Review: After Years in Development, The Last Guardian Is a Thing of Wonder

The Last Guardian is a masterpiece. Not for being the game fans of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus hoped it might become for its seven developmentally fraught years, but because it's so much better than anything I'd imagined possible. Designer-director Fumito Ueda hasn't just crafted a boy's adventure in a Land of Beautiful Things that exemplifies what I love about this medium. In the game, out for Sony's PlayStation 4 Dec. 6, you play as a child who wakes beside an enormous shackled creature in a subterranean lair. The creature's name is Trico, a winged and feathered being that looks a bit like a griffin but without the eagle's beak and a face that's a composite of a cat's, a dog's and rabbit's.