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Review: Shadow of the Colossus
- Title: Shadow of the Colossus
- Developer: SCEI
- Publisher: SCEA
- System: PS2
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 8/10
Gameplay centers around the only real activity to be found within the game: finding and killing the sixteen Colossi. The lands you find yourself in are vast, and to travel quickly from place to place you have the use of your horse Agro. Agro is a swift steed, and sometimes difficult to control. After you've mounted, you essentially just aim the beast in the direction you want to go and then spur him onward. While he maintains a trot relatively well, you'll find if any turning is involved you'll have to continually encourage him. Once you're moving across the field the game allows you a simple way to locate your next quarry. By holding your sword up to the light, a beam appears. Focusing the beam of light until it points out a locale on the horizon tells you where the next creature you seek lies. Reaching the beast is a simple matter of navigating the beautiful landscape and locating the area that the shrine's presence indicated.
Once you've found the Colossus, a short cut scene shows the beast stirring and reveals the creature in all its majesty. Every Colossus is different, though they all share similar qualities. First and foremost is their size. The sheer magnitude of the creatures you face is awe inspiring. On many of them, your tiny form barely reaches their ankle (or whatever they use for that purpose). Some come in vaguely humanoid form, while others appear as flying or four legged beasts. No matter what shape they come in, all have a slow and graceful majesty about them that makes doing what you're there to do more than a little uncomfortable. Your tools for dispatching your prey are simple: a bow and a sword. The tools may be simple, but the task is not.
With the beast on the move, it's up to you to discover how to bring it down. Each Colossus has a weak point on it somewhere, a magical symbol that indicates it is vulnerable. The problem is their size. In order to reach the symbol you're going to have to clamber up their body and hold tight to do your work. While some creatures can simply be leapt onto, there's often some sort of trick to figure out in order to gain access to the thick fur that covers many of the creatures and provides you with a climbing surface. Clinging to their fur is draining, and a circle of energy in the corner of your screen represents how much longer you can hold on. This circle is also used for tasks such as holding your breath or keeping an arrow nocked. Most creatures have some sort of flat surface on them, meaning that scaling these enormous beasts holds similarities to assaulting a mountain. Once you reach a base camp you pause for a breath before continuing towards your goal: the symbol. At the symbol you draw back your sword, and plunge it into the creature's flesh. You can attack the titan anywhere on its body, but the only way to do a significant amount of damage is to reach the symbol. While the procedure is the same for each Colossus, the tactics are different every time.
The game is essentially a series of sixteen boss battles, and the razor sharp focus of the gameplay allows the player to appreciate every tense moment spent clinging to a shaking beast's fur. I can describe the gameplay, but words simply do not do the experience justice. Every single 'vertical dungeon' you encounter during the course of the game has a personality all its own, and despite some frustrations it never gets old actually trying to kill them. Without the distractions of a thousand little minions to kill or annoying puzzles to solve, individual moments in Shadow of the Colossus have a lot more weight. Just riding across the plains on the way to your next encounter is a joy, being able to watch the landscape roll past and enjoying the extremely adept environmental design.
Misty moors, jutting cliffs, and rune-covered ruins dot the plains that you explore. The soft, dreamlike style of Ico has been transferred successfully to a less abstract space here in Shadow. The shrine and its immediate surroundings are your first real experience with Shadow's world. Light streams in from above to illuminate the darkness of the shrine, playing over the ruins of whatever intelligence built the structure so long ago. The lay of the land comes at you in broad visual strokes, a green plain giving way to a dark slab of a mountain. A pass leads through the mountain to a secluded ruin surrounded by water. The water itself is fluid and reactive, extremely well rendered. The Colossi themselves are works of art. The humanoids evoke powerful warriors, while the animals are all vivid forces of nature. The flying creatures are particularly awe-inspiring. It's not every day something the size of a building takes to the air over your head. Whatever form they come in a gentleness emanates from the furry goliaths, even as they try to crush you under their feet. The emotional nature of the title and the beauty of your surroundings combines to create a truly unique experience. Additionally, Shadow supports 480p, widescreen, on HD screens. If you can arrange to play the game this way it is well worth it. What is already a magnificent title seems to leap off the screen due to the high fidelity of the image.
