The apotheosis of a man in the name of love comes at the price of sixteen Colossi.
- Some stupidly long and tiresome exposition which sets up the main villain and fills our hero with the burning flame of intrinsic motivation to crush said villain.
- The mandatory cycle of town, dungeon, boss repeated several times. Plus NPC's and other random fights with enemies.
- Big epic conclusion with a final battle and a usually dumb cutscene.
Team ICO then dishes out Shadow of the Colossus (SotC), a new type of adventure game. SotC shatters all expected elements and mechanics of adventure games. Dark fantasy and high-end adventuring have never been in such a harmonious hybrid before. Everything is necessary and nothing is superfluous. So, essentially, the game is basically just 16 boss battles, that's it.
It opens up with some dude, no name, no introductory scrolling text, and no wise shaman hermit telling the backdrop or anything, just some dude. He's on his horse, named Agro, and is carrying a body. He reaches a temple/shrine of some sorts, places the body on a raised platform. It's a dead female and our hero has come to this land to desperately try and save her. An ominous deity realizes that the sword you hold is an ancient relic and tells you to go kill 16 Colossi in order to restore the chick. So yeah, dude saving a chick, awesome, let's go.
Whenever you're in the sunlight you can raise your sword. It will create a beam of light that gets sharper and narrower when it's pointing in the direction of the Colossi you are searching for. As you gallop on your horse in the direction of the Colossi you will meet nothing… save a few turtles and birds and other harmless wildlife. It's just you, Agro and the geography. Really, I'm not joking, there are no towns, no dungeons, no enemies, no scripted scenes, no mini-games, no peasants asking you to help them retrieve their missing cows… none of that bilge. Just you and your trusty stead hunting down Colossi, the way it should be.
When you finally find a Colossus, you'll be floored. Sure they aren't the biggest enemies in gaming history but the way they are presented and their designs, they are definitely among the best foes ever. Colossi are the physical manifestation of 16 idols in the shrine/temple where the chick is. Think of a stone idol from an ancient civilization, then bump it up in size by a lot, transform it into a living being but the transformation didn't go smoothly. Colossi have pieces of what looks like rubble from buildings and other such elements integrated in them. It's like a stone bridge tried to become a giant, but the morphing process went awry. The asymmetrical and imperfections of the Colossi designs only serve to make them more memorable.
How they are introduced makes them even more impressive. One Colossus has you traveling through a meandering valley in the dark, then a small forest, and finally you reach a lake. The music cuts out and all is silent. In the middle of the lake is a huge platform reaching high up, you must dismount Agro and swim. As you swim you feel uneasy, unprotected and nervous. There is a narrow spiraling pathway that leads up to the top of the platform. After you traverse it and do a few jumps you are on the top. There is the Colossus, it's just sitting there, it sees you and gets up… and so commences the fight. They truely are monstrosities, yet magnificent and marvelous at the same time.
Then you have to kill them. Generally this will involve you literally climbing up and onto the Colossi and finding their weak points, which are these bright blue glyphs. Stabbing the weak points will take a chunk off their health meters; usually there are two weak points on a Colossus and you'll have to find both to finish it off. Oh yeah it sounds simple, find giant blue spot, stab it a few times, do it again for the other spot, voila, dead Colossi.
It's not. The Colossi will make itself difficult to climb, usually you'll have to lure it into crouching or something so you can jump and grab that tuft of coarse hair on it's thigh and start climbing. Then once you finally 'mount' it, it will buck and sway and you'll be totally hopeless up there. All you can do is hold down the R1 button and hold on for dear life. You're 'grip' meter will diminish as you climb and are tossed about, but as long as it has some juice left in it you'll hang on tightly. Don't worry though your arsenal isn't limited to just a sword, you also have a bow… and that's it. Oh yeah and you can only shoot the bow while stationary, even better.
There is nothing, I repeat there is nothing out in the game market that captures such intensity and majesty like fighting a Colossus. When you're hanging onto the back on a giant Colossus and it shakes itself like a wet dog, the camera sways frantically, some light motion blur convolutes everything and the hero is being shaken like a ragdoll, wow, there's nothing like it. Then the music kicks into this grand spirit-lifting tempo whenever you're on a Colossus and, geez, the whole scene is just absolutely astounding. Also you fight Colossi in relatively flat areas, so there's no climbing a tower and then jumping on it, no way, you got to get on top the old fashioned way.
Every time you stab a Colossus you feel it, you feel the brutality, the almost sheer cruelty of the action. The moment your blade penetrates it will cry out in pain and its animalistic reactionary instincts are practically tangible. You'll connect with the Colossus right there and almost understand what it's going through, it's that vivid. Then when you finally defeat a Colossus after an epic struggle, the death animation will hit you every time. Such a mysterious and grand creature dieing by your hand, is very touching. It is really something to see a Colossus topple over; seeing a geyser of bodily fluid and blood spewing out of its weak points, hearing its horrible groan of pain and witnessing it crash into the ground with a thunderous boom.
Shadow of the Colossus is a journey that if you choose to take will be unique and memorable. Every Colossus is special and requires a different strategy to defeat, not all of them are humanoid either; some are beasts of the air and fly for example. Sure it has a handful of minor flaws like a poor framerate, sometimes-glitchy grab detection and overall lack of direction. But nothing detracts from the joy of the hunt, the intensity of the battle and the remorse of the kill.