From the pure white of a sun bleached title screen, glimpses of a daydream form. Bits and pieces swirl and wash-up on the shore. The reflection of a broken bridge towering across the horizon, a young boy chased by shadows. The voice of a young girl with a single word etched on her lips.

The increased resolution in the rerelease of Ico allows us to see many things that were unnoticeable or difficult to distinguish in its original release. This is mostly evident in the incredible animation of the two primary characters. It has often been asserted that Director Fumito Ueda's animation and visual arts background are responsible for the unique look and feel of his games. They are minimal, stripped of superfluity. They are prime, and all too rare, examples of design by subtraction. The sparseness of the ludo-narrative and the geometric simplicity of the environment allows the focus to be applied to character. When Ico and Yorda rest at a save point (an elegant solution, the save point is a stone sofa; when we take a break, so do they. Or vice versa) we see Ico's breathing is laboured, unlike Yorda's, whose subtle animation expresses her intrinsic calm. After a short period Ico starts to nap, his head falling towards Yorda as she mirrors him. Later, Yorda wakes and goes off exploring, independently of Ico. It is a delightful use of idle animation and one that's probably rarely seen. Another surprise is, as he is being attacked, Ico faces the Shadows. As they fly overhead, his head turns with them. Given that I believed this was a unique feature in the Wind Waker I am amazed at its appearance in one of the earliest PlayStation 2 games. I'm intrigued and unsure as to whether they were in the original game at all. I certainly can't remember them, but that in itself is inconclusive. It is to the eternal credit of the game that, even ten years on and after many playthroughs, one can still find subtleties that reveal just how thoughtful this simple game really is.

During the past six months I've been living in self-imposed isolation from games, playing only Ikaruga and Ketsui with any sort of constancy. At a time in life where I have begun to take stock and work-out what is important to me, where I go from here, I realise gaming has been a massive personal investment over the past ten years, both in time and money, and I've come to realise I've been getting increasingly diminished returns. Gaming is perhaps bigger today than ever, more money, more exposure. There are more avenues for people to experience gaming than there have ever been. Yet, I find myself increasingly disinterested at the state of it all. I have a stack of games from this generation I am wary to even start for fear of being struck with overwhelmingly apathy. They are notably few and far between, the games I have enjoyed in the past few years, ones I have written about here and elsewhere: Nier, Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption, and Vanquish.

I find myself looking forward to re-mastered editions of games I have played before: Ico, Metal Gear Solid 3, the Ocarina of Time. Nothing excites me about the state of modern gaming. I have boxed up the current consoles and simply left a PlayStation 2 in their stead.

Ah, the PlayStation 2.

The PlayStation 2 is where gaming mattered most to me, and that it was abandoned in suspended animation at the height of its maturation by the onslaught of new technology is a real shame. In its twilight years it played host to some of the finest games ever made. Games with a sense of purpose and pride. And its these games I keep coming back to, in my mind, which said mostly everything about gaming that I wanted to hear. The three most notable being Shadow of the Colossus, Dragon Quest VIII, and Final Fantasy XII.

These three games are individual pieces of work I would hold up, alongside Radiohead's Kid A, Stars of the Lid's Refinement of the Decline, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, as works that helped define my character, that made me who I am. That you could play those three games and understand things about me that I have never articulated. Those three games managed to scale a peak which has, for me, not been reached again (Red Dead Redemption has come closest but, being based on our world, it loses most of the magic of these earlier games).

They presented me with open worlds - entirely imaginary worlds - and allowed me to wander in them, explore them, make them my own. They come closest to exemplifying my interpretation of the Shigeru Miyamoto quote at the top of this page, that games should be playgrounds, they should be worlds for you to fully exist in while you are playing them, and thinking of them.

Games today are simply so expensive to make that decisions of implicit artistic conscience have to be ignored in order for the money to be spent on the graphics so they are of a standard that won't simply be torn apart once the game is revealed to the gaming public. Everything else seems to fall by the wayside. Note a recent comment seen on a review of White Knight Chronicles II: "the graphics look like they are from 2007". And there it is: a snarky one-line comment dismissing thousands of hours' work. Whatever else the game has to offer is not important, the graphics look old. And this is repeated, over and over again, on countless reviews, YouTube videos, blogs. Thus more money is spent on how the game looks, and expensive graphics mean there is little money left to be spent on making the world breathe.

