A beautiful game that is flawless in its flawed style. Evidently, people are still stupid.
Shadow of the Colossus, made as a tie-in to the cult hit ICO, really plays nothing like ICO so you should pretty much ignore that. Their stories tie in, and although the story is brilliant in its simplicity, it can't sell the game considering it can be summed up in a small paragraph.
What can sell this game is... Well, almost everything else.
Gameplay: 10/10
For years, games have relied on boss fights as a standing point. In action games this is where all your skills culminate and come together; the boss fights make or break a game. In many games you would have completely different fights against bosses to what you would against normal enemies; normal enemies often require an excessive use of AoE (Area of Effect) abilities, you might even decide to change your weapons and abilities in games where it applies, taking something that hits in a wide area over a weapon which has clearly superior damage; often, normal enemies will seem more of an endurance affair, mowing down hundreds of them, all the while watching your HP slowly whittle down and hoping you pick up a health-up before it reaches zero.
And always, games have relied on one thing to make an impressive boss; size. Yes, size does matter, because over the years bosses have gotten significantly bigger. Originally they could be just triple your size and you'd be impressed. Beautiful games like Contra began to change all this, approaching aliens that took up as much, if not more, than your entire TV.
Even childish games followed these principles. I specifically remember playing Adventure Island on the Super Nintendo and literally falling off my bed when I saw one of the last bosses, a giant skeleton warrior that took up about 3 screenlengths in height.
Well, Shadow of the Colossus has just kicked everyone else out of the arena and now stands, proudly, its flag in the ground.
You see, Shadow of the Colossus is only bosses. There are no 'mobs', no 'minions', no 'soldiers'. Just 16 bosses.
And they are, with the exception of 2 or 3, pretty much huge.
The whole premise of Shadow of the Colossus, is that you're an insignificant little ant. You're a human, and you don't kill a giant towering hulk of death by equipping some fancy-ass gemstone then running up to it and hitting it with your sword. You also don't kill it by having magic. Surprise, humans don't have magic. This is about as close as you'll get to a realistic simulation about how badly you'd get owned in a real boss fight. If you were very fit, that is.
To kill the various Colossi of this game, you have to find a way to get to their weak spots. Their weak spots usually reside in pretty obvious areas. Their heads, backs, wings, although sometimes they're a little more unusual. Such as their feet. No, underneath their feet. Yeah, good luck with that.
The gameplay of this game really can't be summed up in words, because much like many of the good games I make a point of reviewing, you absolutely must play it. This is the kind of game that you just can't let escape you. Every so often a revolutionary, original game comes out, and this is one of them. The adrenaline rushes you will get from this game are unrivaled. You must play through this game, if only once. Don't worry, it won't take long...
Graphics: 10/10.
Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. The graphical style of ICO was definately interesting due to their strange shadow designs. Many reflections were very shiny, glaringly so, and other places were almost unusually dark. The whole game can often feel like a piece of art, a beautifully drawn canvas that just makes you want to sit and stare at it for hours on end.
I think I probably did a few times. To get to each colossus encounter you'll have to do a bit of travelling using your magical sword that shines in the direction you need to go in under sunlight. Sometimes the Colossus will be right outside your door; other times, you'll have to travel, and get plenty lost, through deserts, jungles, and massive lakes. The whole island you're on is relatively big. It's far from the size you might see in, say, an MMO, but it certainly feels huge, even if, looking back, it isn't.
And every single part of it is beautiful. No matter how far you travel, if you have enough appreciation for virtual beauty then you won't be phased even in the least. Some have considered this game boring, but I have an extremely short attention span, and even I had enough good taste in me to occasionally stop and let my jaw drop at the scenery. Anyone who thinks this game is slow or boring quite obviously needs to go back to Counterstrike or World of Warcraft, because they evidently have no appreciation of anything other than instant action and zero immersion.
Stop and smell the flowers people. Or just go back to your dumb games. Either way.
Sound: 10/10.
Yeesh, another 10. I loved this soundtrack so much I bought it. Much in the style of ICO, the music is very... Well, it's hard to say. Some of the music has a distinctly Eastern feel with various woodwind instruments, although the battle music is definately my favourite, a combination of orchestral violin and tribal percussion... Most of the time. The sound track is fairly varied, although for the most part it's instrumental, orchestral, and really suits the style of the game. Don't go expecting any heavy rock or junk like that, this game is mostly in a more classical style. So if you were hoping for 50 Cent rapping about his tiny wang, then you might want to consider his own game. Much like the rest of this game, if you play Counterstrike you'll most likely appreciate only 30% of this game.
