Summary
There is no other game like it
The Good
This is a feeble attempt to review the beautiful, powerful work of art that is "Shadow of the Colossus". No review can describe this game adequately, no review is able to reflect even one tenth of the experience you will have playing the game. At most, a review can transfer to you the feelings of the author towards the game. I have to stress it before I continue: this is not one of those games that will make you want to play them just because the reviewer mentioned cool new magical weapons, ten thousands lines of dialogue, realistic physics or whatever. "Shadow of the Colossus" has to be experienced in order to be appreciated. There is no way to understand just from descriptions and reviews why so many people were deeply moved by this game.
At first sight, what is this game about? You don't know much when you begin playing it. In fact, you won't know much more when you finish it, either. A girl was sacrificed (why and by whom - you'll never know), and you, the hero of the game, head to a temple where a mysterious ancient being (or beings?) called Dormin promises you to resurrect the girl if you defeat sixteen colossi, giant creatures that populate the land.
I was one of those people who found nothing interesting in this premise and had no desire to play through the game in which, as people told me, there are only sixteen colossi battles and nothing else. If I only knew how wrong I was.
As I said, there is no way I'll be able to describe the greatness of this game to you. Any description will inevitably end up being nothing but a pale image of the game. Just trust me when I say that this game has to be experienced. In fact, the experience is so intense that it nearly becomes physical.
The gameplay of "Shadow of the Colossus" was designed with precisely this in mind - to give the player a sensation of physical connection to the game world. Many games implement realistic physical interaction, but I don't think there is one that managed to draw the player in with such a force. One of the reasons for that is the amazing animation, which makes everything seem absolutely real. Another reason is the intensity of the action, and the fact it is inseparable from the interaction. In other words, this is not a game in which you can interact with the environment and then fight; the fight and interaction with the environment are one and the same.
I'll try to explain that. You see, in most games, there are "levels", during which the character might overcome obstacles, solve puzzles, perform physical activities, etc.; and there are enemies, which the character has to defeat. In "Shadow of the Colossus", the enemies
are the levels. To say "there are only sixteen battles in the game" is absolutely misleading; the right way to say that would be "there are sixteen
levels (or stages, or even chapters) in the game". Because a battle against a colossus is not one of those usual "boss battles" we are all accustomed to. Each colossus is a location, an environment. Interacting with this environment and fighting
at the same time is what makes the action of "Shadow of the Colossus" unparalleled.
It won't be an exaggeration to say that "Shadow of the Colossus" offers the most intense action experience to-date. It is hard to trace its roots to a specific genre, but its relation to platform games is obvious. From a purely technical point of view, your main activity in the game is 3D platform action. Platformers have traditionally belonged to the most suspenseful, nerve-tickling action games around; but "Shadow of the Colossus" takes it onto a whole new level.
Imagine a level with platforms, ledges, places to jump onto and over, places you could fall off, places you could hold on to hang from - in short, a real level of a platform game. Now imagine that this whole level is
moving. Because in reality, this level is a living creature. A creature you climb onto in order to kill. This creature doesn't want to be killed. It will try to shake you off, and you'll have to hang on for your life.
I don't think I've experienced a more intense action gameplay than I did while I was climbing onto a colossus and he was trying to shake me off. My wife literally screamed when she saw how utterly destructive and violent the colossus' movement was. The only thing I could do was pressing down a button and
hanging on. Of course, you can't just hang on forever; you have a grip meter that shows how much force you have in your hands. When you climb on the colossus, you'll have to know that the ground below your feet can begin shaking at any time. You won't be able to see properly for several moments. Even if you think you were running on a relatively smooth surface, you'll have to be ready to crouch and to grasp the colossus' fur at any time. Otherwise you'll be shaken off its back like a little insect.
The moment you see your first colossus, you are in for a shock. Most of the colossi are
huge. Not large, not big -
huge. Colossal, in the most direct sense of this word. Alone seeing those colossi is an experience you'll never forget. When you see the first colossus, the only thing you can think is: "Oh my God... how will I ever be able to defeat such a creature??!". Not all of the colossi are so overwhelmingly big; some of them are rather small, like the tiger-like flame guardian, who is perhaps only five-six times larger than you. But each and every one of the colossi is awe-inspiring, both in their design and in the gameplay.
