I am one of the very few individuals out there who view video games as an art form. When you think about it logically anything can be an art form. Music can be an art form, because sounds can represent the calmness or anger within a person. Writing can be an art form, because a person can represent human choice or other moral themes through characters and story. And of course drawing can be an art from, because… well any artist should know this one. In recent years, the video game industry has begun to shine thanks to wonderful works of art created by several talented game developers. Being able to immerse someone into a fictional world and let them become something they always wanted to be should show people how hard developers have worked to push their games to the fullest potential. That art has now adapted an interactive form.
The recent God of War allows us to step into a world heavily inspired by norse mythology and witness a father trying to learn how to take care of his son. Bloodborne transports us to a mysterious kingdom inspired by the works of lovecraft and lets us become a skilled hunter fighting beasts. Uncharted 4 lets us become a treasure hunter, Doom lets us be a powerhouse demon slayer, Hitman 2 lets us be an assassin, so on and so forth. You can tell by now video games are important to me and without them I would probably get bored doing the usual stuff I do every other week. Most of the games I just listed came out on modern generation consoles. The reason why is because I haven’t played that many classics. I’m too busy catching up on the games of today rather than what came out in the past and influenced future titles. It’s very hard to sit down and play a classic, especially when some elements of past video games haven’t aged well. Well thanks to modern technology, we can remaster or remake past classics so that gamers of today can experience them in a definitive version. Here are a few good examples of remasters or remakes done right. This year's Resident Evil 2 Remake reworks the Racoon City many fans grew up with while modernizing the Resident Evil formula. The BioShock Collection which increases the performance of all three games for modern consoles. Then there’s the game I’m going to talk about today.
One that has stood up against the test on time. In 2001 a development team known as Team Ico partnered up with Sony to create a game that made good use of the Playstation 2’s hardware, and unlike most titles their game was ahead of its time. What they published that year was a game known as Ico, which followed a boy and girl venturing through a dark and spooky world. Ico was a special game not only for being graphically amazing, but the way it portrayed it’s themes. The loneliness of the world and the intense pressure the main characters had to go through. Ico was praised by many and is considered one of the greatest games of all time. It was thanks to Ico that Team Ico began to stand out in the video game market, creating beautiful worlds and telling stories by simply playing the game. With the success of Ico,
Team Ico decided to follow it up with another major project. They wanted their next game to be twice the size as Ico and be much grander in scope. They hired almost five hundred artists to design the world and creatures, made the designers incorporate realistic physics, made a huge open world for the player to explore, and pushed the Playstation 2’s hardware to it’s uttermost limit. By 2005 the team finally came out with their new game and it was known as Shadow of The Colossus. It followed a boy wandering around a desolate world slaying colossal monsters and trying to bring a girl back to life. It was a simplistic game with tons of depth hidden beneath the surface. They were probably not expecting it, but the Shadow of The Colossus received critical acclaim by many. It was praised for its story, gameplay design, soundtrack, graphics, and many other aspects. It won quite a few awards and was even deemed another one of the greatest games of all time. Hailed as a timeless masterpiece.
Shadow of The Colossus did a lot of aspects that most games at the time and probably now wouldn’t do. Being an easy to appreciate work of art. Last year the game was remade by Bluepoint Games, the same people who reworked God of War 3 and made The Nathan Drake Collection. It’s great Sony decided to chose them of all people to remake Team Ico’s masterpiece, because they obviously know how they rework games without removing the core principles of what made them so special. Fourteen years is a lot of time and you're probably wondering if Shadow of The Colossus still stands out today even with the graphical overhaul and fixed controls? The answer is yes of f*cking course. This is my first time playing Shadow of The Colossus and even though it is a nearly decade and a half old Playstation 2 game it still plays very well today. Not even done with this review and I’m already telling you to check out this timeless classic. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Shadow of The Colossus and why it highly deserves your attention. Drain the spirit of its color, bleed into the gray.
Story
In a far away land a lonesome boy named Wander (trust me, this is what it says on the wikipedia) rides off to a mysterious peninsula carrying with him a dead girl named Mono. We aren’t told much about Mono besides that she was a fair maiden who was sacrificed because her village believed she was cursed. Why? Well we don’t know either. The peninsula Wander is traveling towards is known as the Forbidden Land, no one may enter the land because it is home to many unholy creatures. Wander is told that the beings there may be able to resurrect Mono using ancient magic, and ignoring the many warnings his elders have told him he storms off. Riding quickly on the back of his horse Agro. Wander crosses a large stone bridge, makes his way down a spiral staircase, and finds an altar located within a huge empty room. There isn’t much stuff in the room besides sixteen giant statues and a source of light coming into the temple.
Wander places Mono on the altar and a strange voice begins to speak to him. The voice tells Wander his name is Dormin, and he asks why Wander has journeyed to the Forbidden Land. Wander asks Dormin if he is able to resurrect Mono and luckily he answers him yes. However Dormin can’t do so at the moment, because his powers are being hindered. Dormin notices Wander is carrying a legendary sword that belonged to his village and realizes it’s just the thing he needed. He tells Wander the sixteen statues within the room are actually sixteen colossal beings located around the Forbidden Land. Wander can use his sword to slay the colossal beings and unleash the powers from within them, and by doing so Dormin may gain his powers back and probably resurrect Mono. Without hesitation Wander rides off to locate the sixteen colossal giants. When he slays the first colossus it spews out a strange black mysterious mist which enters Wander’s body and knocks him out. Wander wakes up back at the temple to hallucinate a shadowy being standing next to him. Wander wonders what the strange mist is, but Dormin doesn't answer. He ignores the issue and pushes forward to slay the other colossi and resurrect Mono. Even if it means losing more of himself.
