The Last Guardian Review

Sturm und Drang, storm and impetus

PlayStation 4 exclusive.

The Last Guardian, the latest effort by Fumito Ueda, father of unforgettable masterpieces for PlayStation 2 such as ICO e Shadow of the Colossus, it is an ambivalent game, incredibly difficult to review and above all to frame with a simple final number that establishes its value. Like so many authorial works, he constantly travels on the woolen thread of absolute masterpiece and complete disaster and, at the end of the games, like a work of art, the judgment can only be very personal, essentially determined by the sensations and emotions that it will have been. able to generate in you gamers.
However, The Last Guardian is also a work of ingenuity, a product of the technique whose main purpose is to entertain the gamer and, as such, can be judged with absolute objectivity.

Originally announced in 2007 as a PlayStation 3 title destined to succeed the two chapters of the Ueda saga already mentioned, its development has been very troubled with continuous delays, technical and financial problems, until the apparent disappearance from the radar. Meanwhile, the new generation peeped out and, in a historic PlayStation Experience, the title returned to show itself, this time as an exclusive for the new Sony console, now finally able to support a game that from the beginning seemed incredibly ambitious: to create a emotional connection between the player and Trico, a huge hybrid between a cat and a bird, in a huge and boundless setting. An essential value of the production has been from the beginning the characterization of Trico, a fantastic animal to define it using a "potterian" term.

The game puts us in the shoes of a child who wakes up in an unknown place, with his body entirely covered with strange signs. Not far from him a strange creature, Trico, is chained and seriously injured. By recovering small barrels full of a strange blue substance of which the strange animal seems to be greedy, we will overcome its distrust and, little by little, the relationship between the two unfortunates will grow becoming almost symbiotic. Trico and the young boy, whose narrative voice as an adult will accompany us in the various stages of the game, need each other in order to finally find freedom.

Like a work of art

From the artistic point of view, fans of Japanese animation, the one of the Ghibli studios or of Ueda's previous works, will have something to rejoice. Settings, characters, color palette, all recall a certain imaginary common to these products that have defined the concept of Japanese animation over the course of more than thirty years.. The huge settings, made of endless valleys colored by the bright green of the grass caressed by the wind and the luxuriant vegetation, which contrast with the gray of huge ruined buildings, as mysterious as they are inaccessible, give back a certain sensation of dreamy freedom that closely resembles that proven in Shadow of the Colossus. The most original and interesting aspect, from this point of view, is the curious mix of cel shading and photorealistic rendering, to which is added a heavy blur effect that makes the entire environments almost dreamlike, as if the entire journey of Trico and our alter ego were nothing more than a dream. Those who have played Ueda's previous works know well how much the game designer cares about characterizing the settings, however with The Last Guardian the multifaceted Japanese developer has reached the highest peak of his works, giving us back an incredibly suggestive and evocative setting of a now lost civilization.

However, the excellent artistic sector is counterbalanced by a hostile, frustrating gameplay, which more than once has put our nerves to the test. The whole game is based on environmental puzzles that in the company of our Trico we will have to try to overcome. The control system, however, does nothing to facilitate our search for an escape route and rather simple activities become very complicated thanks to slow, woody controls, completely out of context for a 2016 game. Most of the challenges proposed by The Last Guardian consists in crossing with Trico areas apparently too small for its mass: the task is made complicated not by the objective difficulty of finding a way out, or a way to access this or that area but by a certain bad responsiveness at the controls, for example when picking up a keg or throwing it, when trying to push a block in a certain direction, when trying to recall our Trico towards a certain place. The animations of the character (some of these already renamed "flash dance") also make it difficult to judge the potential of a jump, which for a platform game is a shame I dare say "deadly". The bad handling of the camera, which in the tightest places always ends up in the feathered fur of our Trico, further increases the feeling of frustration that the gaming experience with The Last Guardian has given us just in time for the holidays.

When Trico refuses to follow us, which happens very often in the first hours of the game, we will be able to spur him by offering him the barrels full of the blue substance we told you about. This is the other objective of the game: the collection of small barrels that most of the time requires the solving of small environmental puzzles. Trico's artificial intelligence, even in this case, does not help: many times we will find ourselves trying to interpret the animal's behavior thinking that it is not causal, but aimed at directing us towards a certain path, and indeed in some cases it is so; in others, however, its behavior literally does not tell us anything, so much so that without any reason, after trying in every way to make it pass a gate or a hill, without success, the creature will spontaneously make the jump that we had so insistently tried to make him do it. Not having understood the reason, therefore, it will be practically impossible for us in similar situations to try to replicate our actions. In other situations Trico will remain stupidly staring at a keg, with the intention of eating it, without succeeding, except after a small imperceptible shift to recognize it and grab it.

Not all the gameplay sector, however, is to be thrown away; some clever and fun game mechanics, such as the ability to target obstacles and enemies with a reflective shield, which will then be incinerated by the lightning bolt generated by Trico's tail, work and are well thought out, however they are far too few when compared to the rest of the gameplay. The level design apparently incomprehensible at the beginning, but coherent and grandiose when you get to the end credits is well structured and although in many cases it will seem to you to return, as in a loop, to the starting point, we advise you to have faith: at least in this field Ueda does not fight.

From a technical point of view the huge settings, the incredibly detailed hair of Trico, remind us of the main reason why the game has suffered so many delays, up to skipping an entire generation of consoles. Even the PlayStation 4 (we have not had the opportunity to try with the Pro) in some situations seems to be struggling with some evident drop in frame rates. For example, an effective anti-aliasing filter is missing and some textures are not exactly well-finished. The glance, however, remains wonderful, supported as it is by a good technique which, while not making one cry out to a miracle, manages to cope with an obviously demanding and ambitious production.

The soundtrack is splendid, able to accompany the images on the screen with equal grace.