Shadow of the Colossus (2005)

Very very gorgeous and enriching experience. Something about the way Ueda does stories and worlds and characters is just so good, it just feels so mystical yet real and makes you feel like you're really connected to it all. The amount of love I felt for the horse at the end of the game is proof enough. The entire end sequence in general was just so emotional and lovely.

I think my biggest gripe with this and the only other Ueda game I've played (Ico) is the gameplay aspect of it... As a whole the entire experience just never feels right to me, things feel very clunky, floaty, and just altogether make me feel disconnected and frustrated at what's happening. You do get used to this throughout the game and start noticing it less, but it's still something that ends up feeling like the biggest flaw in what is otherwise an incredible experience. I also did not enjoy every colossi, which is fine I guess, but I think some of them either felt overly complicated in what you had to do to the point that I genuinely wondered how someone would know what to do on a blind playthrough, and some of them just felt tedious in terms of the entire setup you'd have to repeat to progress through the battles.

Idk, it's just something I've never felt that enjoyable from these games, and which makes the entire playthrough just less special. Still, I love the ideas, concepts, worlds, characters, and stories told in these games, and imo that's enough.

Shadow of the colossus is a stunning and beautiful game. You're alone in a deserted atmospheric world where you encounter massive colossi on which you have to climb to defeat them.

The impressive size and majesty of the colossi within the landscape and the tranquile, melancholic solitariness of the open world are the usps of this game. It had a huch influence on indie game devs as it's a game that's played mainly for its beauty, not its gameplay, sth. quite daring and new back then I suppose.

That's cool but also a little bit of the problem with this game. The two basic game mechanics get very tedious once you start to repeat them. Climbing the colossi up first is fun as you have to find out how, but then, after falling down again and again having to climb up again and again it's just simply annoying without being any challenge whatsoever as soon as you find out how and you just need to repeat. It's overall a bit repetitive.

Also exploring an open world which is basically empty is a very questionable game design decision. Finding the colossi is supposed to be a riddle, as they give you some cryptic advice for where to find them. The landscape is beautiful and atmospheric, but looking for them gets annoying. I think finding them in a pair of 3 or 4 for instance would've been good enough. This way, it's obligatory to use a guide to find them.

Ah yeah and then of course the camera control. That almost destroyed the whole thing. Almost.

Shadow of the Colossus is touted as one of the venerated PS2 classics, or really one of the standards of all Playstationdom. I knew it was supposed to be good, but it never caught my interest enough for me to sit down and play it. The remaster was one of the free games on PS Plus this month, so I figured I’d see if it’s all what it’s cracked up to be.

The game is nice to look at. I don’t know what the original colossuses looked like, but the remaster really makes them feel like hulking ancient beasts. They’re a mix of fur and stone and while they are inspired by real creatures, they feel just foreign enough to be magical. You do fight 2-3 minotaurs that look relatively the same, they just have different weapons. Even after fighting through 5, 10, 15 colossuses I was always intrigued by their design. I’m already a little spooked by the deep sea, and the fight with the sea serpent where you just see it’s undulating body and runner lights underneath you was sufficiently creepy.

I didn’t realize this game was an open world ordeal. The world you inhabit, the “Forbidden Lands” is a mix of biomes. You ride across open fields, sand dunes, mountain valleys, and dense jungles. All of them look beautiful and help to set the mood for whatever fight you’re about to walk into. The world also doesn’t seem heavily based on any particular influence. It’s more a mashup of Greek, Celtic, and Mayan, it gives the world and colossuses a unique ancient feeling. That being said, I’m not totally sold on the open world. It’s a lot of riding around an empty world and getting lost in winding paths. Your sword has a compass ability, but it points you directly at where the next fight is, not the best path to take. I don’t mind a little bit of exploring, but you can follow the sword down the wrong set of chasms and end up backtracking to find the right path. I get maybe the long rides between fights is to help with pacing, slow the game down and give us a moment to reflect, but by the end I wanted a fast travel ability.

The music is a dynamic, orchestral soundtrack. It simmers out while you’re riding across the lands and swells when you’re dangling off the side of a colossus. There’s also a change in the score from a darker, imposing tune when you start the fight to a more bright, heroic tune when you start winning the tussle. In a game with little to no dialogue, good music is important, and this game has it.

