Shadow of the Colossus: Slaying the Test of Time

Most of the this is spoiler-free. There’s a spoiler section I marked-off.

I don’t think it’s particularly mind-blowing to call Shadow of the Colossus the greatest video game ever made. It’s been called as much by people much better at this stuff than myself. Having just replayed it for a fourth time, I’m now totally comfortable saying that, yes, Shadow of the Colossus has no peer in gaming. It’s the GOAT: the greatest of all-time. It checks every box. It scratches every itch. Some titles do aspects of gaming better, but no game does so much of everything as well as Shadow of the Colossus. Is it my favorite game? Probably not, as Shadow of the Colossus didn’t tunnel into the pleasure center of my brain quite as much as my replay of Super Mario Odyssey did earlier this year. But, I think what Mario Odyssey accomplished (the ultimate perfecting of 3D mascot platforming) was much less significant than what Shadow of the Colossus has done: absolutely murder the test of time. Don’t get me wrong: I can totally get how someone would not like SOTC at all. A game that boils down to riding around a vast, barren map to fight giants in a series of jumping puzzles is not going to fire everyone up. I’ll even take it a step further: the concept of Shadow of the Colossus sounds boring.

WELL, IT DOES!

Take literally any flagship game, remove all enemies and goals and leave only the levels and bosses, and what would you have? Imagine the first Legend of Zelda on the NES. Now, twist the game by giving Link the sword AND the bow with unlimited arrows to start. Now take Hyrule, the exact same map and all nine dungeons, and then remove EVERYTHING from it. All traps. All keys. All enemies. All items. All locked doors but the entrance to Death Mountain. Make it so any place unreachable without items is now reachable via, say, a land-bridge or something. All hidden paths to bosses are also removed and replaced with a direct path, so you’re not warping around the dungeons but rather walking through a series of rooms until you reach the boss chamber. Thus, the only thing left in this new Legend of Zelda are the bosses in front of the rooms with each-Triforce piece. Any bosses that previously needed another weapon now can be beaten by the sword. Arrows can damage them, but the final blow must be struck with the sword. Oh, and the sword beam is also removed. Once you beat a boss and collect the Triforce piece, you’re returned to the starting screen where you got the sword & bow.

Are you picturing all this?

Good. Now, go get all eight Triforce pieces and rescue Princess Zelda from Ganon.

Does this game sound like something that would be fun to do?

Well, that’s the pitch Shadow of the Colossus makes to players. It sounds terminally boring. It’s Punch-Out if you had to walk around an empty city for five-to-twenty minutes between every fight (that won’t be the only time I compare Shadow of the Colossus to this). I don’t think I’d like Punch-Out if you had to do that. I’d certainly not go back to it just for fun. So, yea, Shadow of the Colossus is a weird pitch to gamers right out of the gate. Not only that, but the pitch comes with expressions and terminology that make it sound like some fart-sniffing art house thing.

“IT’S ABSTRACT!”

“IT’S SYMBOLIC!”

“IT’S MINIMALIST!”

“IT’S OPEN TO INTERPRETATION!”

These are things a lot of people do not like and want no part of. And no, it’s not just jock-sniffing dude-bros who scoff at that type of thing. There’s people who spend their whole lives grinding through Final Fantasy games or Zelda or Skyrim or any other big tentpole release who are simply not interested in “art house” games. Pitching them on the merits of such a title’s gameplay is particularly tough. Trust me. I’ve spent nearly three years now telling anyone who will listen that Gris, an artsy-fartsy indie that’s actually about overcoming grief and is just a touch pretentious about it, is also a truly fantastic platforming experience with rock-solid controls and outstanding level design (well, if you ignore the first level). Some people are just not interested in taking the risk because it looks like and sounds like something that would bore them. In the case of Shadow of the Colossus, it’s not so much the gameplay of fighting the Colossi that sounds boring. It’s how you experience it. The world of the Forbidden Lands is also given no backstory beyond being “cursed” and is filled with temples and glyphs in a language created for the game that means nothing. A lot of people just want a story and a game to go along with it. Remove the mysticism, spooky made-up language, and empty world and you’ve got Cuphead: a boss rush where a deity tells you to go fight larger enemies sold on the merits of its cutting edge graphics that is still never going to appeal as widely as a “mainstream game” but people just have to try it out. Nobody has to try Shadow of the Colossus. If anything, it’s almost unapproachable.

