Ico Hands-On

There wasn't a whole lot of information available for ICO, but the demo, which was shown in playable form at the end of Sony's pre-E3 press conference, was set up at a single kiosk with no documentation and no representative to answer questions. On top of that, there seemed to be no story or setup to ICO - once you hit start, the game simply started. Still, we were able to piece together enough information to get a basic sense of what the game is all about.

You play as a young Japanese-looking girl in what looks like a modern-day environment. Your mission is to find specific characters and take them to different places. In this demo, your task was to find a spiritually important woman and guide her to a safe location. To do this, you had to climb walls, pull levers, and, occasionally, fight off weird-looking shadow enemies with your staff. The game had an awful lot of lever-pulling in it, and there was almost no action. Entering a room often meant watching a long cutscene of the room's layout, and the graphics really weren't that spectacular.

With so little information available, it's really too early to make any judgments about what ICO is about or how it's going to play. At the moment, it seems like a really passive Tomb Raider, but we'll just have to wait and see.