The Last Guardian – hands-on with PlayStation's most anticipated game

A decade in the making, Fumito Ueda's ethereal adventure is almost in our hands. But does it live up to the hype?

It begins with a flashback - or at least that's what it seems. While children are heard laughing and playing in the background, the camera approaches some sort of golden artefact half buried in the sand. Then, after a credits sequence illustrated with 16th century etchings of mythological monsters, we see a scene familiar to anyone who has been watching the slow development of Fumito Ueda's third game for Sony: a small boy, lying asleep next to a vast dog-like beast.

To be sat in a small demo room hidden away from the hurly burly of the E3 show floor, playing - actually playing - The Last Guardian, seems almost unreal. First previewed at E3 in 2009 and certainly in development for at least two years before that, the game has been a fixture on most wanted lists ever since. Partly it was the heritage of Ueda and his team, previously responsible for the ethereal delights of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus; but partly it was that first trailer, showing a little boy and the huge doe-eyed monster with whom he appeared to have built a symbiotic relationship. Little else was known - and, after a long, troubled development cycle, little else still is.