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In recent years scale has become a great way of producing jaw-dropping moments in videogames. Huge vistas, cities that spread for miles, enormous armies – all of these examples have really changed how we look at certain games. Of course, these things weren’t really possible until recently, but it’s become a great ‘wow’ factor for many games. In my experience, however, scale has always been something poorly represented in most game. Certainly some of them are able to give the impression of huge objects, but it’s rare that they’re anything more than a few square blocks with some decals on them. Even huge end of level bosses often feel bland and never convey their size as they should. Shadow of the Colossus is determined to break this with its collection of beautiful monstrosities. It’s a game, which, although on the surface may seem to be a series of boss battles, intends to rewrite the rules all over again.
In the follow up to the critically acclaimed title ICO (not a sequel), Sony has come up with something just as intriguing and magical in Shadow of the Colossus. The game follows a young boy (I’m already seeing a link to ICO here) and his quest to bring back the life of a young girl (and again) by slaying sixteen massive creatures across a huge landscape. Hopefully this story will be expanded in the full game, but we expect something fairly mysterious to be honest.
In the level we played, one of these sixteen creatures needs to be found and defeated. But first, you have to find him. Luckily our hero has a horse to ride around the massive landscape that the monsters inhabit. In order to find the location of these colossi it’s necessary to hold your sword aloft, which handily reflects sunlight in the direction of the next monster that needs to be slain. In all honesty, though, even riding the horse about is a huge amount of fun and just taking in the sights – the huge canyons and mountain ridges – is an incredible experience.
Obviously the meat of the game is the monsters you fight, and meaty they certainly are. The first time you clamp your eyes on one as it ponderously crashes through some trees and drags its enormous club behind it, you will be a little taken aback. Well, I was anyway – I mean just how the hell are you supposed to take down something that big? It doesn’t help that the first time I faced off with one that he just stood there looking at me with his dead eyes, neither of us moving. I foolishly thought that he couldn’t see me until I saw his arm swinging that massive club in my direction. It was terrifying and brought me into the game in a way I’ve never felt before. These creatures are truly intimidating.
The good news is that Shadow of the Colossus offers an ingenious, almost puzzle based, system for taking out these enormous critters. Each creature has patches of grass-like hair all over their bodies which can be used to climb its body and inflict wounds as you proceed. They also have weak spots, normally close to their head, which are of course the most difficult sections to climb to. Keeping your balance is no picnic either and jumping from patch to patch is challenging and fun. Plunging your sword into the head of a colossi and watching the blood spurt out of it is brutally satisfying – at least it looked that way to me; I would have had first hand experience if the damn thing hadn’t kept shaking me off and stomping me into the ground.
The critical thing for me was that even when I was being stomped, I was still having fun. It’s challenging and epic in a completely fresh way. Rather than mowing down a series of enemies with your super huge gun or magical sword (like so many other games), Shadow of the Colossus offers real monsters – creatures that aren’t going to go down easily. Despite ICO receiving critical acclaim it never lit up the sales charts, which was a massive shame. Shadow of the Colossus intends to rectify this by offering a much more accessible experience. Indeed, if the full game is as satisfying as this level, one can only hope it will receive the critical and commercial success it deserves. If it does, perhaps it will act as a signpost for all next generation developers. We can only hope so.
