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The Last Guardianis clearly a metaphor for the painfully adorable hellscape that your life becomes when you raise a puppy.

I have a puppy. He's able to be alone now for long stretches of time without killing himself, but there was a six-month period in his life when it was all I could do to keep him alive, clean, and not murdered. His delightful puppy wriggling and whimpering helped a lot in those darker moments.

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There were months of my life where I would commute home from an abbreviated work day with no real notion of what I was walking into. Would the puppy still be breathing? Would he have shit smeared all over him? Would he somehow manage to cover himself in pink makeup, or something equally implausible?

On most occasions, the answer was "yes."

Credit: Sony

So it is with Trico, the impossibly cute dog-cat-dragon-bird-thing that forms the emotional core of The Last Guardian. This creature of fantasy is no pup, but your relationship with it starts at zero when you break its brainwashing and begin training it to trust you.

The Last Guardianis a fundamentally a puzzle game. Your nameless Boy protagonist and his giant, feathered friend must help each other ascend a series of crumbling towers in the heart of an ancient valley, from which they hope to eventually escape.

You control the Boy directly and exert limited control over Trico by issuing commands. The creature responds (or doesn't), based on the strength of your relationship -- which is directly, if not always clearly, tied to how much you've fed it.

Therein lies the "puppy" problem.

Trico is a disobedient asshole. This isn't a game that coddles you toward a solution, but even when the answer seems obvious, the stupid creature can muck things up. You might understand logically that Trico needs to jump down to a lower perch in order to solve a puzzle, but actually making it do the thing is often a trial of patience.

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Tell Trico to jump and it might go exactly where you want... or it might just jump in place, or move in another direction, or turn and stare at you quizzically with those big, dumb, soulful eyes. The game provides virtually zero instruction on Trico training and there are no visual indicators to signal the strength of your bond with the creature.

Credit: sony

This leads to occasions where you find yourself mashing buttons and screaming at your TV while the stubborn animal does what it will. Trico isn't really disobedient; it's just stupid. Like a puppy, it's learning how to interact with a world that it doesn't understand.

What's not clear is if that behavior is a limitation of the game's code or it's simply working as intended. But really: does it matter? I'll never understand why my dumb puppy crapped all over himself in his crate, but -- once I got the idiot cleaned up -- it didn't make him less endearing.

And make no mistake: Trico isendearing. It moves and reacts like a living creature rather than a video game construct. Yes, every feather ruffle and cooing whine and butt wiggle is a product of programming, but the illusion is masterful.

For all that left me frustrated, I formed an emotional attachment with the beast. When I wasn't banging my head against the wall at its inability to understand basic commands, I genuinely enjoyed spending time with it

Again: it's a puppy. Even when it seems broken, it's working as intended.

Credit: Sony

The same cannot be said for the rest of the game, unfortunately. The Last Guardianarrives in poor condition: sluggish controls, a camera that requires constant micromanagement, questionable checkpoint placement, and an inconsistent frame rate.

I lost count of the number of times I fell to my death because the camera insisted on resting itself at an odd angle. The time wasted repeating solved puzzles as I worked my way back from a checkpoint to the point where I failed previously. The illusion-shattering disruption that springs up when frame rate suddenly drops into the single digits.

For a game that was in some form of development for more than 10 years, this isn't just a problem; it's disgraceful. Trico's disobedience is a massive headache, but nothing disrupts the pace of The Last Guardianmore than technical difficulties that should have been solved over the past 10 years.

I finished The Last Guardianwith no small amount of hatred in my heart for its lousy execution. But even with all that baggage, I found myself forgiving of its frustrations.

Blame Trico. Thank Trico. That creature is so infuriatingly easy to love. The Last Guardiangives you so many reasons to dislike it, and one, impossibly endearing reason to love it.

Don't understand? Try raising a puppy. Then you will.

TopicsGaming

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