1. The word colossus just has a weird number of S's and L's in it to me so I am sure I'll get it wrong a few times here. Bear w/ me, people.
2. From the opening sequence, Shadow of the Colossus seeks to sprawl out along the lines of motion picture epics like 2001 or The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It is not so much setting or plot but intent. Shadow of the Colossus is a dyed in the wool masterpiece. It aims high and pulls no punches.
3. You play as an unnamed wanderer. You cross a barren land on horseback, carrying the corpse of a woman w/ you. After arriving at a temple, you lay her across the alter and demand its resident god bring her back to life. In exchange for this, you are bid to destroy sixteen colossi in the surrounding area. This is all you are given at the outset. No names. No history. Nothing.
4. In fact, if I had to pick one word to define what sets Shadow of the Colossus
apart from typical video games, that would be it: nothing. Broad
swatches of gameplay are just riding your horse. The distance, the
absence of anything, becomes a character unto itself. Even during
battles, you will spend a lot of time avoiding attacks
and making no absolute progress in terms of depleting your enemy's
energy meter.
5. I mentioned The Good, The Bad and the Ugly earlier because the lighting gives the landscape here a decidedly western feel. The image of the hot sun you might have gotten from lens flares in film is here done w/ bloom. The effect makes you instinctively squint your eyes.
6. Shadow of the Colossus's age has put some rough edges on it graphical presentation but it nevertheless remains impressive due to its sheer scope. Sure, you can see some straight edges on some polygonal models but it nevertheless renders an enormous and believable world where you simply don't notice small problems because the whole of it is so well done.
7. The sound design needs no such qualifier. Effects are weighty and substantial. Music waxes and wanes w/ the action, often fading away entirely and allowing the environmental sounds to form their own soundtrack.
8. Some actions and the camera controls are mapped in a what is now a non-standard way by default. Thankfully, the controls are remappable but even once that's done, the camera has a nasty habit of trying to undo any adjustments you make, often leaving you w/o the visual information you need. Additionally, when you go to aim an arrow, you do not automatically aim where the camera is looking but straight ahead of where the character model is pointed.
9. A bit of this awkwardness is necessary. If running up the
back of these colossi was as effortless as parkour
in Assassin's Creed, the tension of the battles would be utterly lost. Still, I wasn't exactly screaming from mountain tops what a great game this was when I had to redo minutes of gameplay because I missed a blind jump.
10. Because Shadow of Colossus relies so much on its sense of space, a bit of aimlessness is also necessary. Beyond being given basic instructions and the occasional hint from on high, you are going on very little. Oftentimes, it took me twenty minutes or more to figure out how to even damage some of the colossi and some of the battles took me over an hour. Once you've played through a few times, I'd imagine you could beat the whole game in a single sitting but the first time through involves plenty of tense, frustrating moments where you can't tell if you are trying to do the wrong thing or attempting the correct action and failing. I imagine this quite well mirrors the nameless protagonist's perspective.
11. This is how I think the game really shines. What you are tasked w/ is something unlike anyone has ever actually done--how many of us has ever attempted to resurrect the dead?--but through adroit use of image, sound and gameplay, you experience the same emotions as the character you control.
12. The only possible misstep Shadow of the Colossus makes aside from minor complaints is the inclusion of a few cut scenes that explain some backstory partway. They serve only to make explicit what the game had thus far managed to do very well implicitly. The colossi feel as if they are made of the land itself and you cannot ignore the reality that you are going against nature. To have a few dudes show up and explain this to you seems redundant at best.
13. Shadow of the Colossus is frequently held up as a prime example of video games as art. I don't actually think presenting itself as a work of art was all that notable for a game even in 2005 but doing so in a game so strictly action oriented and w/ so little direct storytelling makes for a unique and captivating experience. I also spelled colossus correctly every time, I think, but double check me on that.
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