I live with a very big cat. He likes to sprawl across my lap when I play games. I often wonder what's going on behind his big wide eyes. So perhaps it's not surprising I fell so hard for Trico, the house-sized, big-eyed feline in The Last Guardian. Trico is obviously fake – he can fly and shoot lightning from his tail.

It's not the level design or even the gameplay, which are both compelling enough. As a long-time gamer who has fond memories of playing Ico quite a few years ago and then beating the spiritual successor to that release called Shadow of the Colossus in 2005 (all created by designer Fumito Ueda and his team with a focus on forming an emotional bond), I've kept up on this latest project. The Last Guardian features a young boy climbing around on castles and coaxing a giant dragon-like creature named Trico into helping him escape. The interchange between the boy and the creature is what held my attention. It serves as a good lesson in how to make AI in a chatbot, a digital assistant or within an app or any piece of software.

This is not a drill. This is not a fake news story. The Last Guardian is finally available. Seven years after it was first revealed as a PlayStation 3 title during the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the Sony adventure game will make its long-awaited debut for the PlayStation 4 on Tuesday. There is lots of reason for excitement for The Last Guardian, which stars a young boy and a dog-like beast named Trico. The game comes from revered game designer Fumito Ueda, best known for classic action adventure titles Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, considered among the best games during the PlayStation 2 era.

This is the fairy tale opening of Fumito Ueda's heavily anticipated game, 10 years in the making and only the forty-six year old Japanese director's third major work. But then, of course, the first two – Ico and Shadow of Colossus – are legendary. Film director Guillermo del Toro once described them as the medium's sole masterpieces. No wonder anticipation was so high. Like its predecessors, this is the story of young boy – this time, one whose actions are narrated by an elderly man looking back on his former journey.

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.

In 1994, long before the celebrated video-game designer Fumito Ueda went to work for Sony, he took part in a competition that the company sponsored for young artists. Having made it through the opening rounds, Ueda, then a recent graduate of the Osaka University of Arts, used the thousand-dollar allowance Sony gave him to create an installation in a shopping complex in Yokohama. He set up a small cage, the kind a pet owner might buy for a parakeet, and filled it with mounds of soil. Then he cut claw marks into the bars and positioned a sign in front of the cage explaining that it was home to a subterranean cat. Whenever a mall-goer approached, Ueda, observing from nearby, would push a button on a remote control, activating a pair of motors that kicked dirt into the onlooker's face.

The video game world is vastly different now than it was in 2007, when Fumito Ueda and his team began working on The Last Guardian. Nintendo dominated the hardware market with the 3DS and Wii, while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 trailed by millions in console sales. Assassin's Creed, BioShock and Mass Effect debuted, kicking off a fresh round of long-running AAA franchises. Today, we have the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro, and Nintendo is attempting to rebound from slow sales of the Wii U. Day-one patches are normal, pre-order DLC bundles are standard practice, we're on the ninth Assassin's Creed and, sometimes, indie games are indistinguishable from AAA titles. This is the brave new world that Ueda will release The Last Guardian into on December 6th.