n 2001, Sony Computer Entertainment of America quietly released a cryptically titled adventure game: ICO was an austere tale about a boy born with steerlike horns, rejected (and nearly buried alive) by his people and forced to navigate a dangerous, eerie castle while protecting a mysterious girl. It won critical acclaim (if not wide appreciation) for its strikingly spare architecture, clever puzzles and sui generis gameplay. Four years and four months later, developer Fumito Ueda returns to the PS2 with Shadow of the Colossus, a spiritual sequel to ICO that marries puzzle-solving with epic combat.
Expressing the same minimalist narrative approach, Shadow of the Colossus opens as a boy and his horse move along precarious cliff paths. They reach a bridge and the camera pulls slowly back, revealing the bridge's interminable architecture, stretching ostensibly miles from end to end. At the other side, the boy enters a mammoth temple, and we realize he's been carrying a body—a young girl—which he places on a sunlit altar. A booming voice fills the chamber—why is he here? What does he want? The boy responds: to reunite the girl's body with its soul. Very well, says the voice, in order to grant this wish the boy must seek out and destroy 16 colossi, mountainous mythical beasts stationed throughout the surrounding lands.
Who is this boy? The dead girl? For what reason(s) did she die? And why does the disembodied voice wish the colossi destroyed? What are these massive creatures scattered through the world, really? And why do their statues line the walls of the temple? These are the kinds of ambiguities players will grapple with as they explore Shadow of the Colossus's sublime vistas and towering denizens.
The boy has standard abilities, including jumps, rolls and climbing maneuvers. He comes equipped with a simple bow and sword and must use these weapons in combination to defeat each of the tactically unique colossi. By holding his sword aloft in sunlight, he can also determine in which direction his next challenge lies. The boy's horse (named Agro) can be summoned and mounted for extended travel and must occasionally be used in battle with certain colossi. As the colossi are discovered, players must determine how best to "climb" each one and repeatedly stab key points with the sword while being attentive to a "grip" meter, which measures the "strength" of the boy relative to the angle at which he's positioned. When it runs down, the boy will lose his hold and plummet to ground, and the process must be repeated until the colossus's life bar is depleted. At the close of each battle, the boy is returned to the temple, where his quest for the next colossus begins.
Astounding aesthetics
You could do worse than describe Shadow of the Colossus as a sort of "ultimate boss monster marathon." With acutely focused David-and-Goliath combat and panoptic scenery devoid of civilization (or life of any kind, save a few birds and lizards), it bespeaks the imperative "You will go from A to B and do the same thing 16 times in a row without interruption." For any other game, such an approach would be the kiss of death, which makes Shadow of the Colossus's haunting and memorable gameplay all the more impressive.
Fumito Ueda understands precisely the tenuous relationship between challenge and gratification. Here is a game that comprehends the essential elements of the action genre, serving them back as peerless knuckle-gnawing experiences. The 16 colossi are exercises in architectural perfection, and nothing in modern gaming quite compares with the experience of, for instance, clinging desperately to the tufts of straggly fur on the back of a pterodactyl-like beast as it screeches and bucks and whirls thousands of feet in the air, or the sense of knowing you will have to actually climb that distant lumbering monster you know is half a mile away, yet still taking up all of your television screen. Shadow of the Colossus's stylistic dimensionality (calling it cerebral would be inaccurate) hinges on experiences like these, in which players are suddenly catapulted out of serene strategic contemplation and into hair-raising hand-eye trials.
Two things mar an otherwise perfect experience, the first of which can be laid at the foot of the PS2's horribly overstrained architecture. Shadow of the Colossus may skimp on textures, but it lays its vistas long, producing a wonderful sense of environmental immersion at the cost of smooth performance. While too much is made of frame rate in other games, here it actually is debilitating and has a measured impact on gameplay, often causing the camera to "overcorrect" when panning or getting you into trouble when trying to execute jumps that require precision timing. If Ueda could have waited one more year, this could have been the quintessential headliner for the PS3 and would have been a much cleaner and tighter game on that hardware.
The other problem, a bit more serious, is the camera itself, which functions like the shivering, quaking experience that's supposed to somehow be more "authentic" in a show like NYPD Blue. Consequently, the camera is almost always everywhere you don't need it to be, often slipping to your far right or left no matter how much time you spend repositioning to near-center with the right thumbstick. Coupled with the perpetually sluggish frame rate, Shadow of the Colossus often feels like a diamond you're forced to view underwater—beautiful but often distorted. Still, it's like nothing else (anywhere, or in the history of gaming), and though it's a tad short at 10 to 12 hours, it's still worth picking up if only to witness a game that in many ways successfully bridges the gap between platform gaming and high-concept art.
Few games can genuinely be described as (really truly) artful, emotionally moving ... even inspiring. Fumito Ueda makes such games, and Shadow of the Colossus radiates real brilliance despite its control problems.
—Matt
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