So, the story, I wouldn’t’ve been surprised if you told me this game was based off some lesser known Greek myth. It has all the hallmarks of a mythology story; you play as a kid in love who takes his dead lover to the sacred lands to plead for her soul. A god commands you to kill the 16 colossus and in return he will resurrect your lover. You have a magic sword and trusty horse, but you aren’t a warrior by any means. There’s no fancy combo moves you pull off; your only attack is a simple stab or swing. The clothing of your character, the Wanderer, has some Greek influences, again giving this game a mythological feel. The only character who speaks more than a few words is the invisible god, giving you cryptic descriptions of the colossuses and vague hints when you get stumped. The light dialogue makes the whole experience feels serene. As you go through the story you start picking visual storytelling hints that you may not be a great hero. Every colossus emits black smoke that shoots into the Wanderer and while some of the colossuses are aggressive towards you, most seem to just be going on their way and only acknowledge you as a little gnat, again enforcing that ‘Am I the hero?’ feeling.

The game ends, so spoiler blurs for this 15 year old game, with the reveal that the god you’ve been ‘working’ for is an evil god and the colossuses were magic seals that kept him at bay. With them dead, he possesses you and goes on a rampage right as the leaders of your village show up. The old wizard banishes you to the other world and leaves you stranded in the Forbidden Lands. Through all this your lover hadn’t been resurrected yet and I was curious if the game was gonna leave that ambiguous or not. She does end up coming back to life and finds you have been transformed into a devil baby. The game was doing so well playing it straight, then with that weird baby ending I had a ‘yep, there’s that weird Japanese stuff.’

The gameplay is where I have some hitches with this game. It’s showing its age with the controls. While the grabbing and climbing mechanics felt janky at first, I was able to adapt to them. Still, I had a few moments where I missed a ledge because of the grab mechanics acting up. Fighting the colossuses is less like a boss battle and more like a puzzle. Just getting on the colossuses is a trick. As you take down more colossuses, the puzzles get harder, by the end I had to look up a walkthrough for some of them ‘cause they got a little moon logicy. Once you get on the colossus, then it’s just a physics game of trying to stay on top of it while conserving your stamina. The colossuses will try their hardest to shake you off and Wanderer bounces around the fur and stonework like a pinball. There are no other enemies in the game. I figured this being a video game you would have minions to fight along the way, probably those shadow people, but no. This game is trying to be more an experience than a gamey game.

There’s also controls for when you’re on horseback. Now, at the end of the story, your horse bites it in a big emotional moment, but I hated those horse controls so much that I wasn’t as torn up about it. You less ride the horse and more drive the horse, steering it with the left analog stick and accelerating with the triangle. Argo, the horse, doesn’t like to jump off even the slightest incline and there are a couple narrow land bridges you must cross, and Argo takes wide turns. When he smacks against a wall, it takes a bit to get him reoriented and heading the right way.

All in all, while some of the controls have aged poorly, this game is definitely worth the praise it gets. It has cinematic moments and feels more like an experience, but not to the David Cage level. The game is pretty to look at and you get long stretches of staring at scenery. I’m pretty sure I was the last person on Earth not to play this game, but if you somehow haven’t also played this it’s worth it. I got it for free, but I’d be okay paying for it and now I'm tired of saying colossuses.

Simply put, it is a game that needs to be played to be experienced. It's absolutely gorgeous, one of the best looking games I've played with atmosphere to boot.

The game drips atmosphere, from the dilapidated visage of the ruined lands, to the many gameplay aspects that make Wander into a true ant vs gods, to the subtle ways that Wander decays as your progress through the game.

The Colossi feel immense and powerful, every time I faced one I got a feeling of "oh crap, this one might be it," and every time I beat one I felt gratified.

The gameplay is quite simple, but very fun. It basically boils down to "climb Colossus, stab blue glowy bit until dead." That isn't to say that it is as easy as all that. Each Colossus has a certain trick to it, almost like a Zelda boss. Half the fun is figuring out how to get to the stabby Bluepoint (heh). Climbing on the Colossi gives a feeling of scale I've never felt in any action video game before or after playing this game. Simply put, it is quite breathtaking.