The variety of the colossi makes sure that every new battle will be totally different. You never know what awaits you. That's why every time a new colossus appears, you'll be amazed. You'll never say: "Oh, I've seen a similar one before". Because every colossus is drastically different. They live in different environments. Some can be found on a sunny field, others hide in the depth of a dark lake, again others have found homes in mysterious ancient temples, etc. Some battles take place completely outdoors, others completely indoors, or both. You'll fight flying colossi and swimming colossi, you'll visit vast deserts, old lakes, forests, plains, temples, city ruins, and so on. Each battle has a unique atmosphere, and you will remember each one of them for a long time after it is over.
The colossi themselves have a strong similarity with animals. Some of them look human, but their behavior is still more animal-like. Other colossi look like specific animals. They are not monsters, but more like symbols, incarnation of a certain animal. You'll encounter bird-like, turtle-like, lizard-like, lion-like creatures. You feel like you are fighting gods, primordial legendary creatures, not just over-sized beasts.
Even though all colossi battles follow the same general formula - find a way on top of the colossus, stab his vitals to kill him - the variety between the battles is so big that sometimes you'd think you are playing different games that belong to different genres. At one time, you'll be practicing your archery skills and cleverly avoiding attacks; at another time, you'll be jumping across platforms, searching for weakpoints. To illustrate the difference, compare the battle against the sand worm colossus and the one against the small lion, one of the last colossi. The sand worm colossus battle is almost a rail shooter! You ride your horse through a desert, the colossus is chasing you, and you have to turn on the horse and to shoot at his weakpoint with your bow. The battle against the lion is totally different - classic platform action, finding your way through city ruins, jumping from pillar to pillar, trying to lure the quick enemy to the right place. Trust me when I say that no colossus battle is like the other, it is always entirely new and fresh.
There is plenty of unique gameplay in this game beside the other, more common stuff (such as jumping on platforms or shooting arrows). Riding the horse in order to increase your speed, jumping from horseback onto the back of the colossus (a real action movie!), and above all, the whole climbing gameplay. Since the colossi always move, the climbing turns into intense, nerve-tickling, and absolutely furious action. You'll shout "Hang on! Hang on!" to your hero, seeing how violently the colossus shakes its head, seeing how you, a tiny creature, are thrust back and forth, desperately grabbing for the colossus' fur. Then the colossus stops moving for a while, this is your chance - quick, draw out your sword and stab! Sometimes you'd forget to hang on, the strength of your grip will run out, you'll fall down from the colossus' back. Sometimes you'd drop on a different body part, see that there is no fur there, try to balance and to jump over to another area - while everything around you is moving... I have never seen such amazing action in any other game I've played.
But there is another part of the game beside fighting the colossi - the traveling. You don't get automatically transferred to a colossus, and its location is not marked on the map. You'll first have to find it. By holding your sword against the sun you'll be able to track the ray of light and follow it to reach the colossus' lair. You'll travel through a beautiful land on the back of your horse. Sometimes you'll just want to stop and admire the beauty of the world. You could take your time and explore the whole world, even though you must fight the colossi in a specific order. To say that this world is a waste because there is nothing in it to interact with means to miss the whole point of the game. The journey is made as tranquil and as meditative as possible to form maximum contrast to the furious battles. What would regular enemies or items do but distract you from the colossi battles, the heart of the game? Instead, you can enjoy the journey while it lasts. I think the game would lose a lot of its magical appeal if it incorporated standard elements such as "normal" enemies and items.
There is something outstanding in "Shadow of the Colossus" that only one other game I know could achieve: it tells an emotional, touching story without words. The other game is
Another World, which had a dramatic story about friendship without a single line of dialogue. There is some dialogue in "Shadow of the Colossus", but it mostly serves as introduction and descriptions for your missions. Everything that happens in the game is experienced directly by you, the player. You know only as much as you have to know to be able to identify yourself with the hero. You don't know who he is. You can only guess what the dead girl meant to him. And trust me, it makes the whole thing more touching and personal than if they gave you a dossier with a detailed account of their relationship. You know that the man is ready to slay sixteen living being that never did him any harm just because it gives him a faint hope that the girl will be revived. Would you do the same under similar circumstances? Just fill in the blanks yourself and see how the story suddenly becomes so near to your heart.
