Please don't hurt me

Game Info.

Genre Action

Publisher/Developer Sony Computer Entertainment/SCEI

Release 10/05

Every here and there, you find a game that sounds too good to be true, and in-fact, turns out terrible (Pokémon Colosseum and XD come to mind). But even more seldom, you'll find a game that sounds too good to be true and turns out fantastic - Nintendo characters beating the crap out of eachother, rolling around a ball that everything sticks to, conducting a male cheer squad to Japanese rock 'n roll. We've all experienced something like this; a game you got really excited for that turned out either terrible or absolutely all it was cracked up to be. How about an action game that consists solely of 16 boss battles? Does it sound too good to be true?
Well, it's not. I mean, it is. Er, it's good, but it's not untrue. Got it?
Shadow of the Colossus is a game I looked forward to very much. When I heard all you did was run around searching for titanic monsters to climb on and destroy, I thought it sounded very unique and interesting. As it turned out, my months of anticipation paid off.

Gameplay
You play as a young man who, in order to have his girlfriend's untimely death reversed, must appease a power-hungry god by destroying the 16 statues that line the chamber of his temple. The trick is, these statues can't be destroyed by mortal hands. They do, however, each have colossal incarnations of themselves roaming the forbidden lands. Destroy the incarnations and the statues are destroyed. Destroy all the statues and you get your girl back. Or do you? We'll have to wait and see.
But there's not much choice. The vast game world features nothing to do BUT to seek out and destroy the colossi. Even though most of the colossi are hundreds of times your size, they are not easy to find by any means. About 50% of your time with the game is taken up just by scouring the wilds for these beasts (which should give an indication for how freaking large the game world is). This world's open fields are tens of times the size of Ocarina of Time's Hyrule Field. An intense feeling of loneliness permeates through every second spent not battling giants. It's really beyond words.
As for the colossal battles, they're like nothing else in action game history. And within that, each colossus is very different from the last. Some are big, some are small. Some are fast, some are slow. Some shoot blasts of energy at you, some ram into you, and some just try to stomp on you with their house-sized feet. All the instruction you ever have for finding and defeating these beasts is given in one or two cryptic sentences, such as "you will not defeat it as you are now". These puzzle aspects keep the game out of the "tap A rapidly" territory so many games in this genre get into. The gameplay is unique, exciting, and a little bit terrifying. All 16 of these boss battles HAVE to rank among the most memorable in gaming history.
9/10

Control
You call your horse with "X", jump and mount the horse with "triangle", hold on to cliffs, ledges, and colossi's hair wih "R1", switch weapons with left and right on the control pad, and command the weapons with "square". It's really an unorthodox control scheme, and it gets confusing very fast. Jumping and grabbing onto things (such as a colossus' back) are the key mechanics of the gameplay and feel more natural than anything else. I can't tell you how many times I've jumped up and down repeatedly beside the horse without actually getting onto it. The collision detection is also pretty terrible.
7/10

Replay Value
It's very hard to put this game down once you get started. There's always the allure of that next colossus. "What did the cryptic message mean by 'tail in the sand, head in the sky'? Is it in the desert? Does it fly?" You've just gotta' get back in and find out. The sense of mystique is just too much to bear.
Once you've beaten the game, you unlock a "time attack" mode which lets you challenge each colossus battle any time you want (without having to go find it first) and try to beat it under a certain time limit. Doing a few of these rewards you with different upgrades that you can use in the main game, such as arrows that shriek, getting the colossus' attention. This is all a great incentive to come back for more, and the entire game is just short enough that it's fun to play again and again.
9/10

Graphics
My initial reaction to the game's visual design was that it looked dry and tired - rechewed fantasy-flavored cud. Then come in the colossi, which look like nothing I've ever seen anywhere in the world. Their unique designs are so much of what makes this game great. The dramatic use of colors and lighting really transports you into the world better than any other aspect of the game. In the open sunlight of the vast expanses between the colossi's lairs, you really get a feeling of total freedom; in the shade, you really feel like you're under the shadow of something life-threatening, and it's likely that it's a colossus (hence the title). All this cinematic glory is also pulled off without the use of pre-rendered FMV cutscenes. The graphics definitely shows signs of technical weakness, such as heavy flickering, a chronically slow framerate, and scenery popping up everywhere, but for the aged PS2 to pump all this out at at all is remarkable - a mark of solid engineering on the developers' part.
9/10

Sound
The soundtrack is just satisfactory. It pulls off the "drama" thing, but none of it's very memorable. Extra points for the awesome made-up language the voice-overs speak.
8/10

Overall
They really had some fantastic ideas when they made this game. It's an example of the kind of product that isn't trying so damn hard to force having a great level of depth to it (as I feel Final Fantasy games are highly guilty of doing) but achieves it anyway by taking one or two core concepts and exploring the hell out of them. I appreciate that a lot. It's a very Japanese approach to action gaming and a welcome take on the genre. I'd love to see a sequel, although that may be spreading the concept just a bit too far. As it is, Shadow of the Colossus has been one of my favorite PlayStation experiences yet and high up on my favorite games of 2005.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10
=Amazing=
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