Well, I’m going to try. This is my pitch to those who have been holding out on playing Shadow of the Colossus.

#1: SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS IS *SO* SCARY

In “What Makes Horror Horrifying?” author Elizabeth Barrette postulates that horror is dependent on our evolutionary fight-or-flight response. The setting of Shadow of the Colossus assures you’re consistently in that state of mind. It has pitch-perfect timing of when to take the camera away from the player and show off the architecture of the area you just entered and let you know that you’ve arrived in the lair of a Colossus. You’re given a spooky musical cue that’s every bit as beautiful as it is foreboding. By time the beast has appeared, the player will have already been so affected just by the suspense that you’re going to need a moment to gather your wits.. a moment Shadow of the Colossus will rarely will give you. It’s something Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 wanted to accomplish but never quite achieved, and yet, a game that nobody would ever call a horror game perfected that sensation to a science.

It’s a misnomer to say the world of Shadow of the Colossus is totally empty. There’s some scattered wildlife, including lizards, birds, butterflies, etc. Sure, the game is devoid of big game animals (it wouldn’t have killed them to throw a few deer or bears or something into the mix), but the world feels occupied by more than just the Colossi. It creates this eerie unease that feels straight out of Silent Hill. Like any horror game, the first time you play Shadow of the Colossus will always be the most potently spooky. Until the moment the camera is taken from you, you never know when you might be entering the arena of a Colossi. Often, you’re clearly shown the battlefield ahead of time (which is also a clever way of letting players know they didn’t take a wrong turn on their way there), and it’s framed as ominously as possible. In fact, the best music in the game, in my opinion, are always the pieces of music that accompany those cut-aways that show off the lairs. Although the battle rarely begins when you’re not expecting it, it’s often more suspenseful than most games I’ve played that are actually designed to be scary. The gaming embodiment of Alfred Hitchcock’s famous Bomb Theory. You can startle anyone for a quick jump scare, but suspense creates fear that lingers. I don’t know if Shadow of the Colossus is as suspenseful as the commonly held champion of gaming suspense: Silent Hill 2. But, that it’s even up for debate is a truly remarkable achievement for a game in this genre.

Without ever once claiming so, Shadow of the Colossus is a legitimate contender of the scariest game ever made. More than once I screamed out-loud when I thought I had distance between me and whatever I was battling, only to see its weapon crash down upon me. Most impressively: none of the scares or tension rely on the story itself. You might find the god Dormin to be creepy, or be unnerved by “hero” Wander’s slow transformation into something other-humanly, but neither of those aspects come even come close to the chilling sensation of just swimming in a lake while a bird-like Colossus is perched in the background.. simply.. watching.. you. Even the one Colossus that doesn’t attack you, a different majestic flying creature that’s actually the largest in the entire game, moves with this ethereal locomotion that is so creepy that you’re certain to get goosebumps.

Then, you have the battles themselves. The imagery is often overwhelming and terrifying. This giant thing is lumbering towards you, and you’re so very, very small. If you find yourself directly next to one, you can literally feel the weight of its feet as they lift in preparation to crush you. At their core, action games are based around overwhelming odds, but no game makes you feel out-matched and under-powered like Shadow of the Colossus. Of course, once you figure out how to slay the beast, the opposite is true: you feel powerful and strong. This is accomplished without gaining stronger items, or being told by the game how you’re the hero of destiny. It’s simply a feeling of empowerment that overcomes you. That’s you’ve survived the horror, and it’s more satisfying than any actual survival horror game has ever been for me, let alone any action game.

Wow.

#2: SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS IS *SO* VIOLENT

As a fan and practitioner of violence, I love video game violence. It’s just so much more.. legal. You’d think a game that involves stabbing the majority of your enemies in the head and then watching their life essence spurt out, Kill Bill-style would widely be considered among the most viscerally violent games ever. But nobody talks about how incredibly violent Shadow of the Colossus is. I’ve never been a person who did the whole sitcom-style “Body English” when I play games, where you pantomime the movement of the controller. BUT, when I play Shadow of the Colossus, I’m letting out barbarian-like screams every time I thrust the sword into the craniums of the my enemies. I’m not even sure why I’m doing it, except that I’m so immersed that I just instinctively yell. But, I’m not alone. Lots of people have that reaction playing Shadow of the Colossus. It’s so violent that it’s almost primal.