If you do like the sound of classical and over-the-top dramatic orchestral music, then, well, I guess you'll like the music, too.
Story: ?/10
I can't really rank the story in terms of points, nor can I say much about it. You're a hero trying to save/ressurect/awaken some girl, possibly your friend, lover, or sister, and to do so you have to kill Colossi. The whole game has a very NES-like feel to it, with no actual story other than what you make up on your own. In fact I quite felt the whole cathedral area, where for each Colossi you kill, the statue representing them is destroyed, had a destinctly 'First Legend of Zelda game' feel to it, where you're not really told exactly what you're doing or why you're doing it, but you're doing it anyway.
Where it gets complicated is when you tie it in with the story of ICO, which has significantly more elements to it. However, in a similar way to what you might expect from a Hideo Kojima trailer, we're only told about the game in small, and very cryptic doses. I'm quite sure that when the writer of this story (forgive me for forgetting his name) has made enough games, they'll all manage to tie in, but for now, you might want to direct yourself over to the Forums where the overall story has been debated since the game's release.
And that's really the point of it. You come up with your own theories, share them, evolve them. You're now doing something that games, for the last 5 years or so, have really stopped trying to make us do: Think.
Controls: 10/10
AH HAH! That's right, contrary to what everyone says it is not, in fact, the controls that let this game down. In fact the controls are one of the best parts of the game.
You see, in this game, if you run too quickly on an uneven surface, Wanda, the protagonist, may trip over. He may have trouble if you tell him to get off to a running start if he's running down stairs, and he may be a little bit hesitant to jump off a ledge.
Your horse has even more of these traits. Tell it to run in a certain direction and sometimes it just won't feel like it. It might run in another direction, thinking that's what you want it to do, unless you really push that control stick in the opposite direction. It may suddenly feel like veering down towards the forest for a leisurely stroll, and if you're running down a cliffside it sure as hell isn't going to sprint.
Many, even Gamespot themselves, have attributed this to bad controls. If you use just a tiny bit of logic, it's pretty easy to see that this isn't a fault, but absolutely intentional. Much like Assassin's Creed (which surprisingly, Gamespot have been kind to, despite Ubisoft promising to do almost exactly what Shadow of the Colossus did in regards to the character stumbling and hesitating realistically), this only serves to up the immersion, and how much you feel like you actual are Wanda.
But much like the music and the graphics, you actually have to WANT to be in the game for it to take a hold of you. If you sit back with a cynical mind and wait for the game to pull you in, rest assured it will not and you can go and cry in your blog about how the horse refused to do what you wanted it to do.
But if you actually try to get the most out of this game, then you definately will, and will be rewarded heavily for it.
This is what I like about some newer cult games, and why I haven't given up on games entirely. You really have to look for it, in a way you kind of have to work a little bit for it. Gamers with brains are being rewarded with better playing experiences in games like this, Oblivion, and ICO. Keep this stuff coming.
Value: 5/10
No, controls are not the flaw of this game. Value is. 16 Colossi isn't much, and you'll notice that pretty quickly. This is a game you can easily have completed within about 6 hours. Normally that'd get about a 2.
Where the value goes up to a mediocre 5, is when you unlock the Hard Mode of the game. In this mode, most of the weakspots of the Colossi are completely random. You actually have to use that feature of the sword that reveals their weakspot, by shining light on it. And trust me, when you're standing on top of a 100-foot-tall beast that keeps trying to shake you the hell off, that really isn't easy.
I got quite a few solid runthroughs out of hard mode since even fighting the same Colossi three or four times was different, but the problem is that in this game, the main goal of beating an enemy is getting onto its back or head. In easy mode, when you're on the Colossi, that's it, game over, you may as well have won. On Hard mode, while you still have the challenge of finding the weakspots, that's not nearly as much as actually getting on was in the first place. But now, you already know how to get on, so most of the challenge is gone.
So, while the randomized weak spots are a very nice idea for replayability, I was lucky to get 50 hours out of this, and only did because I adored this game. Most people will probably get about 30. And even the people obsessed who spend hours trying to find tricks to beat the Colossi within only a minute or so would have trouble racking up more than 80. So don't expect a 120-hour game like you might get out of Tales of Symphonia or Oblivion. The average player will still only get roughly 30.
Overall: 9/10.
While the value let it down a tad, it's still a masterpiece of a game. Pretty much everything about it will have you dewy-eyed in wonder... At least, that's how it was for me. Just try this game at least once, because it's just one of those revolutionary games that you need to play. Hopefully the much-anticipated Shadow of the Colossus 2, and possibly even more anticipated Shadow of the Colossus Online, will not only rectify the value problem, but make the game even more amazing than it already is.