As someone completely detached from the nostalgia this game may invoke in many, I can understand how it would have blown players away during its initial release on the PS2 in 2005. In 2023, however, even with the quality of life improvements, control scheme changes, and graphical upscaling that the 2018 PS4 remake provides, Shadow of the Colossus is beginning to show its age. After playing through the entire main story and taking a look at the game holistically I’m not sure it stands the test of time and may be overrated thanks to the nostalgia tinted glasses of many.
From the start, Shadow of the Colossus looks to be an open-world adventure game. You have a horse for easy travel across a map that looks rich with ancient ruins and areas to explore. This is unfortunately not the case. The game in reality is a boss rush; the player using their horse for little more than traveling from one Colossi battle to the next with little to no detours to be had. Granted, the game is by definition an “open-world” in the most basic sense of the word, i.e. each environment in the game is linked together seamlessly without load screens and are all immediately available to the player at the start of the game, but this is where it ends. The lack of any real reason to explore makes this “open world“ less than interesting. There are, of course, glowing trinkets to collect scattered sparingly around the game world, lizards to shoot and pick up for increased stamina, and fruit to find and eat for increased health, but nothing else of note. I don’t consider these tasks to be meaningful side content whatsoever and the prospect of finding them never compelled me to venture anywhere besides directly to the next Colossi battle.
While this review is for the 2018 remaster of this game, it is important to note that an open-world the likes of which is present in Shadow of the Colossus was bare bones even during its original 2005 release on the PS2. By 2005, amazing open-world games like Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Yakuza 2 had all been released on the platform. All of these games, while of course having flaws of their own, had an interesting and rich open-world that were full of things to do. I obviously understand the in-game and artistic reasoning behind the empty landscapes of Shadow of the Colossus, but it just doesn’t sit well with me that there is so little to do in such a beautiful world.
Along with the open-world, I also had an assortment of issues with the controls and camera angles used for this game. The control scheme itself is fine - firing your bow with L1 and using Square to attack is near second nature in any video game - but the movement of the player character and especially the horse is immensely clunky. I can’t say if this is reminiscent of the controls present in the PS2 release of the game or was a conscious choice made by BluePoint Games while remaking it, but the controls are passable at best and unwieldy, cumbersome, and aggravating at worst. The control of the horse is especially worth mentioning here as it is hard to steer and incredibly slow unless you repeatedly mash and then hold down Triangle. There are times when I want to abandon the horse altogether and simply travel on foot, but the immense distance you have to travel in this game mandates you use the horse or spend several minutes traversing the empty expanse of the game world leaving you to realize how dead of an experience this game is unless you are tackling a Colossi.
The camera, on the other hand, feels like something BluePoint could have remedied in the PS4 release of the game, but decided to stay true to the atrocious camera work of the original. It is never truly behind the player, repeatedly gets stuck, and zooms in and out to an absurd degree at the worst times. To say it is the cause of several drops to near death throughout my play through would be an understatement. As a PS2 game this camera work would have been fine and forgivable, but for a game released in 2018 it’s unacceptable.
Despite these complaints, Shadow of the Colossus is at its absolute best when you are taking on the Colossi. The puzzle that each encounter presents that must be overcome to take down the behemoths is always engaging and will require some genuine riddle solving on the part of the player. The David versus Goliath scenario of each encounter is both exciting and terrifying no matter how many titans you topple as you realize how incredibly small you are in comparison to the lumbering, flying, or swimming Colossi in the game. Individually, 14 of the 16 Colossi designs in the game are absolutely breathtaking - 2 of the Colossi might as well be carbon copies of each other and their designs, armor covered quadrupeds reminiscent of a lion or large dog, are less than stellar. Regardless of which Colossi designs I like or dislike, the ability of the game developers to seamlessly merge organic materials like hair and scales with inorganic stone and metal is incredible, and is something I have not seen replicated in any other game.
