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.

I knew this was a classic, going in, but what I hadn't anticipated was just how elemental and minimalistic it would be. It was a pleasant surprise and welcome subversion to discover a game that I had known only to be an innovative open world adventure was in fact set in a barren desert, melancholic from its opening cinematic, and centred around a gameplay loop so simplistic that the weight of its repetitions acquire a purposefully suffocating heft, even as the colossi designs and environmental attention required to topple them remain for the most part fresh throughout the experience.

Shadow of the Colossus is a deeply lonely game. Though accompanied by a reliable steed, the experience of wandering through this world only to devastate it makes you feel more and more like a harbinger of death itself, barely receptive to the emotions and realities of the creatures you kill, just charging forward as a naive emissary, directed by a force you never dare to question.

The gameplay itself is slightly clunky; handling your horse takes some time to master, clambering up surfaces can occasionally feel glitchy if you are being thrown around, and there is a sense that the environment itself has a general antipathy towards you - some surfaces that look like they should be climbable simply aren't, and there is no fast-travel system. All of these may read as flaws but it is to the game's credit that its atmosphere, narrative, and general emotional tone render them as assets rather than liabilities. These things should not be easy. There should be no shortcuts. The world should resist you, because there is still life in it, and you are, ultimately, a threat.

This does mean that sometimes the colossi can feel a little tedious. It is, if not a necessary cost, then perhaps an understandable one, as a product of the game's philosophy. Sometimes you have to wait, sometimes the puzzles can be obtuse, and sometimes you will just feel stupid. Sometimes a jump will feel needlessly finnicky, or a gimmick poorly communicated. But only rarely did that actually take me out of the experience, and ultimately those instances were forgivable for the grandeur and scale on which the game operates, the smallness that you feel, the conflict at the heart of your purpose.

"Shadow of the Colossus is one of the great game experiences everyone should have" is the wisdom I've seen frequently extolled, and for all of my assumptions that this would reflect on innovative gameplay, world building, and narrative impact, ultimately the greatest asset of my experience was the isolation at the core of its protagonist, Wander's, world. For as noble and altruistic his motivations - the desire to save an anonymous companion - the world is resistant, and antagonistic, and content without you. And it is only in accepting that, in embracing that, that you can fully commune with it, and what seems like a chaos coalesces into a harmony. The light that draws you to a single point is not a target, it's a call. It's too late for Wander, but it's not too late for us.