Not only does a game like this at least attempt to be interesting and wonderful, but it’s failures are the kind that are going to teach us what makes gaming work, and what doesn’t. It’s going to elicit thought. In many ways, this is better than the games that get it completely right.

The only part I disagree with there is the example.

Ico…

Well, once I am done with it, I intend to write something on it and Silent Hill 2, illustrating some common problems in execution (particularly when it comes to level design and world-logic).

Why are bombs always provided in Ico‘s world, right near something that I need to blow up? Why has the castle been smashed up in just such a way as to allow me exactly one possible route through it? Why does the entire world feel like it is laid out just to take advantage of my character’s abilities?

A game like Super Mario Bros. does not need to explain these things, as on the one hand the game is so clearly surreal — and yet such situations tend to make up the game’s own persistent reality.

Metroid Prime got around these questions with a rather startling bit of insight that also helped to explain and contextualize every other game in the series. Even Lament of Innocence gets away with some of its contrivances with its claim, right near the outset, that “this is all a game” to the villain; that Leon’s quest has been specially put before him for the amusement of the final boss.

Ico plays well, as a game. It is wonderfully-designed. Its world is the most intriguing I have encountered since that in Riven. The problem is, it is transparent as a game. It is too focused. In the same way that you wonder why James can’t just step over a police line in Silent Hill 2, you wonder why Ico can conveniently make his way through the levels as he does; why everything is left out for him. The two games sit on different sides of the same issue, to a similarly disconcerting effect.

There is… more.