Shadow of The Colossus is the kind of game that is unmatched in originality...
Shadow of The Colossus puts you in the shoes of an unnamed guy who goes to a far off land that humans have long deserted to a temple where he puts his fallen love and consults an ethereal being. This being explains that to bring her back to life, he must slay sixteen Colossi. There’s no interaction with any other human. It’s just you, your trusty horse Agro, the spirit and the 16 giants. This is possibly one of the most epic storylines in a game and really has the players grow to like all of the few characters they can interact with.
The gameplay in Shadow of The Colossus is simple, but is unlike any other game. First, you must get to the Colossi, which can take pretty long and is actually pretty fun because you will have the occasional “platformer” sequence to climb up cliffs and what not to get to the giant and exploring the vast, seemless, but empty world of the game is fun and adds to the lonely atmosphere that makes the game great. Then it comes to taking down these mountainous creatures. First you must expose the Colossi’s weakness by getting away from it and shining light on it. Then you must scale it and stab it in that weakpoint. Trying to get on one of them and killing them is a mix of platforming and puzzle solving, but the sense of danger and the fact that the beast could kill you extremely easily makes the atmosphere as intense as any great action game. At first the Colossi will be easy to get up, but soon you will find yourself wondering “how the hell do I even get on that thing” such as when the Colossi are flying, underwater or about 150 feet tall, which after the first few will be pretty common. Scaling them also requires quick thinking. Your character obviously can hold on to the Colossi forever, and the Colossi obviously doesn’t appreciate your crawling on it, so in the middle of your climbs you must seek refuges on the Colossi own armor to hide when it gets angry or when you’re about to slip. There’s really nothing wrong with the gameplay in Shadow of The Colossus, but on top of that, it’s also a game that I garuntee will be unlike any other game you’ve played before.
The graphics in Shadow of The Colossus are as amazing as its gameplay. It offers a huge, great looking world that has zero load times and pretty much everything in the game is epic in scale. The Colossi and the environment overall are mind-blowingly huge and the models and animation are also very done and the game has an amazing artistic style.
The sound is awesome too. The music has an orchestral score that you’d find in any AAA Hollywood film, but also when there’s a lack of music, there’s almost a lack of sound. You will pretty much only be hearing you, your horse and the Colossi, but again, the aim of the developers was to have the game’s atmosphere be very lonely and for what few sound effects the game does have, everything sounds great. My one problem is the lack of voice-overs, but that really doesn’t matter too much at all.
Shadow of The Colossus won’t take a huge amount of time to beat, but every minute of it will be fun and it is well worth playing again because it’s just so amazing.
All in all, Shadow of The Colossus is one of the best, one of the most epic and easily the most original game of this generation. Shadow of The Colossus pushes games beyond just entertainment, it’s entertainment and art put together and is a game that is enjoyable no matter what genre you like.