Was The Last Guardian Worth The Wait? Here's What The Reviews Are Saying

The reviews for The Last Guardian are in. The game has been in the making for a decade now and it's finally releasing on the PS4 after seemingly countless delays. Well, was The last Guardian worth the wait? Here's what the critics are saying in their reviews.

Featuring a boy and the giant bird-dog-chicken thing named Trico, The Last Guardian is an adventure-platforming game that's been in the making for years. IGN, the big dog on the block, called it "good" and rated it a 7.0 out of 10. They explained that the controls could be difficult and the AI for Trico wasn't always cooperative when it should have been, and these hiccups created frustrations, but overall they enjoyed the game...

For every wonderful moment of absolute beauty and emotional attachment to its lifelike companion, there's an equal and opposite baffling moment that ruins the mood with frustrating controls and camera angles. But I found myself willing to put up with all of these hiccups if it meant experiencing any of its multitude of incredibly-beautiful moments.

Trusted Reviews also scored the game similar to IGN, giving it 3.5 out of 5 stars, praising the story and characters and the lifelike behavior of Trico but also citing the controls and Trico's inability to learn as a frustrating aspect of the game. They write...

There were many times in the game where I screamed and pleaded for it to do the thing needed for me to proceed, but instead Trico would simply stare with curiosity and then turn in the opposite direction. The thing is, thematically this makes sense: Trico's learning as much as you are, albeit at a slower pace, so of course it may not understand what's going on. Mechanically, however, it can be a mess.

This was a repeated criticism throughout most of the reviews, and was despised and disliked more or less by different reviewers.

The majority of the reviews acknowledged that they were willing to overlook what they saw as shortcomings to enjoy the bigger picture and the story that the developers were trying to convey, with Forbes writing...

[...] the game does gradually come into its own as you progress. As Trico gets stronger and you understand more of its abilities and how it fits into the level design, the game begins to work more holistically. The lineage of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus slowly shines through and you really begin to care about what happens to both the boy and Trico.

The Guardian ended up giving The Last Guardian a perfect score, and summed up their feelings of the game within the confines of a 140 character tweet. Seems implausible but Simon Parkin wasn't above the task of convincing readers on social media.

The Guardian wasn't along in handing out a perfect score... there was also The Daily Dot, Hardcore Gamer and even Time Magazine also giving the game perfect props. Time's summary basically boiled down to what was mentioned in the Tweet below.

Slightly more in-depth, the article takes a jab at other games on the market, claiming that The Last Guardian "calls out some of what's crass about [the gaming] industry" and says that it's a game about the "shape of things to come".

I tend to doubt fans of games like Battlefield 1, Call of Duty and Titanfall will be hanging up the machine guns and leaving the competitive PvP arenas behind to direct around a giant bird-dog to fight for them, but having variety and options is always a welcomed element in gaming.

The Last Guardian becomes available on the wider market tomorrow on December 6th, exclusively for the PlayStation 4.