When Ico came out more than a decade ago, it wasn’t the type of game I could see myself playing. It was heavy on atmosphere, but light on the sports, guns, and action. It just wasn’t the kind of game that a guy sharing a television, gaming system, and house with three other guys would play. After ten years of people telling me how fantastic Ico was, I was finally ready to give the game a go.

Even though I’ve been playing video games for nearly my entire life, there were always games that just didn’t interest me. Over time, I’ve grown to appreciate more genres and styles of games than I would have in the past. Like music, books, food, and movies, sometimes you just need to expand your tastes once in a while to see what else is out there. I had heard for years how great Ico was; that it was such a different experience than what people were used to getting out of a video game. I remained indignant. All I needed was Madden 2002 and GTA III. A game like Ico was boring. It was just a kid walking around a castle with a girl. How could this game be anything but lame? I’m not too proud to admit how naïve I was. To be fair, I probably wouldn’t even have attempted to track Ico down if it wasn’t for the HD remake. I’m just glad it came out at a time when I finally got the gumption to sit down and play Ico.

What at the time looked to be nothing more than a game where a kid leads a princess around a castle ended up being… well, okay, it’s still a game where a little boy leads a princess around a castle. It’s more than that though. Ico puts you in the shoes of Ico, a young boy with horns that’s been left locked in a giant castle as some form of sacrifice. He breaks out, and stumbles upon a trapped princess named Yorda, and he takes it upon himself to rescue her, and escape the castle. There are some slight plot developments that occur later in the game, but for the most part, Ico sticks to a very basic narrative. It’s not that it’s not engaging. Ico is full of wonderful moments, but they don’t have very much to do with story.

Most of what makes Ico so interesting are the puzzles. Progressing from one part of the castle to the next puts your brain to work. There’s not a whole lot of direction given by the game, so it’s really up to you to figure out how to escape all on your own. It does make you feel like you’re in Ico’s shoes as he tries to work out how to traverse the structure. Yorda will always be tailing close behind you, though she doesn’t do a whole lot to help. The only things Yorda’s good for is getting captured by the castle’s shadowy guardians, opening doors, or making you wait for her to climb a ladder. If you thought your real life relationship with a significant other tested your patience, you obviously haven’t played Ico. Trying to get Yorda out of the castle will not only push the limits of your patience, but will also make the bond between you and your better half even stronger. Not because there’s some grand message hidden in the game, but because nothing can possibly be more annoying than waiting for Yorda to climb ladder after ladder after ladder.

There’s some light combat involved when you try to save Yorda from being captured by shadow creatures, but the further I progressed in the game, the less I was concerned for her welfare. The only reason I really kept her alive was because she was the only person of the two of us who could open the castle’s locked doors. At times, it feels like Ico is one long escort mission, in which you are in charge of the safety of a walking, talking key card. Obviously, the game is much more than that. The way Ico naturally presents its puzzles, and allows you to explore and test yourself by continually throwing ambiguous challenges at you, is really amazing. It’s tough to stop playing once you get into a good groove. There are few things as satisfying as completing one of Ico’s puzzles, particularly since there are no real in-game prompts.

I know Ico gets a lot of praise for its presentation as well, and it didn’t really disappoint. Despite being stuck inside the same building for the duration of the game, there’s a surprising amount of variation in the architecture. I’m not certain many of the rooms that exist in this game space would actually exist if the castle were real, though. There’s a lot of square-footage in the castle, and some of the interiors don’t really match up with the exteriors as far as physical space goes. I know it’s a game, and the developers are allowed to break the laws of structure to provide the most compelling puzzles they can, but I’d like to see the blueprints on this place one day to see just how structurally sound this castle really is. But getting back to how the game looks, there’s little to complain about. The atmosphere and ambiance created by the lighting techniques used really gives the world some weight. It’s quite impressive.

Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have given a game like Ico a fair chance. Since then though, I’ve done a little growing up. My gaming tastes have evolved, and there are very few genres or titles that don’t catch my interest these days. I’m glad that I had the chance to finally catch up with Ico, and despite its flaws, I can finally see why everyone was so enamored with this challenging and unique game when it released. I’ll be diving into Ico’s spiritual successor Shadow of the Colossus next, and hope it too lives up to the hype.

Has it really been 100 episodes already? Join the celebration on Endor as the gang plays through all three Super Star Wars titles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yitCxjCu7Oo

A long time ago on a couch far, far away… For our 100th episode, we play all 3 Super Star Wars games!