Famously, during the development of Final Fantasy XIII, it was stated that the game wouldn't feature any towns because for a next-gen game they would simply cost too much to create and build. Left on its own this statement tells you everything negative about the spiraling cost of games development at the end of the first decade of the Twenty-First Century. Features are left out games, not for creative or functional reasons, but for economic ones. And this from one of the world's most successful gaming houses. In their flagship title, no less. No towns. Too expensive. Things are getting out of control.

Yuji Horii, the creator and director of the Dragon Quest series, once declared that all he needed to make the games he wanted to make was the power of a Super Nintendo. This simple idea of allowing the story and wisdom in the design to be the hook you hang everything else on is exemplified in the Dragon Quest remakes for the Nintendo DS. All have more detailed graphics than the Super Nintendo originals, to be sure, but each, released only in the past two years, look incredibly simple visually. They are still fine, fine games. And, while I believe what Horii stated was absolutely true in terms of what he was trying to achieve at the time, the PlayStation 2 installment, Dragon Quest VIII: the Journey of the Cursed King is the absolute zenith of the series in terms of scale and verisimilitude. I also believe that a current generation Dragon Quest, using the increased power of the PlayStation 3 would surpass even VIII in terms of open world exploration and feeling, it would be anomalous in today's gaming landscape. It simply wouldn't be made (and isn't being, the next installment is being prepared for the Wii, or perhaps the Wii's successor). Besides, Dragon Quest is anachronistic anyway, strip away the graphics of VIII and you are left with a game which could run on the Super Nintendo, which is probably Horii's point all along.

I have recently restarted playing Final Fantasy XII, and the simple feeling of just how well put-together it all is allows me to simply relax into it. Nothing, to my mind, has been made like it since. It's a real shame. No doubt, this was an incredibly expensive game to develop in the year 2006, and that the games I hold aloft are from large, terrificly successful companies (Square Enix and Sony Computer Entertainment). What I yearn for, though, is a present where the idea of making a Final Fantasy XII is available to most developers due to the falling costs of that technology (creative talent aside). Imagine that a modest-sized development house could make a game in 2011 using the technological specifications of the PlayStation, and for that to be a viable financial decision. It's unthinkable. Instead, the tide of progress marches on and the costs never fall because we are continually looking for the next thing, and the smaller developers, those making modest, niche games, have to close their doors, unable to compete financially. More colour drains from the gaming landscape. And the only voices we hear become narrower and louder.

I think I shall keep gaming, most probably in the form of re-playing an ever decreasing circle of games: Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasys, the Dragon Quests, Cave shooters, Ikaruga, and whatever Treasure makes next, in an effort to really understand what it is about games that I love, and to further recognise what it is I require from them should I regain enough interest to keep up with them once again.

Little Touches

The snap and pop of combat in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Smart-bomb aftertouch in Mushihimesama Futari

Hero's sword glinting in the sun in Dragon Quest VIII

After playing through the demo of Vanquish a few times I felt quite ready to start the game proper on Hard mode. I was quite wrong. The first boss, the boss from the demo, readily demolished me time after time. Over twenty times, in fact. This was in the first quarter of an hour of game time. Shamefully, but with a strong desire to actually see the rest of the game I had just bought, I quit to the title menu and lowered the difficulty to Normal, vowing to return to Hard mode (not to mention God Hard mode) later, after I had learned how the game worked. 7 hours later the credits were rolling, the grin had not left my face.