There are plenty of small touches that are hard to describe - I'll repeat over and over again that you must play this game yourself in order to understand. Special cut scenes will play after some of the battles - you'll never know which ones. It might be the next monotonous call of destiny: "Thy next foe is...", but it also might be a beautiful dream, an intimate and tender scene. Without dialogue. Dormin's eerie speech can hardly be perceived as dialogue. It is there just to remind you constantly that it is not over yet. Sings of weariness, wounds and scars will appear on the hero's face. He will finish the game looking older than he did when you entered the temple in the opening cut scene.
The phrase "There are only colossi battles in this game and no other story" is so misleading, because it loses its meaning when applied to the game. The game's story is so moving
precisely because it is kept so simple. You experience this story directly from playing the game. You do not need detailed characters or dialogue to be able to connect yourself with this story. It goes straight to your heart. I cannot explain how it does it, and I think nobody can, but it's a fact. You know that you are dealing with a great work of art when you know it is great without being able to understand how this greatness was achieved.
And the story is very suspenseful. You won't ask "What is suspenseful about going through sixteen giant battles and nothing else?" if you play this game. The more prosaic reason for that is the variety of the colossi battles, the unique challenges and unique atmosphere that await you every time you encounter a new colossus. The other reason is the heavy feeling of inevitability that accompanies the game from the beginning to the end. You slay sixteen giants and your beloved one awakens, that's what you are told. But you know that it can't be that simple. You know that something will happen, you know that you are heading towards a tragic end. It is evident because of the feeling of despair that you have when you begin the game. Alone the task itself can make you desperate. You know that you are morally wrong from everyone's point of view, that you are doing things that cannot remain unnoticed. You don't question Dormin's words only because you'll do anything to save the girl. But you don't need much imagination to realize that the lord of shadows who disappear at the sight of your sword can hardly speak for all of mankind. But you don't know exactly what the end will be. You don't know for sure who is good and who is evil. This is what makes the story so suspenseful, this is what will make you see the ending, which is shocking and unexpected. Maybe even more shocking if you have played
ICO.
I've played so many games with emotional stories, and yet "Shadow of the Colossus" is perhaps the most emotional of them all - in its own unique way. I was shocked and close to tears many times. "Shadow of the Colossus" was created with so much love and tenderness, that those emotions are transferred directly to the player during the gameplay. Once again, it is next to impossible to describe how they have achieved this. Proving once again that games are art, that the quality of a game doesn't depend on its technical complexity, but on the soul its creators put into it. There are many layers in the game, many levels of understanding. The most obvious one is the underlying message of the game, which is for many the core of its story: sacrifice. The girl was sacrificed - was it your fault? How were you involved in that? Now you are here, and you are ready for yet another sacrifice. But this time, you sacrifice yourself. Because every time you travel to fight the next colossus, you know that chances are you won't make it out alive. In fact, after a while you realize that what you are doing is unforgivable. But what does it matter when there is a chance to save the girl? In this way, "Shadow of the Colossus" is a tale of love.
Maybe the reason for this depth are the characters of the game. Yes, this game has many characters, even though you won't notice it in the beginning. One of them is your horse. Your faithful companion, someone who is always at your side, someone who hurries to you when you call it. I remember how one of the colossi fired at the horse, causing it to drop on the ground. I shouted: "Don't touch my horse!", and hurried to its rescue. Sometimes you'll have to travel through some areas the horse cannot access. Then you can whistle for him, call his name. Often it takes a long time till the horse finds an alternate way and comes to you. But when he comes, you realize how attached you are to the animal. You have no friends in this world, only the horse. You'll feel this very clearly when you play the game. Viewed from this angle, "Shadow of the Colossus" is a tale of friendship.
But it is also a tale of battle and death. And here, "Shadow of the Colossus" turns into a myth, an ancient legend, an epic. A mortal fighting gods. Gilgamesh and Enkidu on a heroic journey, Jacob (Israel) defeating an angel, and of course - Hercules. The hero who single-handedly eliminated legendary powerful creatures. This is the feeling you have when you play "Shadow of the Colossus". But what makes it more than just a collection of battles against impressively looking giant creatures is the incredible design of those creatures.
The wizards who made this game managed to design the colossi in such a way that every single battle is not just dramatic and packed with intense action; every battle becomes a very personal and moving experience. I cannot call those colossi "monsters". They are more like gods, or like sacred animals. Each one of them carries a certain dignity that makes you, above all, feel respect to the creature. In most games, you feel an evil joy when you defeat a difficult boss. You cry: "die, sucker!", or "finally killed the bastard!" or whatever. But not in "Shadow of the Colossus".
