The team that brought you ICO strikes gold yet again with this much-anticipated offering.

User Rating: 9.1 | Shadow of the Colossus PS2
By zharmad | Review Date:
First off, let me clear one thing up: The correct plural of colossus is colossi OR colossuses. For those who don't know, a colossus is a huge statue, in the tradition of the Colossus of Rhodes. This game comes from the same Sony internal team that brought us the acclaimed ICO. Now these giant building-sized statues are the only enemy you will face in Shadow. There are 16 of them to be exact, with no other enemies in the game. At first, I was skeptical of a game that was effectively a string of boss battles, but those battles are so innovative and engaging that you will find yourself more than involved with the game. Then again, we are talking about a development team that managed to turn what basically amounted to an escort mission into a complete and wonder game that actually makes you care about the characters. While I still care about the characters in this game, they lack the innocent quality that I found so endearing in ICO.
The characters are minimally introduced, with an opening cut scene of the main character riding his horse, Agro, across a mile long bridge, carrying an unidentified bundle that is soon revealed as our damsel in distress. After lying the girl down on an altar, a voice from the heavens begins to speak, explaining that you must battle colossi in order to use there power to restore the girl. The voice explains that if you hold your sword up to the sun it will guide you to the colossus that you need to defeat. With that, you mount your steed and take off.
On the topic of Agro, this will be one of the most frustrating parts of the game. Coming from The Legend of Zelda games, one is used to a fairly responsive mount in the form of Epona. The designers implemented a realistic AI into the mount in this game, making its control somewhat less than responsive. It does improve somewhat with game play; however, the horse still retains a mind of its own. For instance, dismount the horse and leave it too close to one of the colossi, and it will begin rearing and prancing in a frightened manner. When mounting Agro while he’s frightened, it takes almost no time to coax him into a full run, whereas normally it takes almost 15 seconds to get the horse to move out at a decent speed. Getting the horse to stop in any circumstance is a battle in and of itself, as it seems to slow down at the same rate as a locomotive. Also, Agro cannot go off cliffs, so on some narrow expanses, it is often faster to dismount and use the call button to let the AI move him through without getting hung up.
There are two distinct parts to completing every colossus. The first is to find it. They are spread out all over the map in incredibly wonderful and varied terrain. We no longer have just the rainforest type environment of ICO to run around in. This time, we’ve got desert, plains, and forest. The second part of completing the colossus is to find its weak points and attack them. They are strategically place on different parts of the colossus’s bodies.
The game controls feel a bit contrived, and not too natural. This is primarily due to the “grip” button that must be held down to hang onto the colossus. It may have been better to use it as a grab, and then not have to hold down the button. Graphically, the game is gorgeous. Animations and models are fluid, with some minor clipping when it comes to cloth effects. The sound is absolutely to die for. ICO’s wonderful soundtrack pales in comparison to the orchestral score.
The bottom line on this game is that it’s frankly, just great, and would be an excellent addition to anyone’s collection.

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