The game does not feature a wealth of content. It consists of the 16 Colossi battles and the end. It does have some easter eggs such as the hidden garden, little glowy collectibles, and bonus modes such as the mirror world and time attack. You can also kill lil lizards but you are a bad person if you do. But the meat and bones of the game is the 16 Colossi battles and the travel to get there. The world is gorgeous, but there isn't much else to do besides travel through it.

Normally I would consider that a negative but in this game, it adds to the atmosphere and minimalistic design. The game features no real language, instead using a fantasy language to add to the alien, isolating feel of the land around you.

The story is not very complex but it is well told and heartfelt and really gives a sense of a miniscule candle held aloft in a sea of darkness. It's a story about love and the sacrifices one boy makes for it.

That is, however, not to say that this game is perfect, because it does have some minor, very minor issues. Sometimes the game is very obtuse. It doesn't hold your hand, but it isn't hard. The only time that it really really got me was at the end when there's a certain jump you can only make with your horse, but nothing tells you that and there were no other jumps that could only be made by the horse. It would be a one and done issue, but your can very clearly almost make this jump.

This particular jump is at the very farthest point from the spawn point in the middle of the map. The game does not give you any checkpoints besides the ones at the start of the boss battles. So the three times I tried to make this I had to ride all the way back, which took a good 3 or 4 minutes, and kill myself again until I eventually figured it out.

I have never played the original PS2 game, but from what I have read, this is about as faithful a remake (with some modern conveniences, such as the controls and the ability to manually save whenever, not to mention the updated UI) as can be. To that I absolutely applaud Team Ico for managing to produce this wonderful game on the PS2 and for Bluehole for treating this classic with the respect it deserves.

Although it has its technical flaws and camera issues, this is one of those games that impressed me both artistically and with its gameplay. It's not colorful but it has an appealing color palette that's really appropriate for its world. It instills a sense of mystery and isolation. It somehow manages to be compelling while defying conventional video game design rules.

There are only giant boss fights with no little enemies to stand in your way before them. The only challenge before the bosses is simply finding them in the large open area. The bosses themselves are like puzzles. I still remember being really frustrated by the serpent like boss in the sand only to realize that the camera changes your view when you pull out your bow and arrow while riding on the horse. Before that random discovery I had no idea how to beat it.

The futility in the ending is also very interesting and open-ended. This is an intriguing game in many aspects and is a great example of minimalism in game design.

F••• this game and it's stupid f•••ing controls and s•••ty f•••ing camera and those stupid f•••ing geysers and that unaimable f•••ing bow and the f•••ing innovative (if occasionally inconsistent and frequently f•••ing frustrating) design and the f•••ing world that's even cooler for being empty and especially that last F•••ING boss and his f•••ing fireballs and again with the stupid f•••ing controls and s•••ty f•••ing camera that made me fall half a dozen f•••ing times and die twice, and f••• that goddamn ending that made me get the feels, especially when that stupid f•••ing horse came back. This is a game for insane people and I'm never f•••ing playing it again, especially not on f•••ing "MIRRORED WORLD MODE," FOR F•••S SAKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU F•••ING PEOPLE.

And f••• this f•••ing markup language for making me have to be so f•••ing precise with my censoring lest I accidentally format my text instead. (EDIT: something changed and my precise censoring got f•••ed up so I just changed all the * to • like I should have in the first place.)

Also, this is unrelated, but since I didn't finish The Witcher 3 and don't plan to, I won't be writing a seperate review for it, so I'll just say here that it's a 2-star game that's not even interesting enough to be frustrating. And yes, I did play the f•••ing Bloody Baron (or whatever his stupid name is) storyline and it's stupid, it's all stupid.

I feel a lot better now.

It's a masterpiece. Storytelling is perfect--maybe the best character development I've ever seen with essentially no dialogue at all. The PS4 remake looks absolutely amazing.

Can't say it's perfect given the often frustrating controls. Controls needed to be much tighter given the time-sensitive platforming at every turn. I ended up getting stuck at certain moments and having to continuously come back and try again, not because I couldn't solve the puzzle but because the buttons and joystick went into business for themselves. Maybe that's by design, which I would respect, but it still makes the experience less enjoyable.

Other than that, absolutely perfect. So glad I finally played it.