Shadow of the Colossus was undoubtedly groundbreaking in 2005 and obviously had an impact on game development going forward, but it is nowhere near a perfect game and is quite mediocre by 2023 standards. It is unfortunate that the 2018 remake failed to really upgrade the dated mechanics, clunky controls, and bad camera work of the original leaving us with a graphically beautiful but mechanically underwhelming game.
From the start, Shadow of the Colossus looks to be an open-world adventure game. You have a horse for easy travel across a map that looks rich with ancient ruins and areas to explore. This is unfortunately not the case. The game in reality is a boss rush; the player using their horse for little more than traveling from one Colossi battle to the next with little to no detours to be had. Granted, the game is by definition an “open-world” in the most basic sense of the word, i.e. each environment in the game is linked together seamlessly without load screens and are all immediately available to the player at the start of the game, but this is where it ends. The lack of any real reason to explore makes this “open world“ less than interesting. There are, of course, glowing trinkets to collect scattered sparingly around the game world, lizards to shoot and pick up for increased stamina, and fruit to find and eat for increased health, but nothing else of note. I don’t consider these tasks to be meaningful side content whatsoever and the prospect of finding them never compelled me to venture anywhere besides directly to the next Colossi battle.
While this review is for the 2018 remaster of this game, it is important to note that an open-world the likes of which is present in Shadow of the Colossus was bare bones even during its original 2005 release on the PS2. By 2005, amazing open-world games like Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Yakuza 2 had all been released on the platform. All of these games, while of course having flaws of their own, had an interesting and rich open-world that were full of things to do. I obviously understand the in-game and artistic reasoning behind the empty landscapes of Shadow of the Colossus, but it just doesn’t sit well with me that there is so little to do in such a beautiful world.
Along with the open-world, I also had an assortment of issues with the controls and camera angles used for this game. The control scheme itself is fine - firing your bow with L1 and using Square to attack is near second nature in any video game - but the movement of the player character and especially the horse is immensely clunky. I can’t say if this is reminiscent of the controls present in the PS2 release of the game or was a conscious choice made by BluePoint Games while remaking it, but the controls are passable at best and unwieldy, cumbersome, and aggravating at worst. The control of the horse is especially worth mentioning here as it is hard to steer and incredibly slow unless you repeatedly mash and then hold down Triangle. There are times when I want to abandon the horse altogether and simply travel on foot, but the immense distance you have to travel in this game mandates you use the horse or spend several minutes traversing the empty expanse of the game world leaving you to realize how dead of an experience this game is unless you are tackling a Colossi.
The camera, on the other hand, feels like something BluePoint could have remedied in the PS4 release of the game, but decided to stay true to the atrocious camera work of the original. It is never truly behind the player, repeatedly gets stuck, and zooms in and out to an absurd degree at the worst times. To say it is the cause of several drops to near death throughout my play through would be an understatement. As a PS2 game this camera work would have been fine and forgivable, but for a game released in 2018 it’s unacceptable.
Despite these complaints, Shadow of the Colossus is at its absolute best when you are taking on the Colossi. The puzzle that each encounter presents that must be overcome to take down the behemoths is always engaging and will require some genuine riddle solving on the part of the player. The David versus Goliath scenario of each encounter is both exciting and terrifying no matter how many titans you topple as you realize how incredibly small you are in comparison to the lumbering, flying, or swimming Colossi in the game. Individually, 14 of the 16 Colossi designs in the game are absolutely breathtaking - 2 of the Colossi might as well be carbon copies of each other and their designs, armor covered quadrupeds reminiscent of a lion or large dog, are less than stellar. Regardless of which Colossi designs I like or dislike, the ability of the game developers to seamlessly merge organic materials like hair and scales with inorganic stone and metal is incredible, and is something I have not seen replicated in any other game.
Shadow of the Colossus was undoubtedly groundbreaking in 2005 and obviously had an impact on game development going forward, but it is nowhere near a perfect game and is quite mediocre by 2023 standards. It is unfortunate that the 2018 remake failed to really upgrade the dated mechanics, clunky controls, and bad camera work of the original leaving us with a graphically beautiful but mechanically underwhelming game.