I once remembered Ico as a masterpiece from 2002,that was until i purchased the hd collection availible on ps3. Boy did this game make me shriek and swear because it is basically just one big escort mission and escort missions as we know are diabolical  and expanded into an entire game then you have a gamers worst nightmare. The music, art and amosphere are not in question they are as perfect as ever, the only thing that makes me hate sections of this game is Yorda. She is such a spastic and does everything in her power to get you to a game over screen. Her reactions are so slow, she sometimes goes the opposite direction when you call her like climbing down a ladder when you are calling her from the top. On other occasions she refuses to move and other times she wanders from where you left her and ends up getting caught. The worst thing about her intelligence is that she never ever tries to escape danger unless you call her, that's right she is so dumb that she waits to be caught.  Her reactions to commands are just shocking taking several seconds to react by which time she has been grabbed and to top that she moves and turns like the titanic. When Ico came out it wowed me with its graphics, melancholic mood and beautiful soundtrack and it still does but now i am thwarted by the evil game design that sucks most of the fun from playing it. Experiencing Ico the second time around was mostly an irritation.

Can't be more frustrating than Ashley.

Gamers of today have a low attention span, everything has to be full of explosions and cinematic experiences. Its a cultural shock to go back to masterpieces of older gens that you once loved, becoz suddenly they're not as good as you remember them, low res, no trophies or leaderboards etc.

There is a solution but its hard: try to flip that mental switch in your brain and convince yourself its 2002 again, try be a gamer from that period and not 2014.

Yorda is far from the worst thing about Ico. The horrific camera panning (instead of actually moving) and the complete lack of depth perception when swinging at the shadows are much worse than Yorda, who was a bit of a pain some of the time.

Well...

...I guess you're right.

Fuck no. Ico was pretty forgiving an easy when I played it back in 2001. Maybe it aged poorly but no. Just imagine Yorda is mentally handicapped and don't walk too far away from her and everything is fine.

Some games don't age well, ICO is one of them but worst ever??? Not even close.

LOL, that's hilarious.

I never played much of the game so about an hour or two in or something but what I played was fun and not frustrating at all

I'm hoping to play it again if I can find it cheap. I regret ever returning the game though :P

Old games were much more harsh in general

I've been playing Jak and Daxter on my Vita and there are so many sections where there are cheap 1 hit deaths that often come due to clunky controls or dodgy cameras.

It's just the way games were then. I think the quest for perfection where you have to do large sections of the game perfectly to make any progress should be gone on the whole. There is a place for them on the hardest difficulties, but I think there should be room for players to just enough the game without frustratingly difficult sections

I'm not claiming games should be really easy, but a good balance is required to make sure you are punished for your mistakes, but appropriately punished