[Intrepid Homoludens]

....if you actually possess even the suggestion of adventuring in you, you'll notice games like ICO as well. ICO, simply put, is sublime, a masterpiece of deceptively simple design, expansive atmosphere, and depth of emotional resonance. Per se, it is not an adventure game (it is filled with 'physical' demands - action and timed sequences requiring dexterity and reflex), yet it contains extremely high concentrations of what makes adventure games so potent. I'd even venture to say that ICO is fecund with the power of many adventure games distilled into one, and for that I argue that ICO is forthright a kind of true adventure game, for its minimalist, laconic, yet sheer emotional conveyance of character, story, challenges, and discovery. Ask anyone who has played it what they remember most about it, and they will most likely not talk about the 'awesome action' or 'cool gameplay' or even 'nice graphics', but will instead ejaculate such adjectives as 'magical', 'emotional', or 'breathtaking'. ICO, in its idiosyncratic way, is an adventure game incarnate.

The Cold Hotspot part 1 - Written in stone?

<-- pimp

I think games like ICO (and Beyond Good & Evil, etc.) demonstrate how insistently we think about game categorizations primarily (only?) in terms of gameplay style to the point where it could just become a technicality, preventing us from truly discovering these games for all they perceivabely can be, for all they can offer us. The story in ICO, imo, is so simple and unforced in its narration, but at the same time trumps most any adventure game story I've played thus far in style and design; it surpasses them in emotional impact.

In all honesty, I'm actually glad that ICO doesn't give a damn about arbitrary or even historically epistemological notions of 'adventure game', lest it be strangled by those notions.