"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" wrote the great sci-fi author Arthur C Clarke back in 1973. Playing Fumito Ueda's long-delayed follow up to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Clarke's words seem to have a whole new meaning.
While it's a work of technology – of polygons and pixels, AI routines and shaders, programmed behaviours and artificial systems, there must be some magic at work here. The Last Guardian is not your ordinary game.
It's the story of a boy trapped beneath the ruins of a strange, gothic citadel who awakens to find a companion: a colossal beast, part-bird, part feline, who the boy names Trico.
At first, both the boy and Trico are frightened, but as the boy pulls spears from the creature's body and finds food to give the creature strength, the two establish an unlikely friendship.
Together, they escape the caverns and begin the long climb upwards towards freedom. Sometimes the beast's strength and power will save the boy, at other times the boy's courage and quick thinking will rescue the creature. The more they work together, the more the pair's bond deepens, transforming the game into a fable of friendship, love and trust.
Like Ico and Shadow, The Last Guardian is an astonishing-looking game. There are some signs that this was a game designed for the old PS3, but in its visual design, its lighting and its sumptuous animation, it has an expressive power few other games released this year can match. Where it's near-miraculous, however, is in its depiction of your cat-eagle-hybrid chum. For a start, Trico is beautifully rendered and animated, his muscles tensing and stretching like a cat's, his feathers rippling gently in the breeze.
His behaviour, meanwhile, is uncannily convincing. You can read his emotions – anxiety, rage, excitement, yearning – from the way he moves and the look in his expressive eyes. He can be coaxed along, clambered on and urged to move, reacting slowly but surely to everything you do.
Yet he never comes across as some monster-sized flunky you can boss about, but an independent creature with a mind all of his own. So when he does something smart or amazing, you feel the wonder of the link that ties him to the boy. It's something you have to see moving to believe.
You could describe The Last Guardian as a puzzle-platformer, where you control the boy on his journey through the citadel, climbing and leaping heroically from ledge to ledge to balcony, solving puzzles and using Trico as a means to conquer obstacles and get from A to B. Plus, the beast has some other useful functions, blasting lightning out of his tail, as directed, to destroy doors and other obstacles or battling creepy armoured enemies to protect the boy from a mysterious but doubtless grisly fate.
Yet that doesn't really do justice to the creature or the gameplay. He can't be ordered or controlled by proxy, even once the boy becomes able to issue simple commands. Instead, he needs to be pushed gently, bribed with morsels and encouraged, so that you can help him save the boy and save himself.
It won't always be easy. At first your biggest challenge is getting you and Trico through to the next area. Before long, though, you'll be dealing with more enemies, huge vertical spaces, crumbling walkway and all kinds of strange mechanisms. You'll have to handle symbols that scare Trico and artefacts that make him hostile, not to mention more complex sequences of jumps. You can direct Trico but you can't control him. He is an entity in and of himself.
The downside of this is that Trico won't always do what you want him to, let alone do what he's told. Sometimes you'll be struggling to find the means to get him to make the jump or reach for the high ledge that can get you wherever it is you need to go. Sometimes you'll know where he needs to go or what he needs to do, but feel stumped as to why he won't just do it. This can be frustrating, particularly when Trico's behaviour seems to fall into the chasm between being a bug and being a feature, wasting your time and just getting in the way.
This and the rough controls when you're clambering around on Trico, not to mention a dodgy camera and some awful frame-rate dips, make it almost impossible to score The Last Guardian as highly as we'd like.
For all of its moments of beauty, awe and wonder, it can be a really annoying and ornery game. Yet it's one that dishes up some of the best, most powerful gaming moments of 2016.
We're talking really stunning, unforgettable, emotive stuff.
Will you really remember the latest Call of Duty or FIFA in a few years' time? Probably not. But will you remember The Last Guardian and Trico? For better and occasionally for worse, you definitely will.
Verdict
Some elements are dated and coaxing Trico through the game's puzzles can be frustrating, yet if The Last Guardian has its problems, it's a flawed masterpiece rather than a flop. Striking, imaginative and emotional, it turns a story that could have been hackneyed into something powerful and a bunch of polygons and pixels into the most fantastic beast you'll find this year.
Be prepared for some huge irritations, but buy The Last Guardian despite these. It's the kind of game you won't forget.
The Last Guardian release date: December 9th
Available on: PS4 (tested)
Developer: Team Ico/Gen Design
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
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