Every week on Continue?, we sit down to play a random old school game for 30 minutes. We’re talking NES, SNES, Genesis old here. There is one question we are trying to answer – do we want to stop playing or continue?

Starring: Nick Murphy, Paul Ritchey, and Josh Henderson
Shot by: Paul Ritchey
Edited by: Nick Murphy

After the gut-wrenching events of the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, I was happy to see the team scaling back and getting back to basics with Season Nine. I couldn’t wait for it to start. And then the first five issues wound up in my backlog.

We all have that pile. The books we meant to read, the games we meant to play, the things we meant to do. In our new weekly feature Pile of Shame, we’ll be tackling our personal backlogs and seeing if these things were worth the wait, or better left tossed aside.

Warning: Minor spoilers for Season Eight and Nine ahead.

I still remember the day I found out about Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight. I was in a comic shop on South Street in Philadelphia, and Buffy, one of my all-time favorite shows, had been off the air for over three years. Yet there she was, Buffy Summers in all her glory, on the cover of Previews. I was elated, until I found out it wasn’t coming out until March 2007. That seemed like so far away.

After three great years, Season Eight concluded in 2011, and I mostly loved it. When it started, it felt so familiar, like seeing old friends again. As cheesy as that sounds, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on the air for seven years. It was there when I was in middle school, throughout high school, and for the first half of college. I was very attached to the Scooby Gang, and thrilled to see them return to action. With Joss Whedon very involved in the series, Season Eight was a smooth, natural progression from the events of the series finale.

However, sometimes the scale and scope of Season Eight were so large that it was hard to feel the same emotional attachment that I had with the TV show. Understandably, Joss treated it as the story he wanted to tell without the limitations of a television show’s budget and scheduling issues, which meant he went all out: insane monsters, varied locations spawning several continents, hundreds of slayers, multi-dimensional boning. I was glad to see that the world had changed after Sunnydale was reduced to a crater at the end of show; it just made sense within the context of that world that all the newly awakened potential Slayers would need something else to do, and that Buffy would be the one to lead them. Eventually, though, the international Slayer army took the story so far away from one of the things I loved about the TV show. These characters were supposed to be relatable, flawed, like us, only with a few extra powers or knowledge of the worldwide vampire epidemic. So after the gut-wrenching events of the end of Season Eight, I was happy to see the team scaling back and getting back to basics with Season Nine. I couldn’t wait for it to start. And then the first five issues wound up in my backlog.

Like most things in the pile, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to read them; Season Eight definitely left me wanting more. Whatever the reasons for slacking on my comic-reading, I’m all caught up on Buffy now. And I must say, I love this new approach to post-television Buffy Summers and company. They’re back in California, working mundane jobs, trying to fit in amongst the normal, non-demon-slaying folk and put the horrors they’ve seen behind them–it really feels like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched almost every Tuesday for seven years.

There are some interesting new dynamics that make Season Nine feel fresh. Big sister Buffy is now the third wheel in her sister Dawn’s relationship with Xander. Without her witchy powers (which grew even stronger during Season Eight), Willow’s making a living as a computer programmer and pulling away from the group–she dumped Kennedy, blames Buffy for sucking all of the magic from the world, and has lost a huge part of herself. And though Buffy still has vampires to slay, she’s just another twenty-something without a college education, savings account, or marketable skills. After dedicating her life (and even giving it, on a couple of occasions) to fighting evil and saving the world, all Buffy has to show for it is a coffee shop job and a San Francisco apartment she shares with two roommates. Like in Sunnydale, she spends her nights patrolling, but her slayer skills are no longer a secret. Thanks to Harmony’s rise to fame as a reality TV star, vampires are admired, while Slayers are considered to be terrorists. Even the monsters are suffering; one, having been stuck in the wrong dimension, has been reduced to hassling college dropouts to repay their student loans. On top of that, the former army of potential Slayers aren’t exactly fond of Buffy, either.

After setting up the new lives of the Scoobies, I’m not really sure in which direction this story is heading, but I’m really excited to see Buffy and the gang attempt to resume normal lives after their Season Eight adventures. I’m planning on picking up the first few issues of Angel and Faith, the spinoff series about the adventures of the bad-girl slayer and Buffy’s one true vampire love, to see how it ties into the story. And starting next month, I’ll be reviewing individual issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine. Buffy’s back in a big way, and in my opinion, that’s five by five.