But, violence alone would get boring. Hey look, I love what Mortal Kombat has become. It puts a smile on my face that MK is now so grotesque that it makes even the most hard-assed among us become physically ill. But that’s violence that’s cartoonish. I mean seriously, when Cassie Cage knocks a person’s jaw off and then takes a selfie with it, you half expect Porky Pig to pop up and say THAT’S ALL, FOLKS! (Hey, Warner does own Mortal Kombat, so this might actually happen at some point!) After a while, it’s just kind of silly. I mean seriously, who gives a shit if Johnny Cage turns the corpse of his opponent into a ventriloquist dummy in a game where the non-fatality X-Ray moves would, in fact, kill you in several different ways. Cathartic? Maybe. Pointless? Oh yeah.

In Shadow of the Colossus, the violence is nauseating for different reasons. You’re invading the space of creatures that want nothing to do with you, and you’re systematically ending their lives. Even fans of the game feel unclean when they hunt down what is basically a harmless cross between a flying serpent and a whale, shoot its air-sacks out one at a time, then mount it and begin stabbing it to death. The entire time, this creature never fights back. It has no attack. It’d be like if someone made a realistic whaling simulator, complete with old-timey harpoons. I don’t think I’d want to play that game. If the beasts of Shadow of the Colossus were more life-like, I think it’d have a lot less fans just because of how brutal the act of slaying is. You’re not performing cartoonish fatalities. You’re violently murdering things that have done you no wrong. Since that’s the object of the game, you’d think it’d be a massive turnoff. But, actually, it’s really thought-provoking. The symbolism of Wander being stripped of his humanity as he continues to slay these majestic beasts is among the most powerful metaphors any game has ever had. That image doesn’t work if Shadow of the Colossus isn’t amazingly, breathtakingly violent. And I mean that in a good way. Yet, nobody thinks of it as a violent game, and I think that should be a bigger part of the discussion.

#3: SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS ISN’T *THAT* UNIQUE OR WEIRD

Some people hear things like “minimalist story” and or “art” and think Shadow of the Colossus is so outside their wheelhouse that they could never get into it. That’s one of the more common complaints I hear. While that might still be true of you no matter what, let me postulate that Shadow of the Colossus is about as old-school-arcadey as any major sword-based action game has been in this century. You could skip every single cut-scene and still appreciate how stunning and rewarding the gameplay is.

I’m not the first person to notice that the closest one-to-one analog with SOTC is Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! series. The comparison is much closer than it would seem. You’re a smaller person fighting a series of larger opponents. The entire object of the game is to study your opponent’s patterns and search for an opening to counter-attack. It’s not just a cutesy comparison, either. They really feel like very, very close cousins. The first time you take down any fighter/Colossi, it feels like a major accomplishment. As you get deeper in the game, the opponents become craftier and you have to rethink everything you think you know works. The final fights feature enemies so overwhelmingly destructive and seemingly invincible that you’re left feeling genuinely hopeless, to the point that any progress, even the act of just avoiding being damaged, feels like an accomplishment. While I’m not totally sure taking down the final Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus is as big a “HOLY SHIT, I DID IT!” moment as taking down Mike Tyson/Mr. Dream for the first time (but it’s certainly a bigger moment than beating Nick Bruiser from Super Punch-Out!! or Mr. Sandman from Punch-Out!! on the Wii), that final moment of world-conquering disbelief is almost unique to Shadow of the Colossus/Punch-Out. Not a “hooray, I beat the game!” moment, but rather “I can’t believe I did it!”

And after the game, you open up a time attack mode that eventually opens your eyes to different methods and strategies you’d never even thought of in the heat of those original battles. If Nintendo and Sony ever patch up their differences, I’d love to see a cross-over game, where Little Mac scales Colossi and punches them to death. And let Wander stab Super Macho Man in the head with a sword while you’re at it, fellas.

And, as far as minimalism goes, um.. didn’t most of you come from a generation where stories in games were absurdly simple? Giant Turtle Dragon kidnaps princess. Go save princess. Swine Wizard steals triangle and princess. Seek other triangle so you can save princess. I kind of love Shadow of the Colossus because it’s not bogged down in plot. It’s not a Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid exposition dumpathon. The storytelling of Shadow of the Colossus is so incredibly grounded in classical gaming storytelling that it’s curiously refreshing. After the opening cut-scene, there’s like three extremely short interludes between being given your next assignment of living mountain to slay, and you lose nothing by skipping them. The majority of the story is given at the start and during the nearly half-hour ending sequence (that includes the post-game credits). As a storyteller, Shadow of the Colossus is practically 8-bit.

