At long last I’ve got my grubby little mitts on Shadow of the Colossus, and I definitely think it was worth the wait. The game was developed by the same team that gave us ICO, the critically acclaimed platform game where you must guide a young girl safely out of a castle.

This game keeps the unique graphical style of ICO, and whilst it features a different main character, you get the feeling it is set in the same universe, since the shadowy black creatures from ICO make a reappearance here. Your character has bought a presuambly dead young woman to a deserted temple, in the hope of restoring her soul and bringing her back to life. The disembodied voices of the temple say they can help, but only if you help them by destroying a series of Colossi first.

The Colossi are huge stone guardians which wander around the land, and when I say huge I mean huge, with the first one you meet being at least 20 times taller than your character. These guys are not just end of level monsters, they are the level too! The colossi are mostly stone but some areas are hairy or grassy, and you can cling on to them. There is a grip meter which shows how long you can hold on for before having to find a place to rest on the Colossus, or risk falling to the ground far below.

You must scale these giants, and plunge your sword into various weak points, indicated by a glowing blue symbol, in order to destroy them. This can take quite a while to achieve, and it really feels quite scary, especially when you lose grip and plummet to the ground to find it being broken up by the feet of the Colossus.

Each of the Colossi have their own part of the land in which they dwell, and this is revealed by holding aloft your magic sword (sounds like He-Man :-)) which will redirect sunlight in the direction you must travel. You can also shine sunlight onto the Colossi to try and reveal where the weak points may be.

Accompanying you on your quest is your trusty stead, Agro. The horse is beautifully animated, and you can ride around whilst brandishing your sword or bow and standing on Agro’s back. It is just as well you have a horse too, since the game map is pretty big, and travelling by foot would take far too long!

Whilst at it’s roots the game is just a platform game, it is like no platform game you’ve ever played. It’s obviously really pushing the power of the PS2 and the frame rate suffers as a consquence, struggling to maintain 30FPS during battles. The graphics are quite dark in most places, but the detail in them is amazing, making for a very beautiful looking game.

Shadow of the Collosus is already out in the US and Japan, and is due for a European release in February, along with the re-release of ICO (as reported here a while back).

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