OmegaMouse

So a view I see a lot nowadays is that attention spans are getting shorter, especially when it comes to younger generations. And the growing success of short form content on Tiktok, Youtube and Twitter for example seems to support this claim. I have a friend in their early 20s who regularly checks their phone (sometimes scrolling Tiktok content) as we're watching a film. And an older colleague recently was pleased to see me reading a book, because he felt that anyone my age and younger was less likely to want to invest the time in reading.

But is this actually true on the whole? Does social media like Tiktok really mould our interests and alter our attention? In some respects I can see how it could change our expectations. If we've come to expect a webpage to load in seconds, it can be frustrating when we have to wait minutes. But to someone that was raised with dial-up, perhaps that wouldn't be as much of an issue. In the same way, if a piece of media doesn't capture someone in the first few minutes they may be more inclined to lose focus because they're so used to quick dopamine hits from short form content. Alternatively, maybe this whole argument is just a 'kids these days' fallacy. Obviously there are plenty of young adults that buck this trend.

So I'd heard lots of good things about this game and decided to finally give it a go. I picked up the PS3 HD collection, which includes Ico and SOTC.

From the get go, it felt like a frustrating experience. Very little is explained to you about how the mechanics of the game work. I found myself trying to grab ledges on the colossi that weren't intended.

The game clearly wants you to experiment to find out the different ways in which the colussi will react, but it's often such a slow process that it starts to feel like a chore for half of the battles. And often I was so close to a solution but some small thing would be off, so I'd try something else instead. Then it would turn out that I had it right the first time, I just needed to be standing a metre to the right. So many times the solution felt illogical.

And whilst holding on to the head of a colossus and getting that final hit in is extremely satisfying, on some occasions the window would be so small that I'd get shaken off and have to repeat the whole process to slowly chip away at its health. Knowing exactly what I needed to do, but having to do it multiple times soon became quite dull.

About half of the colossi were genuinely fun to fight. The bird one in particular stands out - soaring through the air as you climb along his wings was incredible.

I will say that the atmosphere, music and story were beautiful. It's a great piece of art. But a lot of people claim that this is one of the greatest games ever made, and I feel like the 'game' part is lacking quite a lot.

Is there something I'm missing? I actually enjoyed Ico a lot more.