#4: THE STORY OF SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS IS *NOT* OPEN TO INTERPRETATION (UNLESS YOU REALLY NEED IT TO BE FOR SOME WEIRD REASON)

**SPOILER WARNING**

This is probably going to be the most controversial point, but the story of Shadow of the Colossus is not as abstract as people make out to be. While some aspects of character backgrounds aren’t spelled out, the plot, the morals, and especially the ending really aren’t open to interpretation. You’ll find people digging so much deeper than they need to, maybe because they don’t like the implications of the ending. But what it all means couldn’t be more clear:

• Wander had some form of love for Mono. Their relationship or background together is inconsequential. Shadow of the Colossus never says they’re an item. He could be some nobody who was creeping on her and being rejected by her right up until she died. Or he could be her boyfriend. Or he could be her brother and they’re doing the Targaryen Mambo for all we know. It doesn’t matter. What matters is he’s a character so overwhelmed with grief that it makes him a useful idiot for the fallen god Dormin.
• Wander explicitly knows everything he is doing is wrong, immoral, and in defiance of the laws of man and nature. Dormin even laughs at how brazen Wander is in his wish to restore Mono. And, during the ending, Lord Emon, who is some kind of leader in Wander’s society, says “so it was you after all” (who took the sword), which spells out as clear as possible that Wander had been warned against all of this. Yes, Emon says Wander has no idea what he’s done, but he still was strictly forbidden from doing anything to begin with.
• Mono was sacrificed for a “cursed future.” Some especially dense people take “sacrificed” to mean any number of things that are basically the opposite of, you know, being sacrificed! “She may have been sick! That’s kind of like being cursed!” Yea. Uh huh. In a game with a cursed land, and a cursed God, and a hero who becomes progressively more monstrous in appearance.. CURSED if you will.. the girl might have been put to death because she caught chicken pox or something. Christ, some people are so thick that it hurts.
• Dormin speaks with both a male and female voice throughout the game, until it takes control of Wander’s body. At this point, only the male voice speaks. The female voice is never heard again.
• This one is the ballgame for interpretation in my opinion: when Mono wakes up, she’s not surprised to be alive, nor is she frightened, scared, or disoriented. She’s not surprised to see Agro the horse. She’s not surprised by her surroundings, and this in a game where the reactions to everything are made explicit. Even characters who show up for like five minutes during the ending are able to emote at what they see. This is called attention to specifically: people react to things in Shadow of the Colossus! Mono coming back from the dead in a strange place she’s never been to after being killed by her own people invokes absolutely no reaction. Weird that.

• The only part of the Shrine of Worship she glances at is the hole in the ceiling that Dormin communicated to Wander through.
• She’s really not surprised to find a goddamned horned baby in the well. She calmly walks over to it and picks up the unholy abomination, barely even exams it, and continues up to the secret garden. I think any rational person would make the surprised Pikachu face for at least a second or two. Nope, it’s almost like she knew the baby would be there.
• Her and Agro then calmly walk up the ramp around the well and through a door that was inaccessible to the player-controlled Wander, then scale another ramp and enter a peaceful garden that provides plenty of food and friendly, delicious wildlife to last a lifetime. None of this is a surprise at all to her. She walks in like she owns the joint. Which she does, because it’s her shrine made to worship her.

So, yea, that’s not Mono anymore. It’s Dormin, or at least the feminine side of Dormin, holding the first horned child in the line that will eventually lead to the events of Ico. Now, whether or not she’s also the evil queen at the end of Ico is left open to the imagination. Well, no, it’s really not. Seriously, how is this even a debate?

“Wow, there’s a baby with horns now, and that’s it, the game is over. I wonder if this is somehow connected to the director’s only prior game, Ico? You know, the one with the boy named Ico who had horns on his head? Horns that are in the exact same position, coming out the side of the head, as the horns on this baby? And that game had an immortal evil queen who is basically a shadow by the point you fight her.. CURSED if you will.. and if that’s true that means this is a prequel, which would explain the CURSED FUTURE prophecy that was the thing that kicked off the plot of the entire game. Oh, and she had shadows for minions and is practically made of shadows herself and there were shadows in this game that were controlled by Dormin at the start of the game and shadows that were surrounding Wander at the end of this game and he becomes a giant shadow and the giant shadow identifies itself as Dormin but only using the male voice when it previously spoke with a male and female voice at the same time. COULD IT BE A PREQUEL TO ICO? I need a few hours to wonder if there’s some kind of connection or if this is a separate universe, and I need that long because I’m dimwitted.

