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Friday 14 June 2013

Ico on the big screen


This is hardly worthy of any mention really but I love it when games crop up in everyday places, it acts as a sort of validation that games are brilliant artifacts. It also allows me to show off my game spotting skills! This one wasn't too hard and in many ways is a bit of an unfortunate cliche in the Games/Art discussion. It's Ico of course! A brilliant game which I haven't really played all that much, but it's the one which always comes up in many peoples' lists of Best Games.


It appears all too briefly in the film Vanishing Waves. The film was so-so, but was enjoyable as a kind of David Lynch-esque sci-fi thriller. The main concept for the story involved the technology to sync a comatose mind with a waking one, allowing the doctors (or whoever these guys were??) to enter the patient's brainhole and revive them. So, main-character man sets off on the inward journey into the patients mind. It's a great idea which leads to some interesting imagery and spooky build-ups (ala Lynch) but it's morally questionable central protagonist and overally serious approach to the material left me feeling a bit distracted. HOWEVER, a game! Look, its Ico!

The inclusion of games in films as cultural references - like you would see with a book or piece of music - shows the potential (which we all know already) for games to communicate ideas as well as any other cultural work. In this case the film's narrative of 'Man goes into magical to rescue Girl' is mirrored in the narrative of Ico which similarly see's a boy rescuing a girl from some mysterious castle/dream-realm.

So there we go - a game in a film! Marvelous!

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