Playing The Last Guardian reminds me a lot of playing Half-Life games: The actual moment-to-moment of working my way through the game involves an enormous amount of frustration and annoyance... but when I look back at it, all I see are the happy memories of the experience.

Joe gives his impressions on The Last Guardian, with his review on PS4.

When twelve year old me sat down and watched Jurassic Park in my local cinema back in 1993, I was utterly entranced; watching towering dinosaurs come to life right in front of my eyes made me want to experience the exact same events that palaeontologist Alan Grant did (minus all that terrifying...

The Last Guardian is a beautiful yet flawed game on the PlayStation 4

The divide between the highs and lows of is staggering. For every wonderful moment of absolute beauty and emotional attachment to its lifelike companion, there's an equal and opposite baffling moment that ruins the mood with frustrating controls and camera angles.

With such a long and tortured development, the question was never "Can The Last Guardian live up to expectations?"; but rather, "How much does The Last Guardian fail to live up to expectations?". There are moments of beauty in this game, and for that reason alone it's worth playing.

Platforms: PS4 (tested) / PS4 Pro Developer: genDESIGN Publisher: Sony Release Date: 9 December (UK) Everything that is beautiful and frustrating about Fumito Ueda's The Last Guardian is evident in its feathery star Trico.

Crytek has been experimenting with ways to make games more immersive by utilizing new tech for a while, whether it's the exceptionally good use of stereoscopic 3D effects in the Crysis games or impressive demos for Oculus Rift.

Engaging exploration; HIGS-view sequences are stunning; Some truly impressive sights--especially the dinosaurs; An immersive and involving world

Far too short; Slow movement; Controlling levitating objects is a challenge; Some obscure objectives and puzzles

Almost a decade. That's how long people have been waiting to get their hands on The Last Guardian , and I left the game untouched sitting atop my PS4 for three days. I'm sure you want to know both why and how, but I have not satisfying answer for either question.

Expansive; imaginative set pieces; Emotional; original story; Breathtaking imagery

Graphical bugs and sporadic framerate; Controlling Trico is ineffective and unnecessary; Tags

Yes, The Last Guardian's controls are incredibly archaic and at times can be entirely broken, but two days after finishing it, the story has stuck with me. Studio Japan has continued to show how it can do so much while saying so little.

Utterly captivating story; Trico behaves in a surprisingly lifelike fashion; Engaging relationship between boy and Trico; Excellent set-piece moments

Control scheme can be immensely fiddly; Getting Trico to do what you want at times is impossible