Despite the original being my favourite PS2 game and in my top 10 games of all time, I'd never wanted to play the remake before. The graphics and lighting always looked a bit 'off' to me, and lacking the atmosphere that those fuzzy, misty PS2 graphics gave off.

After I got used to the sharpness of the visuals though and the slightly terrible rendition of Wanda's face, I really fell for this remakes charms.

It feels like a real labour of love to a game that two decades on, is still one of a kind. It's been so long since I replayed the original that I can't tell if this is greatly altered, but it didn't seem to be to me.

That feeling of isolation, sadness and that you are doing a bad thing is still very much there. The ruined landscape is largely empty and devoid of life, but the glimpses of a lost civilization and nature are beautiful.

The music is as incredible as I remember it. And this remake is gorgeous. I lost track of how many times I stood marvelling at the vistas, colossus and world.

Gameplay wise, the quirks are still there that I largely like. The awkward controls convey this sense that you might fall hundreds of feet at any moment and that you are a small, insignificant blight on these majestic beasts. Some of the shoddy 20 year old camera work and controls did bug me on that final, disappointing colossus but that aside, they were fine for me.

The star of the show is still the colossi. I'd forgotten several of them and felt like a genius working out the solutions, only resorting to a guide once when I knew what to do, just not how to trigger it. Giant, living platforms to climb. A simple idea on paper, a staggering achievement in reality.

It feels like witchcraft to me, even now, how someone came up with that idea and pulled it off. And with such variety. I'm still not sure gaming has bettered that feeling of when you grab onto the flying colossus here or work out how to ride beneath the waves on another.

Ueda's work has always been magical to me. He's the greatest game designer in my eyes for his 3 titles to date. They represent singular, huge thoughts, executed to a level that whole AAA studios never get near. I understand why people get annoyed at the controls or how clear instructions are left vague; but that mystery and fragility are what make these games so special to me.

And you can see how Shadow of the colossus has inspired so many great games since; Breath of the wild. Xenoblade Chronicles. Bayonetta. Elden Ring.

I am so glad that it's now got a playable version that will endure for many years to come.

A fun victory lap that does a decent (if hardly revelatory) job of filling in some blanks in Leon's story and resurrects a few settings from the original game that were chopped from the remakes main campaign.

Playing the game on Hardcore meant the bosses were a bit of an unwelcome challenge spike, but I got through it once I worked out the desired tactic.

The grapple gun makes some of the combat encounters a bit more varied but bar that, it's really just more of the same. Which isn't bad at all, given it's a wonderful game. But it just lacks any real surprises.

Not sure personally it's worthy of the adoration that many reviews bestowed upon it, but it's a decent enough bit of DLC for the price.

I love the Prince of Persia series. Traps, platforming, sunny colour combos, flared trousers, fun combat... Top stuff. Sands of Time is an all timer for me and I've played most of the games either side of it.

So after the positive reviews, I was keen to try this. However I'd say that 15 hours into this game, I was slightly willing it to end. It felt too big, padded, happy to borrow ideas from other games and with a story that's frankly not overly interesting.

Fast forward another 20, and I'm completing the game at 92% completion, waxing lyrical about it to others, seeking out almost every last treasure and putting it in my top 3 Metroidvanias ever.

It's up there with Metroid Dread and Hollow Knight for me. It has the slick movement and levelling up of the former and the challenging combat and exploration of the latter.

The only thing that arguably stops it knocking those off that pedestal is a very slight lack of it's own identity. It handles the series' core conceit of manipulating time really smartly in ways I've not seen before, but shall keep quiet for spoiler reasons; there are several abilities here I've not seen in 2D games before, and they're executed brilliantly.

But there were a lot of moments that broke the immersion and reminded me of other games. A lot of character interactions and treatment felt ripped off of Hades. The combat is pure Dead Cells. The platforming at its toughest reminds me of Celeste and Guacamelee.

But when it's good, man it's good. The abilities you unlock are really great. They forced me to tackle bosses and navigate sections in ways no other games of this type has ever asked me before. The combat got more and more layered, the bosses as tricky as you'd find in a Souls game, the secrets as devious as you'd find in any decent side scroller and I found myself wanting to see every last bit of the map.

I gave up on a few of the stupidly hard trap platforming bits, but on the whole I loved almost every section. The rush I felt for clearing the harder parts was immense.

And the game does have some of its own ideas, from placing screenshots on the map (to recall previously visited areas) to levels frozen in time via capabilities that will become staples in lesser platforms for years to come. By the end of the game, I had mastered the moveset and felt invincible.

It's one of the best reimaginings of a game series I can think of in years, and I hope it gets the success it deserves. All in all, this is exactly how you bring back a long lost series and find a new audience.