As awe-inspiring as Colossus fights are, as beautiful as the gameworld is, Shadow of the Colossus is not without its problems. Shadow was made in a world with flaws, and the title's execution reflects that reality. The camera is the primary problem. In an effort to afford you the most majestic view of your encounters, the camera will occasionally make extremely confusing decisions. While it might seem like a good idea to pull quite a ways back, allowing you to view your avatar as an ant on a beast's back, it is quite difficult to see what you're doing that way. In tight maneuvering situations the camera has a tendency to clip through the Colossus, often obscuring your view mid-leap or as you crawl around a corner. The beauty of Shadow's world doesn't come without a cost, as framerate slowdowns can be an issue during tense moments. While nothing catastrophic ever happened to me as a result of a slowdown it can marr what might otherwise be a scene from a motion picture. Finally, I encountered a few odd collision detection bugs. I managed to get Agro stuck in a pillar at one point, and despite my being able to dismount and call him he was unable to get free. Less humorously, in the middle of a fight with one of the truly majestic flying Colossi I became stuck in an upside-down crawling position. I'd been clinging to the beast's back, and somehow while I was crawling I tumbled and became stuck on my back. I fell from the Colossus and landed in a pond, where I quickly realized that I needed to leap out of the water relatively often so that I wouldn't drown. While it was amusing to swim around upside down for a minute or so, I was basically forced to reset my game. I'd gotten the Colossus down to only a small amount of health, and it was a frustrating decision to have to start all over again.
Shadow of the Colossus, then, pushes the edge of the art form that is the videogame. The story is essentially nothing more than a setup, with everything that follows simple acts that require you to make value judgments about them. The gentle nature of the Colossi would seem to make your acts violations, but the game's finale makes that a questionable assumption as well. The graphical presentation is beautiful and visionary, headily recalling the days when the PS2 was new. The game pushes the boundaries of what the PS2 hardware is capable of, and the title suffers as a result. The control scheme is intuitive, but can sometimes be unwieldy as events in the game get away from you. If you see past the technical problems, the biggest complaint you're likely to have is the brevity of the experience. The game's focus is such that only a few hours of concerted effort will be required to plumb its depths. There is replayability, in the form of a hard mode and time attack tests. The time attacks can net you new objects which you can use in the hard mode of the game, and little things like a different color for Agro.
At the end of the day Shadow of the Colossus is truly a work of art. It stands as a unique experience in the field of gaming, with intense action set pieces and hauntingly beautiful landscapes. Honesty requires me to talk about the technical problems that marr the perfection here, but for me personally they're not a consideration. Games that have the power to move the human heart are so few and far between today that most commentators are still tentative to call gaming an art form. It is titles like this that will make them see the light of day, titles that can move beyond coin collecting, monster fragging, or skull cracking. Not everyone can identify with a psycho killer or a misunderstood alien. Our common humanity binds us to the man who has traveled so far and sacrificed so much. Giant-slaying for the people we love is not merely a fairytale, after all. Shadow is a 10/10 in my book, and easily the best gaming experience the end of the year has to offer.
Actually, the last line of the text called it a 10/10, yet the score at the top says 8/10. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
In my books Ico is one of the most overrated games for the PS2. Sure, it's got a very special look and technically it's well executed, but the game itself was fairly standard fare and felt much like a mixture of Sleepwalker and Prince of Persia (of course it's worth mentioning that neither of those games had been redone in 3D at the time).
I guess the game just never connected with me.
I hope Shadow of the Colossus will be different, but I'm not getting my hopes up. The concept is at least interesting and fairly unique this time and the graphics are breathtaking for a PS2 game.