Blast off into the night with a new episode of Continue?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m0tYROqDvA

Boba Fett + Marsupials = Sparkster.

Every week on Continue?, we sit down to play a random old school game for 30 minutes. We’re talking NES, SNES, Genesis old here. There is one question we are trying to answer – do we want to stop playing or continue?

Starring: Nick Murphy, Paul Ritchey, and Josh Henderson
Shot by: Paul Ritchey
Edited by: Nick Murphy

Get funky with Continue? and one of the greatest vehicular combat games of all time. OF. ALL. TIME.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEhnhmgTKpM

If SOPA & PIPA pass, our world could end up like the world of Vigilante 8! Don’t let that happen!

Every week on Continue?, we sit down to play a random old school game for 30 minutes. We’re talking NES, SNES, Genesis old here. There is one question we are trying to answer – do we want to stop playing or continue?

Starring: Nick Murphy, Paul Ritchey, and Josh Henderson
Shot by: Paul Ritchey
Edited by: Nick Murphy

You think Bruce Willis hates asteroids? Wait until you see what he does to the apocalypse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cojx3Rr1A0E

This week’s episode features a special appearance by Bruce Willis & The Apocalypse.

Every week on Continue?, we sit down to play a random old school game for 30 minutes. We’re talking NES, SNES, Genesis old here. There is one question we are trying to answer – do we want to stop playing or continue?

Starring: Nick Murphy, Paul Ritchey, and Josh Henderson
Shot by: Paul Ritchey
Edited by: Nick Murphy

As much deserved credit as Rocksteady gets for reinvigorating not just the Batman video game franchise, but superhero video games as well, recent findings show they weren’t the first developer to take comic book heroes seriously. In 2008, Factor 5 was secretly working on a Superman video game. The studio closed before the game was finished, but concept art from the game has surfaced, and it gives a glimpse into what could have been an amazing Superman video game.

Siliconera came across the works of Daveed Kaplan, who was working on character models for the game in 2008. Codenamed “Blue Steel,” Factor 5′s unreleased Superman game was to be published by Brash Entertainment, but after Brash’s investors stopped, well, investing in the company, they were forced to close down. You might remember that Brash was also hoping to publish a video game based on DC’s Flash, but that game also never made it beyond the early development stages.

The shame of never getting to see Factor 5′s Superman game is that the most recent Man of Steel video game was based on the mediocre Superman Returns, and featured a final boss fight against… a tornado. Factor 5 had a pretty dense rogues gallery lined up featuring the always available Lex Luthor, Superman’s longtime enemy, Kryptonian zealot Zod, and the ruler of Apokoplips, Darkseid. Throwing down with any of those three big bads would have been a million times better than facing off against a natural disaster.

You can check out all the concept art over on Siliconera, and hope that one day some developer comes along to give us the Superman game that we, and Kal-El, deserve.

[Siliconera]

What happens when the boys of Continue? play one of the most memorable comic book video games of all time? Find out by watching this week’s episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IScbDIQ-u1w

Marvel Heroes Paul, Nick, and Josh battle the supervillain Carnage and send out a special challenge to The Completionist!

Every week on Continue?, we sit down to play a random old school game for 30 minutes. We’re talking NES, SNES, Genesis old here. There is one question we are trying to answer – do we want to stop playing or continue?

Starring: Nick Murphy, Paul Ritchey, and Josh Henderson
Shot by: Paul Ritchey
Edited by: Nick Murphy

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips take a turn down a dark and beautiful road with their latest series, Fatale. Though Bru and Phillips is treading new water with a new publisher, the Criminal/Incognito duo show that there are few creative teams that tell a story as well as they do.

Fatale #1
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips

If you’ve been following this site for even just a short while, you’d know just how much I adore Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. For my money, there is no stronger creative team that has put out such solid work so consistently in the past decade. Sure, they’ve been working together longer than the last ten years, but they weren’t putting out quite the volume of collaborative work in 1999 as they are today. Recently, Brubaker and Phillips have begun alternating runs of their ongoing series of mini-series Criminal with other creator-owned projects. Fatale is the latest tale to be added into that rotation. Combining the duo’s trademark hard-boiled sensibilities with a horror-filled twist, Fatale manages to feel familiar and fresh at the same time.

