Shadow of the Colossus
Not enough superlatives or hyperbole can be applied to Shadow of the Colossus. It is so lovingly, meticulously designed, so unfailingly unique, so unspeakably beautiful, so frequently wondrous and moving in ways other games practically never are. Every victory’s sense of glory is swiftly replaced by sorrow at the death of these immense creatures. And the ending sequence stands as one of the most satisfying I have ever seen in a game, far too rare a thing.
For once, the reviews that gave it 10/10 are not far wrong - it’s so very hard to criticise the game that rounding up from the few decimals it’s short seems fair. Not since the original Unreal have I felt such a sense of wonder at a game; one Colossus literally made my jaw drop while my mind scrambled to figure out precisely how a mere PS2 was rendering such astonishing visuals. Truly an incredible game.
Maybe this is just post-completion euphoria speaking here. We’ll see.
March 5th, 2006 at 11:06 am
argh stop, I can’t hear any more about this game, It makes me want a PS2 so bad =\
March 5th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Like Metroid and Resi 4 on GameCube, this plus God of War alone easily justifies owning a PS2 for me. :) They’re pretty cheap these days anyway, especially second hand.
March 6th, 2006 at 11:43 am
There’s a really nice “how they did that” here:
http://www.dyingduck.com/sotc/making_of_sotc.html
March 6th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I seem to be in a tiny minority, but I found the game really dissapointing, sure it looks gorgeous but for me the battles were frustrating and unrewarding and the frame rate, camera and level of detail glitches really stood out and took me out of the world, esp. when compared to Ico’s solidity in these respects. I can’t help but feel that a lot of the rapturous press the game is getting is because those same media outlets regret pretty much ignoring Ico when it was originally released.
March 6th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Great article Matt, thanks. Over my head to some degree but it still helped clear up how they did stuff.
Tom - I still have to get into Ico. It started off very slow so I left it and never went back. It could be they’re just very different games that will appeal to different people, at least sometimes.
March 20th, 2006 at 8:38 am
whoa!