Shadow of the Colossus PS2: Hands-On

The Ico creators are back with a spiritual successor that builds on the concepts of that hallowed game.

For a lot of developers, giving you bigger and louder ways to blow crap up is as good a motivator for their hours of toil as any. There are, however, exceptions, such as Kenji Kaido and Fumito Ueda, the brains behind cult-classic Ico. With their latest outing, Shadow of the Colossus, the pair is showing again that there's something to be said with a more deliberate and emotional approach to game design.

The parallels between Ico and Shadow and Colossus are most evident in the limited colour palette and over-exposed visuals that permeate character and creature design. Lead character Wanda and his steed Agro convey a visual gentleness that contrasts with their savage task. While this sort of subdued visual design works (admittedly not for everyone), the graphics are currently marred by a sub-standard frame rate, which is made all the more intolerable by the accuracy required from you at various stages of gameplay.

The preview build we played picked up with the pair depositing a waif-like woman in a shrine of sorts before charging off in search of the monstrous, building-sized creatures that house the majority of Shadow of the Colossus's gameplay. It's not made immediately apparent in the demo (and from our earlier discussions with the pair it might not be much better in the game itself), but it would appear that the essence to the revival of the young woman is locked inside the colossi themselves.

So, task pencilled in, Wanda and Agro go giant hunting, which brings up the first obstacle - finding one. Wanda's enchanted sword serves as a divining rod, pointing out the rough location of your targets through directed sunlight reflection. Finding our specific monster involved climbing a sheer face and well-timed jumps, which also provided the first opportunity for the currently sloppy controls to come to the fore.

Controlling Wanda is not as smooth as we had hoped and is hampered by stodgy animation that requires some adjustment. The belaboured movement is most obvious during timed jumps, such as when leaping between various platforms. But, with the wall defeated, we finally caught sight of our soon-to-be-downed giant.

The colossi are best described as enormous, moving, organic levels. They move ploddingly and deliberately, but they're clearly sentient and always aware of your presence. Once you get their attention, using the same sunlight-reflection technique used for finding them, they'll charge you and strike, giving you a few second during which to find a spot to start clambering up the beast.

Once grappled, you can input a button press that points out the direction you should be moving, and you can then start creeping in that general direction. You need to immediately size up the beast, picking out spots where you can hang on and stand, the latter being essential as you only have a limited amount of grip, which is displayed on one of the few onscreen gauges.

Moving around on a colossus is no simple matter, as the beast thrashes to and fro, trying to flight you off. Combine this with the giant's constant movement on the ground and you're left with a highly dynamic platform game where your goal is an elusive weak-spot where you sword can be plunged with some effect. You can dive your weapon in at other spots on the monster too, though with castrated effectiveness.

Unfortunately, the sloppy controls do hamper the experience somewhat. The game requires a fair bit of precision from you, as you leap around on the monsters, but not being given the same consideration makes for a more frustrating experience. It's also not obvious how you're supposed to get up the monsters, and there does seem to be only one right route - at least on colossus we got to tackle.

But that gripe aside, we're comfortable in letting our anticipation sit high. Shadow of the Colossus provides a truly beautiful gaming experience that, while wholly different from Ico, taps into the same vein as that rightly lauded game. We've been promised an interesting collection of giants, which should spice up the gameplay and with better controls we could be in for an unforgettable experience. With the game set for release towards the end of the year (September in the US - the only region with a nailed down date), we can only hope that the niggling issues are taken care of quickly and completely.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games