Last night I began Vanquish again, notching it up to Hard mode. This time on the first boss, while still no walk-over, I didn't lose a life. Its laser did not touch me. Now I was at the opposite side of the arena slow-motion firing at its limb joints while its heat-beam was directed at a position I had been at mere milliseconds before. He fell much quicker this time. It is a satisfying feeling, that of actually becoming better at a game, not merely using power-ups or leveling to overcome its trials. The higher difficulties are about using the games' minimal skill-set to navigate the level more elegantly, to punish the enemies more swiftly and with infinitely more style. Level design is elegantly post-Gears. It has a satisfying tightness to it which means that each bite-size stage, once dispensed with, feels like a scoring a Tetris. The assault up the face of the monstrous concrete elevation feels like Gears' Mansion staircase exploded in just about every direction.

Vanquish is about moments: being sat in cover as an army of enemy robots fire upon you from across a makeshift battlefield, and plotting your boost trajectory from one enemy to the next, flipping behind cover to launch a slow motion rocket at a lumbering mini-boss, switching weapons without missing a beat to pummel it while it is weak. Watching hundreds of explosives and their smoke-arcs crossing the screen reminded me of Bangai-O. And that's it: Vanquish is a game I imagine Treasure might have made, which happens to be the highest compliment I can give any game. Vanquish is sharp. It is modern cover-shooter and old-fashioned score attack. It is one moment. The moment you decide to do what needs to be done. It feels almost breathless, and is a moment that happens over and over again.

Currently playing: King's Field IV.

number108 tim rogers

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@TomorrowsEnd King's Field IV is "Demon's Souls underwater".

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Over the past couple of evenings I've been playing Killzone 2. And, despite the juvenile title (I can't imagine having to ask for the game out-loud, in a shop or something), I'm enjoying my time with it. I know nothing of the first game, nothing of the story, or the characters, and I don't actually think it's important. 'Move-from-here-to-here-and-shoot-everything-with-red-eyes-before-they-shoot-you' is all you need to know. It's simply a chunky shooter (That should be a genre).

One of the ways the developers tried to set the game apart from other First-Person Shooters was with the weight of the character. And it's immediately noticeable; the movement feels like that of a huge meathead with a tonne of armour on. It's nice. It feels different, and it gives you a satisfying presence in the world.

The cover system is interesting and Gears-like, and while it makes little sense (if I can see over the obstacle whilst supposedly in cover, doesn't that leave my poor meaty-head dangerously exposed?), it feels nice to utilise. The tight, claustrophobic level-design is built around its use yet, on the default difficulty level, its not strictly necessary.

I think I'm going to start again from the beginning. Play it on a higher difficulty. See what's what.

Since recently finishing Final Fantasy XIII, I've had the urge to finally tackle Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions for the PSP. It has been a game I've been a little wary of since its PSP release in 2007. Its density and complexity at once repel and draw me in; the promise of its Shakespearean plot clashing with its notorious difficulty. Trying the game in the past led only to taking up something a little smoother like Disgaea instead, replacing Tactics on the shelf with the understanding to try again on one of those rainy days that never comes. I was afraid of when the game was going to bite.

I try to think back to 3 years ago. Am I more intelligent than I was then? That's a question. Am I a different person now? My sensibilities have changed, definitely. And I suppose it's this where this sudden feeling comes from. A feeling of not wanting, anymore, to try a little everything and end up being left with nothing, but thoroughly experiencing only the best and wholly inhabiting it as I do. Be it games, films, novels, anything.

Unfortunately, being that my PSP is currently 1500 miles away on a small Greek island, this feeling will have to be sustained until late August. To do so I am replaying another Yasumi Matsuno's game in the so-called Ivalice Alliance, Final Fantasy XII. My initial uncompleted save-file, dating from the European release, is over 50 hours long. Playing through the first 5 hours again this week I realise I barely remember any of the story events. The hospital dream sequence, the bare-knuckle prison brawl; each came as if by surprise. This delights me no-end, it means experiencing the story anew, with fresh eyes. I'm also relieved that the game still has the power to excite me on the second play-through: the feeling of the (almost) wide-open expanses, the intricacies of the gambit system/license board, the characters (Balthier's entrance!). Separated from any pressure, I can now allow the story to breathe, allow myself to relax in to the experience and enjoy the flow. When August comes (or the intriguing September release of War of the Lions on the iPod touch) I shall be suitably versed to tackle the epic tale of a Kingdom divided.