A remake of the PlayStation 2 classic, Shadow Colossus stands tall as a truly unique experience.
What Is It? Shadow of the Colossus is a 2005 PlayStation 2 game. A remaster was released on a combo disc for the PS3. A full remake was released in 2018 for the PS4. This review is covering the PS4 remake as its own game as I have not played either of the older versions to use as a comparison point.
You are Wander, a young man who is traveling to the Forbidden Lands on his trusty horse Agro. You are carrying Mono, a girl who has been sacrificed due to having a cursed destiny. Wander places Mono on a large stone altar and asks an unseen entity named Dormin for help in resurrecting Mono. Dormin agrees if Wander will defeat sixteen colossi spread throughout the Forbidden Lands.
You will hop on Agro and point your sword to the sky to reveal the general direction of the first colossus. After riding through a mostly open grass field you will arrive at some rocks. Some standard video game rock climbing ensues to bring to a small open area. Advancing a few steps will reveal an absolutely massive creature that is your first opponent.
Armed with your bow and arrow, which cannot hurt a colossus but can get their attention, and sword, you have to figure out how to bring down a massive beast. As you approach you will notice that Wander is roughly the size of one of the beast’s thumbs. The scale is truly staggering, walking upon this colossus is one of my all-time favorite jaw-dropping moments in videogames.
You will figure out that you can grab ahold of the beast’s leg hair to start climbing it. There are easily identifiable weak spots on the beasts where you can plunge in your sword to deal damage. Hit its weak point on the leg a few times and it will bend over, allowing you to climb higher to reach his other weak point and finish him off. The entire time the beast will be trying to shake you off which forces you to grab on at the expense of your stamina meter.
After taking the beast down you are teleported back to the altar area signaling that the next colossus is available to find and fight. Repeat this across the sixteen colossi in the game and you will see the credits.
There isn’t much else to do outside of fighting colossi and sightseeing. There are no other enemies or danger outside of large falls. The world is large and looks great. There isn’t a whole lot going on outside of some random animals and save shrines to find, but you can totally ignore all of this and simply follow your sword to the next fight.
The Best Part: The variety in the colossi. The first three are kind of similar but the game breaks out of that trend afterwards and pretty much all of them are wonderful. Each will present a puzzle pattern of first figuring out how to attach yourself to the beast and then how to find and hit its weak spots. The game features some fantastic iterations of this basic formula which result in a few of my favorite video game boss fights ever. I won’t spoil much, but a special shout-out to the flying colossus you play fairly early on (it’s that fourth boss I mentioned earlier). The pure dread of hanging on for dear life as the creature flips to fly upside down is a wonderful, epic videogame experience.
The Worst Part: The controls. The game isn’t overly difficult. Colossi, mostly, can’t actually hurt you once you start climbing them so most of your damage will come from falling off of them. I did die a dozen times or so during my first playthrough between falling and taking damage when trying to figure out how to climb these things. All of that being said; the vast majority of the difficulty in this game comes from the controls not working how you would hope. This is never more apparent than the final boss which has some really great ideas that are incredibly frustrating to actually pull off. Elsewhere, needing to accurately shoot your bow while riding Agro is another fun idea that is kind of annoying in practice.
The Verdict: Shadow of the Colossus was the first game I played when returning to the PlayStation ecosystem in 2020 after a twenty year absence. This also marked a return to primarily single-player games for me over the same time period. The moment you walk up to the first colossus is etched in my brain as a “wow, this is what I’ve been missing all these years???” style realization.
When replaying it ahead of this review, I knew what to expect but I was still impressed throughout. I spent more time exploring. The world is fairly bare, but even riding through open, grass fields to see a pond or cliff feature is an enjoyable experience. A hawk will fly overhead every now and again, a lizard or two will scatter as you approach. Small touches that bring the Forbidden Lands to life.
Of course, the colossi are the stars of the show here. I have one minor gripe with a repeat boss later on, but otherwise the variety and fun offered across the sixteen of these beasts is simply amazing. Each of them having their own tricks to figure out turn what looks like an open-world action-adventure game into a puzzle-action-adventure game.
The controls occasionally frustrate but that minor complaint easily washes away as you are clinging to a beast’s shoulder while it does everything it can to get you off of it and onto the ground where it can destroy the annoying ant that you are.
I don’t think there are any truly “must play” videogames in the world because everyone has such different tastes that nothing will appeal to everyone. However, if I were to make a “must play” list for gamers of all types, I would absolutely include Shadow of the Colossus. It’s an utterly unique experience with so many moments that have stuck in my head for years, and I would bet that I’m far, far from alone on that.
How to Play: PlayStation 4*. Original: PlayStation 2. Remaster: PlayStation 3
*console played on for this review
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