Nah, I have to be open to the possibility that there might not be any connection between this game and the only other game that the same director did even though a baby with horns is an incredibly specific thing to visually end the game on, especially when it never factored into the entire story leading up to the ending sequence, where Wander now also has horns on his head that are called specific attention to, meaning the entire point of the fucking story I was just playing through was the birth of a horned baby in this game by a director who only had one previous game and that game was about a child with goddamned horns on his head. The director had literally infinite options of what Dormin/Wander being sucked into the well could leave behind, and the director’s choice was to leave a baby in the well with horns just like the hero of his one and only previous game to be the ending.. the whole point everything was leading up to.. of his second game. I’m an incredibly stupid person and also slow but I desperately need people to think I’m more clever than I am. I needed time to think really hard in my thinkin’ chair, and after careful consideration, I’ve decided it could be a coincidence and it’s all open to interpretation, because I’m as thick as a concrete milkshake. Derpdederpderp.”

Christ. This is how people can be presented with mountains of evidence on the moon landing and still believe it was a hoax. I can’t help but laugh that an attempt at throwing fans of Ico a bone by making a game that is so clearly a prequel didn’t work because fans of Ico have their interpreter heads so far up their interpreter asses that they feel they have to interpret differently the very thing they clamored so much. One of those situations where people shot the moon and became so invested in the idea of symbolism and “minimalism” that they became stupid for it. It’s actually hilarious!

**END OF SPOILERS**

Where else does all this “open to interpretation” shit come from? Well, I have a theory. I honestly think it’s because some really misguided people have heard that “all art is open to interpretation.” Shadow of the Colossus is the follow-up to Ico, a game that had a lot less story than Shadow of the Colossus. THAT is a game that actually does require a lot of filling-in-the-gaps via head-canon, and it’s also a game that people said was art house. Then comes the director’s next game, where enough specific information was given to players that a clear story with a very clear ending that goes far beyond a winking reference is released, but it’s the same art style and the same “less is more” approach to development. So, it’s another game that’s “art house” and since these window-lickers read somewhere once that “art is open to interpretation” they think they need to “interpret” the meaning of the story when it’s blasted right in their witless faces: the director had made only two games, and both had a very uniquely-specific visual. Because director Fumito Ueda didn’t put a giant neon arrow with the words DO YOU GET IT? at the end, people label it “open to interpretation.” And since “all art is open to interpretation” and they desperately need to be able to call Shadow of the Colossus, first and foremost, “art”, if it’s not open to interpretation, why, that must mean it’s not really art, right?

If a game needs to be “art” to be special, I hate to break this to the “open to interpretation” crowd, but Shadow of the Colossus is fucked. Why? Because ALL VIDEO GAMES ARE ART! Even the ones you don’t like. Shadow of the Colossus might be damn beautiful to look at it, but it’s hardly unique. Seriously, there’s lots of great looking games. There’s lots of games with unique graphical styles. Having little dialog and most of the story unfold visually instead of with words is not something unique about it. It’s perfectly okay to say Shadow of the Colossus is art. It certainly is. But, its greatness is in what it accomplishes, not something as superficially shallow as “it’s art!”

#5: I WAS WRONG ABOUT SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS. SO VERY, *VERY* WRONG

From the time I first finished Shadow of the Colossus at the age of 16, I firmly believed the game had nothing left to offer me. I’ve never been one of those people who replays games endlessly. In fact, until recently, I never replayed linear games at all. Scoring-driven arcade type stuff? Sure. Games based around levels and plot and surprises? I never saw the point. Games aren’t the same as movies. They’re a time commitment that you have to pay attention to. In 2012, on this very blog, I named Shadow of the Colossus one of my ten favorite games ever, while also noting I wouldn’t ever play it again. This was a couple years after the PS3 re-release that came bundled with Ico. I was 23-years-old when I wrote that and the idea that I would ever become a nostalgic-type was unfathomable to me then. In the nine years since I wrote that, I’ve replayed Shadow of the Colossus twice. We all make liars out of our younger selves, don’t we?

