10 Video Games That Only Get Better With Age

8. Ico

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-zXhIBO27k Ico released to hardly any fanfare back in the early days of the PlayStation 2. Gamers who spent some time playing the game upon its release were intrigued by this minimalist, mysterious puzzle/adventure game, myself included. But admittedly, it is a game that may have gone over many of our heads, despite the positive reviews the game received in the media upon its release. Looking back, this may have to do with the same affliction that affects a select number of video games every so often - Ico was ahead of it's time. The evolution of video games as art in recent years has allowed for a reevaluation of Ico, seemingly bringing a greater level of widespread respect to the game. The core of the game involves the relationship between two characters, the player-controlled boy named Ico, who has horns growing out of his head, and the girl, mysterious and ghostly Yorda. Ico must guide Yorda out of a huge, seemingly abandoned castle while occasionally having to protect her from sinister beings, whose sole purpose is to violently drag Yorda underground through dark portals. The game succeeds in transplanting the strong emotional bond between the two characters into the player, and as the game unfolds, the emotional attachment becomes stronger and stronger. By the end of the game, if the game affects you like it is meant to, you feel a strong sense of personal responsibility towards Yorda, and the game's emotional climax is extremely powerful, to say the least. We've recently seen a flood of excellent games that have taken this concept of instilling powerful, personal emotional experiences alongside the core game mechanics, and have found great success. Games such as Journey, The Unfinished Swan, and even Telltale's The Walking Dead all owe a debt of gratitude to Ico for it's innovations. Best of all, aside from being a powerful emotional experience, Ico is an excellent-playing game as well. The huge castle is a marvel of video game level design. The environmental puzzles that must be traversed recall the brilliance of the old point n click adventure games of the 90's, as well as the dungeons from from Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda franchise. It is a short but challenging game, and its minimalist design and simple controls have allowed the game to age gracefully. Copies for the PS2 are rare and can be pricey, but thankfully the game was recently re-released in a beautiful, new high definition remaster along with the subsequent game by the same developers, Shadow of the Colossus. Shadow of the Colossus, a similarly emotional roller coaster of a game, was much more popular and a greater commercial success than it's predecessor, but it is the opinion of this author that Ico remains the more timeless, playable game today.