Gameplay
Shadow of The Colossus follows a simple gameplay formula that is repeated sixteen times throughout the game. A gameplay loop if you want to call it. Locate sixteen colossuses across the map, scale their bodies, strike their weak points, and bring them towards the ground. It’s a simple gameplay loop, but what makes it so engaging is how you approach each colossus. First there is getting towards them. You aren’t given a map and or marked the location of where they are, you have to figure out yourself. Luckily that sword of yours can be raised into the air. When raised it will reflect the light of the sun towards the direction of where the next colossus hides. You can do this anytime to remind yourself where you have to go, but you can only do this when there is natural sunlight. Meaning you can’t use it in shadowy areas or within caves.
Wander has a lot of basic skills to navigate around the environment. He can jump, climb over objects, and even grip onto certain surfaces. Gripping requires stamina, because Wander is hanging off of a high place and when his stamina meter runs low he lets go of the surface automatically and falls. Be careful how you use your stamina, because falling from high places can do a good amount of damage and send you back farther from where you were trying to get to. Climbing also becomes trivial when facing off against the sixteen colossus across the game. Some of them are big and some of them are small. Some of them walk on all fours and some of them slither beneath the ground. In the end it all comes down to one goal. Climbing onto their body, locating their weak points, and piercing into their skin until they crumble to the ground. The colossus aren’t like most standard bosses where nailing at them will do the trick. You have to find those weak points! Otherwise you’ll be flattened like a pancake.
The first two colossus Valus and Quadratus do a good job at teaching the player how to climb a colossus’ body. Use the debris and hair on them to get higher. As you progress through the game you learn that using the environment to your advantage will be what allows you to get onto them. For example you have to trick Gaius into slamming his fragile stone arm into the ground so you can reveal more parts on his body to climb. Or use the underground tunnels in Phaedra’s arena to run underneath and get behind him to a point where you can climb them. It’s careful analysis that allows you to prevail. If you die while trying to get to the colossus you respawn back at the temple, but if you die while fighting the colossus you begin back at the beginning of the battle.
It’s very forgiving of the developers to do so, especially since getting to some of the colossi is very difficult. You can upgrade your health and stamina by finding certain structures and lizards around the world. What’s also new to the remake are several collectibles which can be used to unlock bonus content and cool new equipment for future playthroughs. Besides that there really isn’t that much else to say about the gameplay. Shadow of The Colossus is a very simple game to play, but simplicity isn’t always a bad thing. You do the same thing sixteen times, but it’s how it expands that makes it feel refreshing each colossi you face. With your skills you should be able to slay each of the sixteen colossus and resurrect Mono from the grave.
Thoughts
Shadow of The Colossus is an experience everyone needs to play at least once. I don’t care if it’s a fourteen year old game and if some design choices didn’t add up as well as some would have hoped for. The original Bioshock is about twelve years old and it holds up like a fine whiskey with a little crack on the side of the bottle. Fourteen years later and almost every aspect of Shadow of The Colossus has aged well. The world may feel empty to venture through at times, but it helps symbolize the loneliness Wander is left with now that Mono is dead. Being given this inhumanely hard task and knowing he will not be held by the hand entire way through. It’s also very peaceful to gallop across these beautiful plains, because the ambience and peacefulness is what provides you comfort before the next fight tries to kill.
The environments are vast and gorgeous and thanks to Bluepoint’s reworked graphics the world looks much prettier than before. May not look as beautiful or breathtaking as God of War or Uncharted 4, but it does make use of the Playstation 4’s hardware. Each of the sixteen colossi are fun to fight and trying to figure out how to defeat them feels like a puzzle. Spotting the parts on their body that are climbable, using the terrain to your advantage, and getting the edge when you can. Once you do figure out the puzzle it feels immensely rewarding, because you were able to figure it out on your own without the game immediately pointing it out to you. The story ended up being quite deep. There may not be much to work off at first, but overtime you figure out more of the plot. The voice you have been speaking to actually has secret plans he won’t tell you, and maybe the actions you are taking aren’t as justifiable as you thought.
The game is pretty linear and you aren’t given the choice of what colossi you want to tackle next. Even though there aren’t any specific powers or abilities needed to defeat these late game bosses. There is a good amount of replay value to be had thanks to newly added extra features. Like the speedrun mode which tests how fast you can beat these bosses, because if you know what you are doing you should be able to defeat all of them in less than five minutes tops. There are items and new equipment that can be used on future playthroughs if unlocked through specific means and activated through an options menu. Collectibles and artwork which can also be unlocked through certain means, and a secret late game weapon which you wouldn’t expect to wield. I heard the control setup from the original version was very awkward, but Bluepoint reconfigured them so that the game is more playable and not awkward to move around.
Shadow of The Colossus is an amazing classic and it’s no wonder critics still talk about it today. It isn’t the best game I have played though. Sometimes the boss AI won’t work and you have to mess around a bit to get back to doing what it is you are supposed to do or restart the fight entirely. The last two bosses of the game specifically get a little annoying as you may have to brute force your way through just to get to where you need to go. Wander is really clunky to maneuver and the physics make clinging onto a colossus very annoying. I think I can understand why some people who picked up this game dropped it within a few hours. Being flung around like a ragdoll and not knowing when you will be given the chance to move again. This does feel intentional though. Like Team Ico knew what they were programming. We are playing as a small feeble boy climbing giant stone beings, so swinging a sword requires force and being shaken off makes us wiggle. Although I have to remind myself is that this is a PS2 game meaning that it wasn’t as advanced or responsive as games of today, so we can’t be so harsh.
Overall I highly recommend Shadow of The Colossus. No it may not be for everyone, but it’s a work of art with simplistic design and has stood out against the test of time. In the end I give Shadow of The Colossus a 9/10 for excellence at best. Masterpiece!
Comments