Against the grain
Is how I like to describe it - Yes, it is a great game, though for me, the camera was a too cumbersome - when playing the demo at E3, I had the same gripe and one of the developers assured that it would be 'fixed' for the release - It was cleaned up a bit, but not fixed - regardless of my minor issues with the game, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of the game, however the original ICO has a higher place in my heart -
Glad to hear that I'm not the only one. I bought Ico some time ago and I even read some reviews before buying it. They were all soooo positive. I was really disappointed. Yeah, it's pretty, but the game isn't all that fun.
Ico is gathering dust in my drawer....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
And being a fan of ICO, I have to say this game is amazing. Size is definitely the focal point of the game. There is something exhilarating about climbing onto a gigantic beast and hanging on for dear life as it tries to shake you off.
Having a horse was a great touch, as well. In fact, I love the horse.
There are some nice touches, too, when you are riding across different landscapes and you are kicking up dust or mud or sand.
The whole thing is just amazing. No other game like it.
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
The game is a technical marvel that highlights the graphical refinement (and mastery) developers have achieved on the ps2. It'll be interesting to see how killer-apps like this affect 360 sales this holiday season.
I've finished SotC the first time thru. Yes, you can continue! You can also try hard mode where the Colossi react more quickly and violently. This review is dead-on. As for the flaws, here's my rundown:
1) Game occasionally crashes (depends on which PS2 you're running--I'm using the original model).
2) Levels-of-detail "pops" at close range. Ideally, these should happen where you can't see it.
3) Some textures aren't anti-aliased.
4) Small color palette, mostly browns and greens.
Oddly enough, I don't think the camera is a problem. I think they left the control as it was because you get better and better at using the camera during battles. Of course, it also cut development time to leave it as-is. The "behind" view and zoom are instrumental. There's also Agro-view. If you call Agro and hold the X button, the camera will look directly at him. If you're battling a Colossus where Agro can't go, you will look directly at the Colossus!
Despite the game is really only 16 boss battles, the entire experience is fun, beautiful, and a bit scary. The sense of large-Colossus and small-hero is done well, right down the the inertia of the huge things. The goal of the game is really to discover what the heck killing these colossi is actually accomplishing.
Overall, a great game that would be even better using another video processor. Always save at the closest altar before attacking the Colossus. It will save you time. I can't wait to see a speed run of this game.
I think games like this are the sort of thing that made me kind of avoid the XBox. Sure the XBox was a technological beast for this era, and it had some fine games, but the number of truely creative and out there games (both american and japanese) was so small it seemed nonexistent. Meanwhile between my PS2 and GCN I've experienced all sorts of marvelous worlds that don't seem present on the XBox. Not that I think this is a fault, MS got the kind of developers they wanted making the kind of games that attract the largest audiences which is perfectly fine.
Anyone know any of the details about the PS3's backwards compatibility? If the PS3 can run PS2 games, will it be able to run them better? In other words, will the framerate issues that you see playing Shadow on the PS2 improve on the PS3? I might wait until the PS3 comes out to play if so.
I just bought this game and defeted 3 Colossi so far and I'm a bit disapointed in the game. All the reviews I read were giving it stunning remarks. But as I play, I'm bored already. All you do is go from the temple place and kill a Colossi, then back to the temple, kill another. All the while it takes you 10 minutes to ride your horse to the next one. Just seems like the game has no other point. They should have put some other enemies in the world for you to mess with on the way...I dunno...maybe I had the wrong idea about what the game was, but that is my take on it from playing it for 3 hours so far...Am I wrong??
Sony sent me a demo of this game. The controls are overly complicated and the analog stick are scaled wrong. Movement is realistic but the scenery is lacking the detail needed to feel immersed. I got to the first colossus and spent like 10 minutes running around in circles trying to affect the colossus in every way I could imagine. Finally a little hint popped up that wasn't helpful. Then another hint showed up a few minutes later that made no sense -- probably assuming I took some kind of action on the first hint. I suppose it might be a good game if you got into it but I gave up. After spending the first half hour riding a horse and climbing a cliff without seeing a single enemy and then another half hour scratching me head trying to solve the puzzle of killing the colossus I got bored.
