Loathe as I am to link to link to the Temple Of Videogame Lies, this struck me as mindbogglingly stupid.

Meaningless name. Just seeing/hearing the name tells you nothing about the game.

Unlike, say, Halo. Or WipEout. Or Metal Gear Solid. Or… Yeah, you can’t have a succesful game unless it’s called “Driving Simulator 17” or “Shooting People With Guns And Then Stealing Their Money And Using It To Pimp Your Car” or “Italian Plumber Princess Rescue Simulation”.

Oddball hero. Doesn’t the boy have horns? If so, this game has the same problem that the Oddworld games have, a quirky hero that’s hard to relate to.

Yeah. I mean, I really got into the role of a faceless, nameless space-marine from the future in Halo. Touched me deeply. I felt I could really relate to an upper-class Englishwoman with hyperinflated breasts and a prediliction for ancient treasure in Tomb Raider. I felt deeply emotionally affected when the little fat man with a big nose in dungarees and a red cap ate a mushroom and grew to twice his normal size.

Short game. Probably a victim of rental, and gamers just wanting more for their money

Because everybody loved the way Bungie added extra-long corridors and made you double back on yourself in Halo to artificially lengthen the game. And nobody bought Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, because that single player campaign was just too damned short!

Non-compelling subject. This may be the heaviest anchor. Ico seems to be a generic fantasy, save the girl story without anything buzz-worthy to sell it.

Gran Turismo 4 seems to be a generic racing game; just get to the finish line first, without anything buzz-worthy to sell it. Halo just seems to be a generic first person shooter; just kill all the aliens, without anything buzz-worthy to sell it. Tetris just seems to be a bunch of squares; get lines and they disappear – how boring does that sound?

Point is, you can make any game sound bland. Ico, on the surface, looks like a generic fantasy; fine, lots of games look generic. But, like all great games, it’s got far more depth than it first suggests.

Kid’s game. This ties into the previous point, but it also stands on its own. To Joe Gamer holding the Ico box in his hand, it looks like a game for kids. There is no obvious coolness to the concept.

See that? That’s the Ico box art. Look at all those big-eyed cartoon characters! Look at the zany bubbly writing! Look at the bright primary colours! Look at… Oh. What was your point again?

This article was written by the CEO of 3D Realms. This company has had a game – Duke Nukem Forever (strangely, they chose to avoid the name “Big Sweaty Bloke With A Cigar Shoots Aliens And Goes To Strip Joints”, instead plumping for something much more ambiguous) – in development for what must be getting on for a couple of millennia. Screenshots were being produced as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was walking the earth, this game has been in production for that long. Dinosaurs remember the early magazine previews. Until they actually finish the damn thing and release it, I don’t think he’s actually in much of a position to criticise other people.

And anyway, if, after all this, DNF does turn out to be a commercial failure (and, let’s face it, history does not tell a pretty story – *cough*Daikatana*cough*), he’s going to have egg all over his big, stupid face. And I will laugh all the way back to my PS2 and I will play ICO all over again, because it is a sublime and wonderful gaming experience, and no clueless, mouthy American guy insisting that it was a really bad idea can change that.

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