Shadow of the Colossus

“that place…began from the resonance of intersecting points…they are memories replaced by ens and naught and etched into stone. blood, young sprouts, sky–and the one with the ability to control beings created from light…in that world, it is said that if one should wish it, one can bring back the souls
of the dead…but to trespass upon that land is strictly forbidden.”

Ever since I originally got into the RPG scene that I have since abandoned, I have pined for a game of this nature. A variety of games have had to fight enemies that are significantly larger than you, but it is always restricted so you are only ever fighting a small aspect of the whole. That is not so in this game. You go around with your horse Argo through and empty world with a sword, and a bow. For references purporse, I threw up a scale shot of a boss battle. I have arrows pointing both myself, and Mr. Snuggles. Granted I know that these creature actually have “proper names” but they are never given in the game, so I was forced to come up with my own.

There are two basic stats in the game: health, and stamina. Basically, your health deals with taking damage, but it pretty much rapids replenishes so you do not have to worry about it much. Your stamina is depleted by holding on to things, and climbing. This is one of the interesting aspects of the game, because you have the climb around the creatures, and they shake like hell to try to get you off. So, you have to be careful, because if your stamina is fully depleted and it shakes, you will go flying. So, you not only have to figure out how to navigate the colossi, you also have to find points on them to rest. Each Colossus battle is a puzzle in itself. Equip with your limited tools, and he provided environment you must go through a process of trying to determine what to hit on the beast, and how to get to that point to hit it. But, when you find that magical seal, and you plunge your sword into it, it is a very gratifying felling.

The basic story of the game is that you are a “wanderer” who travels to the cursed lands because he understood that it was possible to the restore the life of a person. Apparently, some chick that apparently meant a hell of a lot to him died (they say she was sacrificed) for whatever reason. After performing a forbidden spell to awaken the spirits of the temple, they inform him that he must destroy the 16 idols of the temple in order for her life to be restored. In order to destroy the idols, he must kill the colossi. That is pretty much it. The ending is a bit crazy, but still more interesting that most I have seen lately.

In general, the colossi battles are really fun. There were a couple that I hated, pretty much because I had difficulty either figuring out how to do something, or getting Argo to cooperate. If they just removed the creature as GDMF-no-good-piece-of-S. I’m sure everyone can figure that one out. Basically, it was kind of like shelled creature, I guess I would call it a tortoise. Anyhow, it was awful. It took me longer to beat it than any other colossus (including the final one).

Unfortunately, there are several issues that prevent this game from obtaining greatness. Firstly, the most obvious is that it is a PS2 game. I am not sure why such an ambitious game was made on the weakest system available, but it was, and it shows. What would otherwise be beautiful environments suffer from framerate issues, jaggies, color gradienting (made up word = bonus points), etc… Just the standard PS2 stuff. Also, there were a few control problems, though I think this is also mostly just a PS2 problem, since the analog sticks are so bag. However, there are some lagginess issues, and camera fighting. The camera also has a life of its own. Perhaps the most irritating thing is that when you go underwater the camera just freaks out and shots all over the place, so it is very difficult to move around. Particularly in one of the battles that takes place in lake.

Despite all the problems, this game definitely gets my recommendation. In the not to distant future I plan on beating it on Hard difficulty, and then trying to set some good times in the time trials. I think that this game will have some good replay-ability, because there are no levels, and no pointless repetitive battles with meaningless characters. Also, the game is only $40 retail. One of the best bargains in gaming.