Review: Shadow of the Colossus

Played on PS3

For his birthday, the gamer picked up the Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection for Playstation 3. I had never seen either of these games played and was excited to get to see two games that he has talked about quite a bit. Today I will focus on Shadow of the Colossus.

You play as a boy (I think it's a boy, he's pretty small to be a man) who is trying to gain a magical power to revive a young lady. This voice from the heavens tells you that you can get this power if you kill all of the Colossi. You have a sword that points you towards the Colossi and you have to climb on top of them and stab them in their shiny places. (No, that was not meant to be a crude reference, you really do look for the shiny spot and stab in. However, jokes are allowed.)

Apparently the original was only done with subtitles. This version has voices, but their in Japanese. Pretty neat, but I'm not a huge fan of subtitled games, movies sure, not so much game.

Audio: On that note, the Japanese voices are actually rather nice to listen to. Also, the music in the game is really mellow. If nothing else, this game provides good music for meditation. In fact, I was really tired with the gamer started playing the game and the music was so lyrical and soft that I sorta dozed off. Moving on...

Visuals: Also in the really calm and serene, the world is really pretty. Now, it was made for the Playstation 2 so it's not graphically equal to most other PS3 games, but I think it easily looks better than quite a few XBox 360 games. They added a lot of detail for the limits of the system they were working in. For example, they made the horse's tail slightly transparent so it looks like you're seeing all the different hairs. Little touches like that really help to make this game visually stunning.

Involvement: This game provides a good deal of opportunity for you to get involved (if you don't end up dozing on the couch with the cat). Like I said earlier you have to climb the colossi and find the right spot to attack. Now, the colossi don't just stand there and let you climb. It's good to have a second pair of eyes to find the right path up the giant so that you don't fall off with he moves. Further, if this is the first play through you can help to find where the shiny spots are.

Overall: This was a really neat game. I've enjoyed getting to see the story unfold and it's nice to have something really mellow in the midst of all the uber violent and in your face games that we see today. It's a really nice game if you're just going to sit back and watch but is interesting and challenging enough that you can get into it as well. I look forward to seeing Ico and what that looks like.