December 2016’s Game of the Month: The Last Guardian
Read the Review!
Editor-in-Chief Sharon Coone: The Last Guardian is filled with a beautiful kind of discomfort. You awaken in a dungeon along with a massive, chimeric beast, and for the next ten hours, love and fear for it as though it were your last friend on earth. This bird-dog-cat, Trico, moves with unsettling life. It teeters on the edge of uncertain leaps, and winces with hesitation near bodies of water. Trico’s hundreds of feathers billow independently, while its eyes follow you around corners, desperate not to lose their only hope of freedom.
The creature’s visible dread and ambitions pierce through The Last Guardian’s troublesome gameplay. Wide spaces stretch indiscriminatorily in every direction, with no splash of light or color to guide your way. More notably, Trico is infamous for its stubbornness. So often will your commands fall on unmoving ears that you’ll question furiously which is broken, the game or your attempted puzzle solution. The answer tends to be neither — Trico is just too real to follow call-and-response as perfectly as your average AI.
Trico questions your directions, staring confusedly at the item you want it to grab, rolling with self-doubt in the face of large jumps. Sometimes you will want to climb one wall, but a stray torch has brought Trico’s interest to another. Only when you’ve patiently goaded your companion in just the right way will it actually do as you hope.
It’s a frustrating mechanic, no doubt, but one that pulls from you all the patience, confusion, and understanding of a genuine bond. A hundred moments of quiet sincerity string together these exasperations, and every so often, push both characters to new mechanical feats. Alongside The Last Guardian’s mysterious plot, gorgeous visuals, and stirring musical score, the draw of such a challengingly real companion makes for an unforgettably emotional journey, and December’s best gaming experience.
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That does it for our December 2016 Game of the Month. Congratulations to The Last Guardian! What was your favorite game this month? Discuss in the comment section below.
