It turns out we'll have to wait a little bit longer to play The Last Guardian, Sony's beautiful sequel to its classic puzzle adventure games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. The PlayStation 4 game was just bumped back to December 6.
In Tokyo this week, prior to the opening of the Tokyo Game Show, I got the chance to play just a little bit more of the long-in-the-works adventure, which stars a young boy and his mysterious giant dog-bird-cat buddy Trico. At E3 this year I got to play the game's opening scenes; this demo takes place a bit later and taught me more about how Last Guardian's puzzles will work. Be prepared to stop and observe, but also to be patient.
The game's standard conceit is that you, as the boy, need to figure out how to navigate through its pathways alongside Trico. At times, you'll need to use him to move on, like by climbing up his tail or onto his back and using him to get to higher places. Other times, you'll easily move forward---slipping through a grate, for example---and you'll need to figure out how to get Trico through as well.
In the first room of the demo, we had to figure out that Trico would occasionally jump into a position in the room that would allow us to climb higher and exit the chamber. But since he was wandering around the area, it wasn't obvious exactly where that position was, or where you should be to take advantage of it. I tried to solve the puzzle by just running around by myself, but it was only when I stood back and watched Trico's movements that it became clear.
You'll need Trico to do things for you to proceed, but he won't do them exactly when you need him to. This works as a way to build up the relationship between you and Trico, because it feels like neither of you know what to do to solve the puzzle. On the other hand, when you think you have the right solution but Trico is just taking his sweet time doing his part of the equation, I could see where that might become frustrating.