It's possible the demo was bugged. It's also possible I missed a hint, power-up, or something else. Hey, I might even be a moron. Regardless, the developers didn't make my first hour with the game enjoyable so there's not much point in continuing to play it.
I'm 29. I grew up through the early arcade days of pacman, the home computers ranging from vic 20's, c64s, atari 800xl, atari 130xe, 286s, early macs, apple 2e, atari 2600, neogeo, nes, snes, genesis, sega cd, n64, turbo graphics, ps2, xbox.. you name it.
I've been there and played it all.
I'm now a video game artist, 3d animator, cinematic director, technical director... blah blah...
I've made a life of games so to speek and ICO is by far the best game ever made. I know there are a few people who will disagree but those who do, tend to fall into two catagories:
1 - they didnt like the fighting system.
2 - they were emotionally disconnected for whatever reason, perhaps distracted and not caught up in the moment at the right times during game play. Perhaps they arent as open to experiencing emotions as others. We do after all live in a world that tends to make fun of folks who do open themselves up to art, and the incredible emotional experience it can be.
ICO is THE example of what gaming can. ICO isnt incredible because of it's simple fight system, or graphical engine.
ICO is incredible because the structure of the game is laid out in an unfolding manner, yet subtle in story telling devices, it manages to connect with the player emotionally on a true level of concern, love, caring, sadness, deep loss, happiness and beauty.
Where it starts though is the player. Oh, ICO is certainly brilliant story telling and like all brilliant stories told through out time, they can often be misread.
ICO requires 1 thing to work, and thats YOU. You're soul, you're mind, your willingness to be taken emotionally on a journey. If you're trying to guess what will happen next, and "when will i get the rocket launcher and BFG" you're simply not going to GET ICO.
ICO begins with loneliness. And hopefully you feel it. If you dont feel it from the very beginning, i doubt you will truely enjoy the ending and ICO.
The brilliance of ICO is the emotions you experience as you progress through the story. The story is not simple, it subtle. The story does not belittle our intelligence by laying out plot with cliche bad story telling sentences like "I'm glad Johny killed The great demon because now it has unlocked all that is evil, and i have the power to rule the world, because when you found that whistle item, it gave me the keys to unlock my true power" blah blah. ICO doesnt TELL you how to feel, nor does it TELL you the story in such a manner.
ICO hints at a story... and your brain makes it real.
There are several factors to ICO's emotional connection (i've thought about this quite a bit)
1 - ICO (player) is abandoned by his tribe, sacraficed to the god of the castle or however you read it when you initially see the opening intro. I say "however you read it" because its not quite explained WHY they leave you. Later on in the game it becomes more known but you really never get an explaination. So in the very beginning you read into the cinematic based on your own interpretations which typically will be "they're sacraficing me to the gods" So you're left alone to die by your people, and you're ONLY a little boy. Thats powerful stuff. It's very mature for a game story. Funny because we have car jacking, sex, violence and yet THIS is what i consider to be mature story concept. And THIS is where the emotional state comes into play. This is where YOUR emotional invovlent/state becomes important. HOW do you accept such a notion?? A CHILD being LEFT TO DIE ALONE. CAN YOU PUT YOURSELF IN THE ROLE OF THE CHILD? This is not easy to answer because from an artists point of view such as myself, i'm a trained animator and ACTOR. I can easily put myself into a role. Lots of people can who arent trained actors.... BUT ARE YOU ONE OF THEM? This is where i feel ICO becomes a hit or a miss for many folks. CAN YOU let yourself emotionally grasp the concept of the game, the loniless, the rejection of your people, the sadness of being left to die by even your FAMILY. This is ve