Shadow of the Colossus pushes PS2 to its limits and by doing that it provides a fantastic gaming experience.
You play as young man who brings his beloved woman’s body to some kind of temple in a hope to revive her. However in order to do that you have to kill 16 Colossus. You understand that after some voice tells you that from above. By chance you have the right sword which can be used against them. Lucky you. So without any hesitations you climb on your horse, whose name is Argo by the way, and ride away.
Well not exactly, I should explain here. With the sword that you have you can find where the Colossuses are, simply by lifting the weapon up when equipped it will direct you with some kind of ray to the right location. In total there are 16 of them and you can’t choose with who you want to fight as there is only one foe available at a time. In order to slay your enemy you have to find the weak spot where you can thrust in your sword. But before that your hero has to climb Colossus and by holding the sword search for those weak parts. They will give themselves away by shining brightly once you are at close range. The number of spots differs from one to three and even more depending on what stage of the game you are and also on the difficulty level you are playing at. Obviously as you progress it becomes harder as there more of them plus the enemies are cleverer and you have to find the way to climb those huge dudes, here the puzzle focus comes to full use. It isn’t that easy to remain on the Colossus as they constantly try to throw you down by shaking their body. Those battles are so cool that feel adrenaline rush inside you. They provide awesome challenge. One thing that might annoy you at the beginning is the camera which doesn’t always gives you the best angle but once you get used to it won’t bother you much. Another thing you should know is that there is basically nothing between boss battles. The whole gameplay is about you getting to destination on your horse and killing Colossus. Nothing else really but believe me each battle is unique experience and they are very satisfying. You will be forced to use not only your button mashing skills but also your head. From the technical point of view the game is top notch. The graphics are great and the Colossus look fantastic thought the world looks a bit grey and there slight problems with frame rate but nothing too serious. The audio is superb, the music is beautiful and the effects are excellent. The whole presentation is top class and the story is probably the best I encountered so far on PS2 This game manages to capture your imagination by giving you something totally original and also by telling great tale of love and death. No question, it will inspire other developers to create something as original and beautiful but how many will succeed, not many I can assure you. There will be more top games but nothing will come close to Shadow of the Colossus as it is an absolute masterpiece and evidence of what games are capable of in terms of story telling, originality and top production values. In other words it is a classic and every PS2 owner should play, you will miss a lot if you don’t.