It shows that even nine years in development can’t keep a good idea down.
The game isn’t perfect, and graphically it can’t escape its PlayStation 3 roots, but the pairing of a small boy and his huge companion in environments that dwarf them both is hugely compelling, providing an experience unlike anything else in games or film. The fact that Trico is adorable despite being so huge is a testament to the talent at work.
In The Last Guardian you once again play a little boy escaping from a giant fortress, this time accompanied by Trico, an animal the size of a double-decker bus that looks like a cross between an alsatian puppy, a kitten and a baby bird. Created by game-making visionary Fumito Ueda, it follows in the near-legendary footsteps of Ueda’s past works Ico, a wordless story of a boy and a girl escaping a giant, ethereal-looking castle, and Shadow Of The Colossus, in which you slaughtered a succession of office block-sized titans while gradually coming to the realisation that you were doing something unconscionably dreadful. Starting life as a PlayStation 3 game, The Last Guardian (PS4) began its long, painful march through development hell in 2007.
