Shadow of the Colossus

The story of a warrior with nothing but a sword and his trusty horse battling giant monsters to rescue his lost love, Shadow of the Colossus comes off as original and nostalgic at the same time. Few games come close to this sort of simplicity while remaining enjoyable.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the game for me was the lack of plot. You are a warrior fighting colossi in order to resurrect your dead lover. There really isn’t more to it than that. None of the characters, including the hero, are ever even named, with the exception of the hero’s horse and the mysterious being in the temple.

Despite this, the game comes off as richly detailed and highly enjoyable. Instead of throwing together cut-scenes and poor voice acting, the designers put their effort into the game environment and the monsters. It’s a return to basics for an industry that has largely forgotten that a simple game can often be more fun than a complicated one.

The finished product is a game with so much visual appeal that every minute of play looks as polished and realistic as a cut-scene. It doesn’t matter a bit that there isn’t anything to do between the temple and the next colossus. The vast landscapes are so richly detailed that you could spend hours just riding around taking in the scenery. It’s really a breath of fresh air to play a game with so much aesthetic appeal.

The colossi are obviously where the majority of the work was done, and it really does show. In a game of only 16 boss fights, I wasn’t bored for a second. Every boss is a unique challenge in and of itself, and no fight is straightforward. You’ll spend ninety percent of the game clinging for dear life to the back of a massive, beautifully-detailed giant in a desperate bid to strike a telling blow in one of its weak spots.

Of course, no game is perfect. The horse was very realistic, and perhaps the only element of the game that I thought was too realistic. I ended up swearing in frustration every time the dang thing bucked on a rocky outcropping that it could have easily been made to jump. Also, several of the colossi, particularly the bull, pushed the distinction between challenging and frustrating.

These were, of course, minor problems at worst. The only major flaw of the game was the game play itself. Each colossus is a puzzle. Like any puzzle, it’s great fun to try and figure out the first time around. After that, however, there’s really no point since you already know the answer. Thus, the game has very little replay value. On top of that, there are only 16 colossi to fight, which doesn’t make for a lot of play time. I finished the whole thing in about 10 hours.

For it’s few flaws, Shadow of the Colossus is well worth renting for a day or two of good, solid fun. It may not have all the bells and whistles of other games in the adventure genre, but it more than makes up for it. You’ll walk away remembering each colossus and the epic confrontation to take it down. It is a game that does what it was intended to do and does it well.