radha

User Score
9.1

Presentation - 9.0
Gameplay - 10
Value - 7.0

Immersion: This is the most important element of an adventure game, this relates to how successful the game is in capturing the player and making him care for the world in which the game takes place, an immersive game, makes you replay it, lvl up every character, download encyclopedias, read facts, etc. When a game is not immersive is forgettable. Even fighting games can be immersive if you have a characters you relate to, in my reviews I will qualify this although is not in  VGchartz’s final scores.

Intro

A very different take on adventure games, just as ICO was unique by starting the game after you find the “princess”, Shadow of the Colossus is unique and one of the most creative games ever.

Story

Shadow of the colossus does not contain any FMV, the story is reveled as you play the game also everything in this game has a cinematic and mystical feel.

Our hero arrive to a forbidden land in his horse, Agro, he is carrying something that is later revealed to be a girl, he enters a temple and places the girl’s dead body in an altar, a mysterious voice starts talking to him, a demon called Dormin, he ask the demon to revive the girl, Dormin explain him that only by destroying the 16 idols imprisoning him he can do that, but the idols themselves are indestructible, the only way to des troy them is killing the Colossi that each represents. Here is where the game cough me, our hero agrees to kill the colossi, but right when Dormin is about to tell him the horrible consequences that will affect the killer of the colossi he interrupts Dormin and says “I don’t care”, so you ever get to hear the consequences you figure them out as you play.

Characters

The name of the hero in Shadow of the Colossus is never revealed, but he is referred to as Wander. Wander’s determination and courage will impress you more and more as the game progresses. The world in SotC is very different from ours and so the character design is very exotic, the hero has a mix of Native American Indian and Nordic design, and there is a strange language spoke in the game that is of course fictional.

Agro the horse won IGN’s best sidekick ever . Why? Well, although Agro is your way of transportation when you get on him, but you don’t really control him, you still control Wander. You want Agro to turn, you make Wander pull the strings, you want Agro to run, you make Wander kick him, also Agro does not blindly obeys you, he wont jump from a high cliff and will get you off his back when you make him get hurt. All this makes you really appreciate when he does decide to charge towards a 60 feet tall beast that is swinging a gigantic mace at you two, because you do feel he is doing it for you and not that is you doing it. By the way Agro behaves like a real horse, his animation is incredibly accurate.

The colossus are amazing, each require a unique strategy to defeat. If you have never seen this game and have only seen the 4 colossi that are often shown on the net and in reviews (one that looks like a dog and 3 tall ones) maybe you think the rest are the same, well they aren’t, some fly, some are underground, others in water, there are some that are very fast and others that shoot giant fire balls. There are 16 colossi and the time it takes to defeat them increase, taking at first 15 minutes and eventually around 1 hour.

Presentation

Fumito Ueda the game is lead designer said that only 1 or 2 out of 500 artist that applied to work on Shadow of the Colossus met his criteria. The art design in this game is incredible, several technologies were made specifically for this game, including lighting effects and fur and both are excellent. The colossus does look massive and the environment does feel like you are in a huge mystic land. The game streams everything so is all an open world environment and there are no loading time. I this huge sacred land  is easy to get lost the first couple of times,  in fact it even after finishing the game you will need to look at the map a rise your sword to find some colossi (under direct sun light the sword points at the direction in which the Colossi is).

There are some issues in the game, frame rate drops some times, textures look pixilated, and the game relays a lot on blurring effect to minimize aliasing and texture popping. But overall the experience is still excellent and one of the best looking PS2 game to date.

Background music changes according to the situation, is all quiet while you are in the open world searching for the colossi, but when you start fighting them the music scales with the battle. Also the strange language in which people talk adds a feeling of mystery to the game that works great with everything else.

Gameplay

In Shadow of the Colossus there are no small enemies, only boss fights, don’t be fooled into thinking the game is short or repetitive because of this, each colossi is unique and requires a more and more strategy each time. Most of the time you have to climb the colossi to find its weak spot, which is revealed by the sacred sword you carry, but is finding the way to climb what takes most of the time in these battles. You can whistle at the colossi to catch his attention and then hide in a place where you are able to jump on him or throw arrows at him and grab him when he charges at you.

 A lot of attention was paid in the physic engine to make Wander Look believable when he is grabbing onto a Colossi, when they start shaking he move accordingly.

The World map is huge and varied, you can easily get lost at some time since the only clue of where to go is given by the sacred sword and it only point at the direction you need to take and some times this is barely enough.

Value

After finishing this game there is a harder mode where colossi have an extra weak spot you have to find and also your stamina runs dry faster. A time attack mode also becomes available, is not much but is you really enjoy it the first time and think that after knowing the strategy it will be a peace of cake is good to give it a try and find out that even then is not as easy as you thought.

Overall

This game is a master piece, it has been called best adventure game ever by several sites and I agree, you do feel like you are inside this world of fantasy. Every time a piece of the plot is revealed you worry more and more about what will happen to Wander at the end.

Apart from a not so great replay value and some technical issues the game is amazing. I have to say that this game is not for everyone, it takes patience to find the colossus and even more patience to defeat them, if you are someone that needs to kill hordes of bad guys every 5 seconds this is not the game for you, but you should at least give it a try to find out why it gets so much praise.

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IMMERSION: 9.5 out of 10