Prepare to eat bomb

First an update on Black & White: This game may have pissed me off enough to never play it again. I will give it one last try later this week. If I am not suddenly overwhelmed with entertainment, it will go back to my shelf never to be installed again. Now, on with the story.

Last week I got a demo disc in the mail for Shadow of the Colossus on PS2. I didn’t know much about the game going into the demo except for the fact that it was developed by the same team that created Ico for PS2. Just as they did with Ico, the developers have managed to milk every last bit of performance and graphic quality out of the PS2’s soon to be outdated hardware.

The demo isn’t long enough to learn much about the story line, but the website gives a bit more detail. In short, you are traveling through an ancient land in search of a way to revive your lady friend. The secret to reviving her is kept by the colossi (yeah, I said colossi) and you must take it from them.

Gameplay has three major components: a Tomb Raider style adventure, travel on horseback and the battles with each colossus. The adventure portion of the game gives a chance to tour the inside of the game’s magnificent buildings. There are puzzles and the usual pushing, pulling, jumping. It remains to be seen whether there is any combat outside of the battles with the colossi. The horseback travel is more entertaining than it sounds. It’s a lot of fun to just ride around on your horse across huge expanses of terrain. It makes me feel like a cowboy. The colossus battles are of course the bread and butter of this game. The first glimpse of the colossus was better than I believed it could be. It is easily the largest in-game foe I have encountered. Fighting the colossus starts by avoiding its huge feet and whatever weapon it may be carrying. Next, you must grab hold of something on its leg and climb your way up its body stabbing it and shooting it with arrows as you go. If this sounds crazy, you should see it in action. I only wish I had a way to capture video from the PS2 for a demonstration.

He doesn’t look so tough from 3 miles away

Visually, the game’s environment is very similar to that of Ico. The landscapes are vast and beautifully rendered. The visuals have a universal soft filter cast over them giving everything a dreamy kind of appearance. Another similarity to Ico is the scale of the game’s architecture in that it all looks like it has been designed and built by a race of super-huge beings which has long since abandoned its handiwork. The audio in the demo works very well into the overall experience and the music is the sort of epic and haunting soundtrack that I would enjoy listening to separately from playing the game.

I wish I could say more here, but the demo was only about 30 minutes long including reattempts at slaying the one included colossus. Nevertheless, that 30 minutes of gameplay was enough to make me want to own this game. I want lots of games.