But, it was a safe bet at the time. My second play-through of Shadow of the Colossus lacked the elements that made it so memorable. The sense of dread when I entered new lairs. The sense of wonder when I’d see a new Colossus for the first time (or, in the case of the two small-fry Colossi, seething disappointment). The sense of accomplishment when I figured out how to slay each one. Replacing the sense of awe was a magnifying glass focused on the many, many problems Shadow of the Colossus has. The controls, no matter what scheme you use, are unintuitive and often frustrating. The AI for horsey Agro leaves a lot to be desired, especially for how much she factors into a couple of the battles. Colossi battles can be less epic and more an exercise in frustration in how much they shake you off. And finally, once you no longer have any surprises left from the appearances of the Colossi, some of them just plain suck. Or, if not full-on suckage, they’re not “epic enough.” Like, the gecko Colossi, Kuromori, feels like it’d be the boss in the Zelda dungeon where you get the bow & arrow from the big chest. It wasn’t that the game wasn’t fun anymore, but rather the best thing it had to offer, the joy of discovery, was gone. My 2018 replaying of the PlayStation 4 remaster seemed to reaffirm that: still great, but the thrill was gone.

Then, something weird happened: I got an itch to play Shadow of the Colossus following my review of the dumpster fire that was Drizzlepath: Deja Vu. My Dad and kid sister had played Shadow together earlier this year, without any guidance or hints from me, and I got see that sense of discovery and splendor in someone else. It was kind of magical to see. Of course, that could never happen with me again. Not with this game. But, when I started playing it, this time with the mindset of “I know what to expect, I’ve been down this path before, so this is just a visit to an old friend”, I found myself once again dazzled. That incredible music. Those awe-inspiring vistas. That eeriness of the architecture. It ALL got me again. Even the sense of dread when I found myself ready to jump in a lake that I knew had a sea monster in it, or the spectacle of Colossi who can’t even fit on screen no matter how much distance you get from them. It got me. It got me good.

It felt like I’d come home.

And so it was, at long last, that I discovered that the greatness in Shadow of the Colossus isn’t a one-and-done experience. I came to terms with how the controls, far from perfect, nonetheless allowed the job to be done. I accepted that a horse wouldn’t exactly be a cunning strategist in the heat of battle. I allowed myself to forgive the 11th Colossi for being such a massive disappointment, mostly because I got to enjoy the act of stabbing it right through its disappointing little heart. Sure, no replay will ever top that first time you finally scaled the sixteenth colossus and gave it the old ancient sword lobotomy. But.. what game is that true of? I’ve thought a lot about that this week, and I’m kind of miffed at myself. I was calling out Shadow of the Colossus specifically for a thing every game is actually guilty of. What I blamed it for doing in 2010 I’d never blame any game for today. I guess that’s part of growing-up. In fact, Shadow of the Colossus, even if you never scratch far past the surface, withstands the test of time better than almost any game of its kind out there. It’s really something special.

Best of all, if you want it to be deeper, it can be. That’s where the true greatness of Shadow of the Colossus lays: it’s a fill-in-the-blanks game. It whatever you need it to be. Seriously, it does everything short of Colossi Basketball. If you want intrigue, mystery, and mythology, it’s all here. A truly chilling horror experience? Shadow of the Colossus certainly qualifies. A sword and archery adventure for the ages? Yep, that too. A fuck-around sandbox with tons of stuff to do and see? Actually, yea, and in fact it does that even better than I figured. Do you like geocaching? Do you like hunting games? Do you like treasure hunts? The extra features (white-tailed lizards, fruit, and the new-to-the-PS4-version “enlightenment” coins) cover ALL those too! Shadow of the Colossus is a white knuckle adventure AND a resourceful action-puzzler. Or do you want arcade-like challenges within a specific time limit? Yea, the time attack covers you there. All of this in a game that’s both decidedly modern while also feeling remarkable retro in how it’s framed. It’s this incredible series of juxtapositions, all in a game that nobody in human history has ever defended the rough control scheme of. Shadow of the Colossus SHOULD be boring. It SHOULD have aged badly. It should not be incredible after sixteen years.

Instead, it’s the greatest of all-time. At least that’s my interpretation of it.