it comes out over here?/England?/Canada?/Brazil?

[Popcorn]

As far as I understand it, the title 'Wanda and the Colossus' might just be something of a dodgy translation, but, uh, it might be a translation they keep. It's certainly a more accessible name than 'Ico', but you gotta wonder if the Japanese are particularly aware of the geeky/old-fashioned connotations the name 'Wanda' has in the Western world.

[Dache]

I've never played Ico. In fact, I don't really know anything about it.

Banned.

[Green Gibbon!]

I hadn't even thought of the connotations the title had. It originally just struck me as a neat, storybook title.

Man, slang ruins everything.

[CE]

I guess I'm banned then. I hated Ico.

[plasticwingsband]

Oh yes.

[Segaholic2]

CE is so banned.

[Squirrelknight]

How could you hate Ico? Hating Ico is like hating nipples-- No matter your race, gender, religion or lifestyle, everyone likes nipples (and should like Ico)... Nipples (and Ico) are always interesting, damn fun to look at, and insanely fun to play with.

Seriously though, Wanda and the Colossus looks awesome so far... It, along with the new Zelda are pretty much the only games I'm looking forward to after Halo 2 and Metroid Prime 2 this November.

[Zeta]

I'm dissapointed. When I heard the title, I imagined a game in which a little girl guides a giant stone man through fights and puzzles.

Instead, it seems to be, well - a generic sort of fantasy concept. Pretty much like Zelda, except the horse seems to function better. At least Ico had a somewhat original premise (a fucking boy with horns guiding an annoyingly helpless girl through a castle of undead spectres).

[Lakwren]

... What the hell is Ico?

I'm banned, aren't I.

[Zeta]

... What the hell is Ico?

Dude, I just wrote what it was right above:

(a fucking boy with horns guiding an annoyingly helpless girl through a castle of undead spectres).

A cinematic game with an incredibly immersive enviroment about a boy with horns who guides an annoying helpless girl through a castle of evil spirits trying to catch and sacrifice her.

[Dache]

CE doesn't deserve thumbs. Or eyes. Hating Ico is like hating yourself.

[Baba O'Reily]

I'm dissapointed. When I heard the title, I imagined a game in which a little girl guides a giant stone man through fights and puzzles.

That actually sounds fun.
But would you be able to eat watermelons with said stone man at the end of the game?

[Popcorn]

I'm dissapointed. When I heard the title, I imagined a game in which a little girl guides a giant stone man through fights and puzzles.

Well, almost... you play a guy trying to help a girl by fighting giant stone men. And solving puzzles.

[CE]

Why didn't I like Ico? I found everything except the atmosphere of the game to be incrediblely lacking.

The puzzles in the game ranged from the stupid to the incrediblely stupid. They never were intellectually challenging, only obscure. I have much the same complaint about the puzzles in other games, and wish that game makers would make more interesting puzzles (or leave the puzzles out all together).

Good puzzle games, like DROD have intelectually stimulating puzzles that require you to think about different possibilities. Also, there should be more than one correct path to the solution so different people can solve the puzzle in their own unique way. This means less "open the door" and more "get to the room on the other side of the door". The second statement allows multiple solutions -- you could climb through a window, or you could break down the house, or you could slide down a chimney.

The fighting system in Ico was also incrediblely lame. By rappidly pressing the one attack button, you could beat back every single ghost (at least that I saw). Again, no personal solutions and no evolving gameplay. I much prefer Viewtiful Joe's fighting system, where the different choices of how to fight lead to a sense of personalization -- you aren't playing the game the way the designer forces you to, you're playing the game the way you choose to. Viewtiful Joe's fighting system is nearly perfect in that regard.

Overall, Ico was a huge disapointment for me. The game looks great, but plays awfully. Of course, that's exactly what the current game players want -- just look at the popularity of such games as Doom 3.

[Green Gibbon!]

Organic freedom is good, and the game might even have been superior with it, but at the same time, it isn't necessarily the end-all solution. Playing Ico is like solving a series of riddles. There's only one answer to each puzzle, but knowing that, the challenge becomes: "Hm, what do I do with what I've been given?" as opposed to, "Hm, let's see how I can wriggle around this." They're two distinctly different experiences, but neither can be definitively called superior to the other.

Comparing Ico to Viewtiful Joe is like comparing a juicy char grilled steak with a deluxe cherry-banana split. (Incidentally, I always manage to get bored with Joe by around level 5. It doesn't seem like I'm ever going to finish the game.)

The only puzzle in Ico that I remember really bothering me is this one part where I had to cross some invisible bridge or something. Which was stupid, how was I supposed to know that bridge was there? By and large, though, everything is so well-integrated it almost never feels like you're playing an old-fashioned puzzle game, even though that's ultimately what it boils down to.

[Popcorn]

The only puzzle in Ico that I remember really bothering me is this one part where I had to cross some invisible bridge or something.

What?

The only puzzle in Ico that ever bothered me was that one where you have to use a bomb to blow up a sort of watchtower-like structure. The tower then collapses and forms a bridge to the next section. It took me ages to work that out, because it makes absolutely no sense that you'd be able to blow it up... it's not like the game has deformable landscape or anything, and the other areas where you use bombs are always sprinkled with a liberal seasoning of logical hints... like "oh, that pillar's the only think propping up that bridge, and I need the bridge to fall down, so I guess I'll blow it up" as opposed to "well there seems to be no obvious way to continue here, so I guess I'll just try every possible thing until something happens".

[Dache]

The one that bothered me was the fucking spring puzzle you Americans were spared.

[Green Gibbon!]

But I imported the Japanese one so I could play that puzzle!

[Dache]

MELONS.