5/5 ★ – Siggimanfred's review of Shadow of the Colossus.

I always thought this game would be confusing, overly long and overhyped. I was SO wrong. Shadow of the Colossus is a game that everyone owes themselves to play at some point. Its design is so genius that it cannot be understated. For anyone who’s ever seen footage of this game and never could make sense of it, here’s a spoiler-free explanation that I think will make you understand it better and maybe go “oh shit, that sounds good maybe I should give that a try” You play as some prince who has a girl who’s dead. He wants to bring her back to life so he has to kill colossi yadda yadda you’ve seen what the story is about. HOWEVER; Here’s how the game actually works. This game starts at the Temple, which works as a hub for every colossus. A voice will tell you vaguely of the place where the next colossus is. You jump on your horse and ride out to where the sun is. You then hold up your sword and a beam will indicate in which direction you gotta go. You then ride for approx. 5-10 minutes until you find the colossus. This is the meat of the game. This game doesn’t have traditional combat. You don’t fight shadow goblins, you don’t level up your strength and vitality, you don’t collect sticks and rocks to somehow make arrows out of and you don’t spam the Square button for 15 minutes until the thing dies. Instead, the games combat isn’t as much combat as it is a puzzle. And every one of them feels bombastic in scope, but not too difficult to figure out and are exciting and rewarding. These gigantic rock beings make you freeze up in awe and fear from their elegance, beauty and sheer size. “How the hell do I take THAT down?”, you think to yourself? And so you start to experiment. Maybe you figure it out completely on your own. Maybe the tips from the voice gives you just enough of a clue to figure out the solution. Maybe you can’t figure it out so you go on IGN and look up what it is you have to do (not that I’D ever have done such a thing…heh). Regardless, eventually you end up climbing this gigantic thing, trying your best not to fall off and stabbing it while it tries its absolute hardest to kick you off. *ZING*. You got it. Somber music starts playing. You watch as this majestic being, this ancient intelligent rock skyscraper, this beautiful creature You watch as its eyes fade to darkness. As it falls lifeless onto the ground. This thing that you were wrestling to death, that had you scream “NO DON’T KICK ME OFF HOLD ON YES C’MON DIE ALREADY DIE DIE DIE C’MOOON YEES” mere seconds ago? You feel sad for it. You feel horrible for killing it. Who knows how long it’s been around. And now? Now it’s gone. And you caused it. You feel rewarded, you feel great about having won this challenge, but at the same time, you start to wonder if you’re really the good guy here. But before you can do that, you’re stabbed by these black vines. You wake up in the temple. On to the next colossus. This is all the game is. And it’s all it needs to be. It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. The game has a good variety of colossi, of which the majority are an absolute blast to figure out and defeat. While I didn’t enjoy the final boss due to some AI problems, the ending makes up for it plenty. Like the game, to the point, beautiful and meaningful with very little dialogue. SOTC has always been a visual spectacle, and the PS4 version is the best version of it. It looks so good I want to eat it. It looks so good it makes me wonder how one measly studio located in Texas of all places can make a game that looks like this. Again, running on a laptop cpu from 2013. The soundtrack complements the atmosphere incredibly well too, with its choir, flutes and violins. The main things that still plague the game somewhat are its controls and AI, although from what I could tell, this is the best rendition of it. The controls are somewhat weird at first, being used to modern control schemes, having to press a button to grip, hold on to and climb things is uncommon. I don’t see how the game would work without this mechanic however and you get used to it relatively quick. The AI is definitely the worst part of the game. I’ve had a few instances where it would refuse to act in the way it’s supposed to and that can be detrimental in a game where you need to rely on this. Only a few Colossi gave me trouble with this however. It’s not a great excuse, but at least it wasn’t too frequent for me. All in all though? This game is a 5 hour experience, during which it has very little to waste your time on and a lot to show and engage you with and due to this, It’d be contrary to reason to not recommend everyone at least give it a try. Masterpiece/10