I finished The Last Guardian yesterday and I have things to say about it. For context, I played the game on the PS4 Pro. In short, I thought it was fantastic. It's an incredibly unique game and I don't think I will ever play a game like it again. I found that there were a couple of keywords that could describe my experience with it. Let's take a look.....

Beautiful

In every sense of the word. This is one of the best looking games I have played. The art really shines through for the entire game. The animation for Trico and the kid look great. They are really convincing and help flesh out the world. After finishing the game, I can safely say that I don't think they could have pulled this off on the PS3. The scale of the game is surprising towards the end of the game. There are scenes where it is able to pull of scale on an insane level while still looking terrific. I didn't run into many frame rate issues which was great. In this respect it doesn't feel like a game that has been through development hell for 10 years.

Convincing

Trico is easily the most convincing animal I have ever seen in a video game. A lot has been said about the AI running Trico. Sometimes Trico doesn't listen to you. Sometimes he immediately do what you want him to do. It worked for me because he was like a pet. When you call him and he walks over to you it's sort of magical. The look in his eyes is something I keep thinking about. It's not just that though. Sometimes it's just watching Trico interact with the world. When he plays around in a pond getting wet and then gets out to dry himself out, it looks great. There is no UI either which makes the game feel very clean.

Frustrating

The Last Guardian is not a perfect game obviously. In fact, it is super rough in some areas. Let's start off with the controls. Well, triangle is the jump button. That's just mind-blowing to me. In context, it technically makes sense, but c'mon now. Just have the X button be jump. The kid controls like a little kid, which has its up and downs. The kid has not fully mastered his motor skills, so he stumbles a lot. In practice, it looks really amazing when you're running down a giant staircase while the kid is sort of tripping over himself. It looks amazing and it just adds to the scale of the game. Then there is the button prompts. The game at times treats the player like a an adult; meaning that it drops you into a room and now they have to figure what the puzzle is. How do I get out of here? Then for some reason it continuously has button prompts pop up throughout the game. When I talk about how convincing the game is, it immediately drops the immersion when a button prompt pops up.

Conflicted

While I really enjoyed my time with this game, I still walk away feeling conflicted. I really loved the journey I had with the kid and Trico, but I don't know if I can recommend this game to anyone. It's an incredibly weird thing. This game is for an incredibly small niche audience. If you do not have patience, DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME. You will be so frustrated with it. There really isn't any combat in this game either, which I don't mind, but it's Trico that does all of the work for you. It's such a unique game that I will probably never forget.

I don't think I will ever play a game like this again. Part of that is that I don't see how any publishers would green light a game of this scale. The audience for this game is too small to spend millions of dollars on something like this. It's a fascinating game that has a magical touch to it, but also stumbles along the way. I encourage people to try this game if they have the patience to play it. Take your time with it and savor it. The Last Guardian was worth the wait.