So when I was reevaluating my thoughts on Ico, I remembered I had the HD edition on PS3 and I was having such a fun time going through the game I decided that a new playthrough of Shadow of the Colossus was in order. It never moved on my list, but it was still great to reaffirm for myself why I placed it so high. his is such a unique and interesting title, that despite some of it's flaws, just wins you over by the experience it gives you.
Shadow of the Colossus is the story of a man named Wander who travels to the Forbidden Lands with his horse Agro and the corpse of the woman he loves. He travels to these lands to bargain with an ancient entity sealed there in order to bring his love back to life. The entity says its within it's power but will come at a high price of which Wander agrees. At this point Wander is tasked with slaying sixteen Colossi that wander the land in order to free the entity. Armed with a simple bow and a magic sword, Wander travels across the time stopped lands with Agro to hunt these great behemoths.
In true Team Ico fashion, there isn't much left to say about the plot because it's pretty minimalist like Ico was. In fact, there isn't even a lot of evidence to say the girl you're trying to resurrect even returns Wanders feeling towards him. You can imagine him as a creepy stalker or heartbroken hero, it's up to you to decide.
The gameplay itself follows this minimalist approach as the Forbidden Lands are a huge landscape to traverse, with several out of the way locations, that are filled with very little outside of the Sixteen Colossi. Yet I must commend the developers because in addition to the world being quite gorgeous to look at, this less is more approach does translate well as simply finding a gorgeous view or out of the way tree with fruit is pretty rewarding in itself. I appreciate the fact the game lets you explore as much as you want and doesn't necessarily feel obligated to bog you down with chores to do.
Course the main event here are the Colossi themselves. They have often been described as sixteen boss battles but only a handful truly deserve that moniker whereas the majority of them are simply action platforming puzzles that resist your efforts to solve them. The Colossi exhibit different behaviors that range from aggressive, to curious, to indifference. These quirks create their own challenges and memorable elements for each of the Colossi and trying to find your way to each of their Glowing Glyphs to strike them down can bring with them their own amusing brain twisters. That's kind of what ultimately sets this game apart from other games. I mean MGS and Zelda have puzzle bosses as well, but most of them are fairly simple in practice with several tools at your disposal. SotC on the other hand gives you only the most basic tools and instructions to solve their riddles and it takes observing the landscape and the nature of the beasts themselves to figure it out. Before I played this game for myself, I was watching a friend go through it and he got to the Turtle boss in the Geyser fields. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out how to get on them until I suggested he lure it over to one of the geysers to see if it will knock him off balance. Sure enough, that was the first step to beating the beast and it was such an organic and well thought out puzzle that it has stayed with me for quite awhile.
Another thing that has stuck with me about this game was a review I read where the reviewer mentioned they didn't finish the game. Not because it was hard, but because they felt too guilty about what they were doing. For anyone who has played the game will know, beating the Colossi does not give you some triumphant victory theme, instead you're greeted by more somber pieces depicting the death of an a ancient and sacred creature that will never be seen again. The black tentacles are also a dead giveaway, but I was pretty struck by the idea of a game that could move a person to feel that way. Like Ico before it, Shadow of the Colossi tells a tragic and moving story with little words and context but rather with feelings itself, which is something I feel games try to strive for, but mostly fail to do so well. Largely because they tell you what to feel whereas this title and Ico sort of bring it out of the player more naturally.
I don't really know what else to say here, like Ico and Journey before it, this game is more an experience than a game, though the dev team could have made the controls a bit less clunky, so it's hard to really put into words what this game is about and why you should play it, other than that I feel the title embodies what gaming allows us to do. To explore a land, chase down a flying monster that requires a precise jump from your horse to reach and then a climatic struggle to slay the beast in order for the game to instill with you a deep sadness that makes the feat a hollow victory. Yeah, I just might leave it at that.
Coming Up next: Genes exist to pass down our hopes and dreams for the future through our children. Living is a link to the future. That's how all life works. Loving each other, teaching each other... that's how we can change the world. I finally realized it. The true meaning of life...
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