This post was coming inevitably, as video games are a great motivation and inspiration to me. Team ICO without a doubt pushes video games as an art form. They make games like no other publisher does.
Their first game, ICO (seen in the screenshot above), is an enigmatic tale about a young boy born with horns, exiled from his home land. He must escape the fortress in which he is held, and along the way meets an ethereal and strange girl (Yorda) whom he travels with. And all the while, they are pursued by a powerful sorceress who is for some reason desperate to retrieve the Yorda. The game is heavily puzzle-based, with some instances of combat in between. The puzzles themselves are brilliant, and the mood and art style of the game is unlike any other.
Shadow of the Colossus, Team ICO's second installment, is considered to be a distant prequel to ICO. I thought ICO had great mood, but SoTC is even better.
In SoTC, you are The Wanderer. You must seek out and kill 16 colossi in order to save your girl. The story is not as simple as it seems. Nothing is ever totally explained, but not in a bad way. It's very open to interpretation at the (incredible) ending. Again, Team ICO goes against the convention of a normal action-adventure game. The only enemies in the game are the 16 bosses, and the only living characters are you and your horse, Agro. The feeling of loneliness in this game is communicated amazingly, and the scale of the colossi is conveyed beautifully. The way everything moves is incredibly natural. The animation for Agro is probably the most stunning horse animation I've seen EVER. (And I'm including games on Xbox360/PS3 that have horses in them). The boss fights themselves are (for lack of a better word) epic. The soundtrack is perfect, and suits the game in terms of scale/epicness.
Team ICO's next project is not due to come out until 2012. The Last Guardian will be about a young boy and his relationship with what seems to be a part-dog, part-eagle, part-lion sort of creature. They will work together to overcome obstacles in the game.
I don't know a ton about this game yet. But I have seen the E3 trailer for it, and it looks beautiful. If this game is anything like the first two of Team ICO's productions, this will be a release day purchase for me.