There’s a lot going on in this first issue. A multitude of characters are introduced, the story (at least in this issue) takes place in two different eras, and so many plot threads are introduced it can be a bit daunting to take it all in the first time you flip through the issue. While it’s not a bad thing that there’s a lot going on right off the bat, Fatale #1 definitely feels a bit more chaotic than the tightly wound narratives Brubaker typically pens. Part of that may come from the fact that Fatale was born out of ideas Brubaker admits in the afterword he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. The story begins in 2011, but quickly readers will find themselves in 1956, where a mysterious young woman named Josephine is meeting with a reporter. He wants to blow the lid off a police scandal, but she alludes to there being so much more at stake. What follows only serves to prove her point, but without spoiling the mystery, that’s really all I can say.

However, I don’t necessarily see how jam-packed the first issue is as a fault. I’m sure Brubaker has a very concrete outline and idea of where this story is going, who is going to do what, and how they’re going to do it. Keeping the readers on their toes is just another part of the equation. The quick pacing and hecticness of the issue only add to the mystery of each character’s motivations. Particularly so in the case of the femme fatale that has every male character’s stomach in a twist, Josephine. Who is she? How does she make men feel so weak in the knees? What happened during the war to put her in her current predicament? I’m sure we’ll find out, but not until Brubaker wants us to.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Nobody draws women smoking better than Sean Phillips. Maybe Eduardo Risso comes in a close second, but Phillips undoubtedly knows how to make a woman look beautiful even when she’s doing something ugly. Now obviously Sean Phillips can draw a heck of a lot of things besides smoking really well. It’s just that with the type of stories he and Brubaker tell, there are a lot of pretty ladies lighting up seemingly every issue. Josephine is no exception to that rule. Outside of that, you can count on the same expert storytelling from Phillips this issue. His penmanship when it comes to these types of stories is unparalleled. And that extends beyond the page. There are very few cinematographers and directors working today that have the acute knowledge of knowing where to put the camera (or how to light/block a scene) to create the atmosphere Phillips does. They at least have the added benefit of having actors on hand, and not having to create them from scratch every single panel.

Now I hate to say it, and this is me admittedly being nitpicky, but I was actually a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to see more of Phillips’ creature art in the issue. There are glimpses of otherworldly and unnatural beings, but outside of a few static shots, Phillips is still just drawing everyday people. They’re fantastically dark and moody people, but I was hoping to see more horrific images in this story. With plenty more story to come, I’m sure there won’t be a lack of monstrous characters in Fatale. This issue though was a bit light on the Lovecraft.

When it’s all said and done, Fatale #1 is a very strong first issue. Anytime Brubaker and Phillips get together, you know you’re going to be in a for a good time. Fatale #1 does a great job of setting up a whole slew of new mysteries and characters, and I’m eagerly anticipating the next issue. Even though newcomers to the Brubaker/Phillips style may find themselves cast into the deep end rather quickly, I have a feeling they’ll be just as hooked. The duo are leading us down a dark path, and I can’t wait to see how weird it gets.

As anyone who plays video games knows, Apple’s iPad and tablet technology has been something of a game changer in the way people play and experience video games. With its interactive touch technology, the player can become more a part of the story than ever before. And now Kendall Davis, one of the producers for Halo 4, is going to push that limit even further with The Last Sleeper.

Davis looks at The Last Sleeper as more of an interactive story than a game, as the player will make every decision that moves the story forward. It is a game that has been designed specifically for iPad and tablets and will take full advantage of the technology.

From The Last Sleeper’s Kickstarter website:

Millennia ago, Queen Valasca unleashed an ancient evil upon the people of the Ephos. Known only as the Shadow, it feeds off their fear and misery to prolong her unnaturally long life, creating hollow shells of empty existence.

A young woman named Fera was born with the gift to harness the last vestiges of Ephos’s Light: the only power that can defeat the Shadow. As Fera blossoms into a powerful warrior, she is marked for death by the Queen.

We experience the story as Adam, an amnesiac soldier who awakens in the famine-stricken forests of Ephos. As Adam wanders in the forest in search of purpose, he discovers that he too can wield the Light.

The Last Sleeper has already met its goal on its Kickstarter page, but you still have time to be a backer if you want. It looks to be the kind of experience that we as gamers only dreamed about up until a few years ago. You can look forward to finding out for yourself in Spring /Summer 2012 when The Last Sleeper launches for iPad and Tablets.

The Last Sleeper Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/78728598/the-last-sleeper-episode-1