ICO, a game that is as barren as they come, offers a small piece of solace when you reach a save point and a piece of music called Heal kicks in.

PS2 classic Ico is a stark, minimal affair. You hold a girl’s hand, you run around a bit. But it wasn’t always that way! Some recent file examination and translation work has uncovered that there was supposed to be a lot more story and exposition in the game.

Shadow of the Colossus first came out in 2005. Since then, millions of people have played the beloved PS2 game, driven by its lonesome charm, moved by its mysterious ending. But one man never stopped playing, as a result, he's found stuff that the game's creators never intended anyone to see.

One man keeps unearthing hidden, secret parts of Team Ico's games and one of NomadColossus' most recent finds reveals extremely moody beta sections of Ico that didn't make it into the final version. Well worth a look if you love this PS2 classic game.

Although you might not want to. It stars a girl and the robot protecting her. That setup tends to lend itself pretty well to tear-jerking twists. If that's not an issue, The Girl and the Robot might just be the adventure game you're looking for.

Inspired mostly by Medieval architecture and the Middle Ages, fortified stone castles in video games are always among the most exciting locations. These bastions are the keepers of many secrets, hidden cellars and lost knowledge all awaiting the player to find them.

You don't necessarily need noisy, crowded cities to make a section of a game exciting. Uninhabited wastelands, post-apocalyptic worlds, a sea of sand dunes, vast grasslands... These can all be strikingly beautiful places, and capable of telling enticing stories.

With Valentine's Day putting us all in a romantic mood it was our duty to gather some of the defining aaaawww moments video games offer.

Shuhei Yoshida is a Sony dude. The guy oversees all of Sony's software development. When he's not doing that, he's using the internet to tweet and post photos. Photos like this.

Designed by Kotaku reader Marinko Milosevski, these fake movie posters make me want to watch a film based on Shadow of the Colossus. And Majora's Mask. And Super Metroid. And Ocarina of Time. And Ico. And Wind Waker.

Fumito Ueda, the mind behind such classics as ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, left Sony last year much to the dismay of fans awaiting the release of his latest project, The Last Guardian. Since then, there's been little news on his involvement with the project as an outside contractor and indeed how production on the…

Some people view high-definition rereleases of older games as nothing more that an attempt to cash in on nostalgia. Others, like commenter Uncle Jesse here, see them as an opportunity to discover the gems they might have missed.

The Last Guardian is the the PlayStation 3 game that the people who most want PlayStation 3 games want.

Some good stuff in this week's PlayStation store update. We've got full-game downloads for a number of solid titles, including Crysis 2, Rainbow Six: Vegas, and individual downloads for the HD versions of both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. That latter one, in particular, is certainly worth $20, even if you played it…