A game can fill a grown man's eyes with tears

Author's Rating:

Pros: The beautiful graphics, the wonderful music, and the epic battles

Cons: A couple graphical glitches, but hardly noticable

The Bottom Line: 
Wanderer doesn't need to weild huge swords or do all these weird attacks to be a bad*** cause he already prooved himself when stepping up to these beasts.

Author's Review
Hideo Kojima said that video games are not art. Now I don't know what that man was on at the time, but if there is one thing I know from playing this game, is that games can be more art then a painting or a book. I felt that playing this game was like eating cake. No matter how much cake you eat, you can't get enough... Wait... that's not right... Is it... um... cake taste really good... Wait no... Well anyway, let's get onto the review.

When I first bought Shadow of the Colossus, I was somewhat afraid to play it. I haven't felt that way since Kingdom Hearts. It's like getting to much of a good thing then ya burst. Well once I did start playing, I was introduced to one of the most stunning introductions a game could deliver. You start off by watching a very beautiful intro of the nameless hero (let's call him Wanderer.) and his horse Agro traveling through beautiful landscapes as they plan to awaken the young girl (Let's call her Wanda since the game was supposed to be called Wanda and the Colossus.) It is so beautiful though that the fact that the horse is a SLOW walker doesn't seem to bother you. Finally after about 5 minutes of this wandering, Wanderer and Agro come up to a shrine where Wanderer then asks a demon to revive Wanda. The demon announces that he does have the power, but to do this, Wanderer must do him a favor. He is assigned to kill 16 colossi. Wow... talk about putting the pressure on ya. Needless to say, Wanderer agrees and takes his trusty steed Agro on a colossi hunt.

The controls are pretty easy to use once you get used to them. For the most part, it is easy to control Wanderer. He also has simple commands that allow you to explore more parts of this huge world. You can climb on walls, stab, pivot to the side while hanging off ledges, call Agro, and do a barrel roll. They may seem a lil useless, but when fighting the colossi, they are very handy.

Agro has his own set of controls. When next to Agro, you can climb on his back, and then have him run. You press and hold down the X button to get him running. And while on him, you can hang off the side, or stand on his back and aim your bow and arrow (very cool). In some of the battles, Agro is a necesity.

Now we come to the Colossi battles. The fact ism this game is about two things. Exploration and boss battles. There are no baddies that wander looking for you. It is all about exploring the world to find these huge creatures and slay them. To find them, you have to hold your sword up while on Agro's back. Then if you are in the sun, there will be beams of light coming out of your sword. Turn to find the cluster of light, and wherever they do cluster, the collosi is in that general direction. Finally when you find these colossi, you will be in for one heck of a surprise. These creatures are enormous (some are kind of midgety). When fightin one of these beasts, you usually wanna use the sword to find its weakness. Then once you find it, you need to figure out how to get there. You need to sometimes outsmart the beasts into smashing the ground so you can climb up the hair on their arms, or have them look down at you and climb their beard. Then you must pull out your sword to find its weakness since it only appears when the blade i out. Then you must stab the weakness untill the creature dies (sometimes you have to hit more then one weakness). Sounds easy? Well.. the thing is, some of the weaknesses are right at the top of the creatures head, and alot of times, they won't allow you to just kill them off. When on the weakness, they flail you around trying to through you off by shaking there head, their arm, or what have you. And you have to hold down the R1 button to hold on. You can also in some occasions find platforms on the creatures body and rest there while regaining your energy, and then go at it again. You start to notice as you continue on, your character gets dirtier, and darker. Nice touch guys. Some battles require you to use every resource you have. Some battles you have to use a bridge over a creatures head, or some make you ride on Agro's back to keep away from an attack. All I can say about all this is, that in the end, the battles feel... well... epic... Each and everyone one.

The graphics in this game are simply gorgeous while simple at the same time. The look of the colossi are so well done, and the look of the character is so well animated (Wanderer and Agro) that you can hardly notice a few lil glitches here and there. This game uses PS2s graphics to it's fullest.

The music is just another epic addition to this game. The music you get while watching the colossus walk slowly toward you, to the music you get while scaling the enormous beasts back, adds to the feel to this game and in the end you catch yourself humming the music to each battle.

One thing I liked was when you press the L1 button, the camera centers on the Colossus while still showing your character. When riding Agro and going across the colossus's path, it looks very over whelming, in a good way.

All in all, the game is both unique and at the same time simple. The music, and the graphics add to the epicness of this game. And all I can say is that it is in the end, simply brilliant...

I mean come on guys, I didn't use any sarcasm! I think I didn't...