I played the game with my wife, and every time we defeated a colossus, we simply looked at each other, and we knew that we were both feeling the same thing: pangs of conscience. I remember how, after having defeated a giant bird, we saw how it fell down into the water: the once proud flying creature will never rise again. My wife felt so sorry that she almost cried. She would also sometimes beg me to stop fighting and to spare a colossus' life. Of course, there was also the joy of victory, the satisfaction and the pride, but also a feeling of tragedy. I wanted to kneel and to bow to the fallen enemy. I've never had such a feeling before. Of course, in many games you defeat plot-related bosses and can feel sorry for them, but they are mostly humans, and your emotional connection is evident in the story line and in what they say. Here, the colossi have nothing to do with your story. They also don't say a word. Even with colossi who look human, you know that they are not. And yet, you have feelings for those big creatures. Their emotions are visible in every movement they make, in their attacks, in the way they look at you.
The variety of the colossi also influences the emotional experience, not just the gameplay. Each colossus has a different personality, so the degree of the emotional connection you'll feel to them will vary greatly. Some of them are very aggressive, they attack you on sight, even if you don't do anything to harm them. Others will simply ignore you until you begin attacking them; there is one colossus who doesn't attack you at all. Some simply look vicious and unpleasant, while others look calm, majestic, and noble.
One of the reasons for the emotional connection with the game's characters is their incredible animation. Really, the most astounding technical aspect of the game are not even the graphics, but the animation. You can spend hours just jumping on and off your horse, calling its name, and seeing how it gracefully runs towards you. The movements of the horse and the riding look absolutely realistic. The hero's animations are also extremely well-done. You'll immediately recall
ICO, made by the same developers, to which "Shadow of the Colossus" is the prequel story-wise. In "ICO", you really felt that your character was jumping, climbing, hanging on ledges, making efforts. You'll have the same sensation with "Shadow of the Colossus". One of the reason for the sheer intensity of the action is the fantastic animation. When a colossus begins to move violently, trying to shake you off, and you desperately grab his fur and try to hold on, you truly
feel the magnitude of the scene. You feel the danger, because you see the realistic animation in front of you.
Graphically, the game is quite similar to "ICO, but richer in scope, because its world is much larger and there are many more different creatures. You'll notice the similarity in the choice of colors, in the attention to detail and atmosphere, in the general magical innocence of the graphics. You'll admire those graphics not for their variety, but for the consistency in style. No matter where you go and what you see, every bit of graphics in the game follows the same aesthetics.
To enrich the experience even more, "Shadow of the Colossus" has a magnificent soundtrack. Alone the music that plays during the intro can seduce your soul. During the battles with the colossi, the music follows the events of the battle in a dynamic way. The colossus appearing, noticing you, preparing to strike, you finally getting on top of the colossus - everything is reflected through the music.
The Bad
There is only one small flaw in "Shadow of the Colossus": the camera. You can rotate the camera and adjust it to a desired point of view, but after a while it keeps returning to the "default" perspective, which is sometimes very awkward. It is particularly disturbing during the battles; sometimes I found the screen covered entirely by a piece of a colossus fur, because that's what my character was obviously looking it, lying flat on the beast's back after it had tried to shake him off. It takes time to move the camera back into any normal perspective, and during this time the colossus might shake you again. However, even though I was very irritated by this camera in the beginning, I gradually got used to it and even liked the frantic rotation and the weird angles.
The Bottom Line
+ Unique concept
+ Unique style and presentation
+ Magical atmosphere
+ Incredible action
+ Touching without words
+ Great animation, graphics, and music
- Some camera issues
When I was playing "Shadow of the Colossus", I thought of one author's description of a genius painter: "When you see his pictures, you feel as if there were no other painters before him". I think there are two kinds of greatness in art: a work that breaks new ground or reaches perfection within a certain style, and a unique creation that wasn't influenced by anyone and can't influence others, just because it is so unique. "Shadow of the Colossus" belongs to the second kind. When you play it, you feel as if there were no other games before it. I've had a similar sensation before - with
Loom, to a certain extent with
Last Express and
Live a Live. Games that are so unique, so complete in their unique-ness, that nothing can be said or done afterwards. They can have no real sequels, and they are impossible to imitate.
"Shadow of the Colossus" deserves every word of praise it has received. It is pure magic in form of a game, and I'll say it as directly as I can: you must play it. Because there is no other game like it.