Recently brought the PS4 remaster of this and all I can say is that there’s a reason this is considered one of the all time greats.

Like a ten hour rendition of a Japanese fairy tale, simplistic gameplay and beautiful visuals (especially the remaster, which is easily one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever played).

My only criticism would be that some of the movement and controls feel a little wonky in 2018...but that’s a minor gripe. This game is otherwise perfect art.

I'm embarrassed to say I've bought Shadow of the Colossus three times, but only finished the most recent PS4 remaster. This was never the game's fault: The PS2 and PS3 releases coincidentally arrived at times of my life where events distracted me entirely from gaming.

The reason I've continued to return to the title is that it's just so focused in its vision. The desolate yet intriguing world, the straightforward gameplay, the spartan narrative, they all establish a consistent tone and momentum that's incredibly unique in the gaming landscape and very, very compelling. It's the sort of game that pulls in both the player and anyone else in the room who happens to glance at the screen.

It isn't flawless. The optional, easily missed collectibles feel a little under-developed. I've never found the smaller colossi as satisfying as the rest. Occasionally the game's minimalist approach leaves the player in the dark (sometimes literally, depending on your brightness settings). But the fact that I'm resorting to such nitpicking for a title originally developed 13 years ago is a testament to how great this game truly is.

I hate the controls. The updated graphics look nice but the character still flails around weirdly.

Also, I'm an incredibly impatient person. Waiting the the colossi to move their slow bodies into the right position for me to kill them is honestly torture. I think I got to colossus #10. I'm not sure if I'll finish this one...though I am curious about how this whole resurrection scheme is going to backfire on the guy.

So, I’ve got some strong feelings about Colossus 16. I won’t go into too much detail yet, as Wander is currently dangling from an arm after I paused the game to put the kids to bed.

I’ll spoil individual mechanics once I’ve completed the game, but the issue making me angry now could boil down to bad lighting. I’ve missed a few key jumps because the lighting of the Colossus is so poor. I can’t think of another time the weather effects caused me to fail like this (even on Colossus 10 in the sandstorm). The cost of failure isn’t brutal, but it’s frustrating to fail and lose ground multiple times because some dark foreground fur is not distinguished from some fur a little ways back.

Maybe I’ll feel differently once I’ve completed it, but now I’m upset the final battle didn’t feel as solid as the others (save for Colossus 11, which has the torch pickup mechanic I still hate).

I’m 2/3 through now and have only run into one annoying (but manageable) mechanic and one mechanic that was implement an extremely unfriendly way. Even when reproducing it, knowing how to do it, I shook my fist at the developer.

Besides those, this game is everything I thought it would be. A friend recommended it years ago on the PS2 and I’ve waited until now to give it a go. It’s beautiful, thrilling, a little tricky, and mildly depressing, which is just how I like them.

Play this game. Just play it now. Don't even read anything, don't read or watch any gameplay videos or reviews. Just buy it on PSN and play it NOW.

Okay I should probably actually review the game or that would be unprofessional. If you're here wondering what the fuss is about, SotC is an action adventure game by Team ICO, the developers of the acclaimed PS2 title ICO. If you have any interest in art or music at all, I would highly recommend this game. The environments, landscape, and atmosphere are just haunting like something out of a Ghibli movie.

The soundtrack is one of THE BEST in video game history, the symphony pushed the limits of what VGM could be. The gameplay is ROCK SOLID. Each Colossus has a wicked design and each has complex AI and unique and fun ways to defeat each one. This game does everything to make the player feel like they are actually fighting GIANTS and are incredibly cinematic.

The story is ambiguous and mysterious, keeping details subtle and the ending, OH BOY the ending is emotional and thought-provoking and even kinda ties in with ICO.

So that is what is good about the game, but what kinda sucks is that while the world is cool and open, it is very empty. There is very little to do between boss fights other than hunt lizards and pick fruit, which isnt a HUGE problem, but kinda bothers me.

Also, some fights can be stupidly long because the colossi might not even move a muscle and the player will STILL NOT be able to hold on to get a good hit. This is a HUGE problem if you are playing the HD remaster time attack modes. The 3rd Colossus Hard Time Attack was near impossible (but I did it :P).

Other than those small issues the game is flawless, epic, grand, and a triumph in gaming.