The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection

There is, unfortunately, a good chance that you are not aware of the two titles in this HD compilation. They flew under a lot of radars, mine included. But trust me when I tell you that this collection has two of the best PlayStation 2 games ever to grace the console. And trust me, they have done a good job bringing it onto the PS3. It even has 3D if you’re into that sort of thing, which I’m not. There are a few haters out there who diss on the game just because their feeble minds can’t comprehend how superbly simple these games are. For the haters, go play a call of duty or something, because these games are only for people who can appreciate video games as an art form. So let’s break these games down and I will attempt to do them justice in a review, attempt being the key word.

First up from what I hear to be chronological order, Shadow of the Colossus. Shadow was my first introduction to the Ico Team over at Sony Japan and it opened my mind to how games could be something more then what I previously thought. The title’s main character goes on an adventure to save what is assumed to be his girl friend though in proper Ico Team fashion you never really find out. Basically the game is a collection of 16 boss battles. You run around the world looking for your target, find him, defeat him, and end up back at start to do the process over again. Sounds boring huh? Well I haven’t told you what makes it so great yet, and to confirm, it isn’t the story.

The main selling point of this game is its use of scale. The game world is a huge valley that is pretty devoid of life. Well scratch that, devoid of other people. There are birds in the sky, fish in the sea, and various other animals around the valley, but it is sparsely populated. This plays into the setting, which as far as I can tell is a world that was once inhabited but is now long since been abandoned and much of what had been human settlements are now ruins. You have your trusty friend and loyal companion Agito, your horse, and your dead lady friend and that just about does it. Oh and the 16 colossi that you must defeat. But those are just colossal beings, that couldn’t possibly be that hard right?

For those who haven’t quite picked up the cue, the bosses are, for the most part, gigantic. Your first introduction to the boss battle system has you about the size of the enemy’s little finger. You literally have to climb all the way up his body while he is trying to throw you off, reach his head and thrust your sword a few times into the top of his head. This is even harder than it sounds and that is just the beginning. There are bosses that you have to attack while you are swimming, and bosses that you will soar through the sky on. Each boss battle is uniquely designed so you never feel like you are doing the same thing for two battles. The game could be better at telling you how to go about beating the brutes, but after some trial and error you will come up victorious. (The one with the fire, look for a stick on the ground!) Since the game consists entirely of you fighting 16 of these battles, and that’s it, it is a good thing that these battles are as satisfying as they are. It will make you literally say out loud, “wow that was awesome!” At least I did. On several occasions as well.

I don’t really want to spend too much of my time harping on how great this game is, after all we have another game to get to in this review, but the bottom line is this game is worth playing to anyone who likes video games. It has a few flaws, namely the control for the character can feel a bit imprecise, the falling down animation is kind of long, there are times you will die and you won’t feel as though it was a fair death, but these don’t take away from the experience at all. The story, though I mentioned isn’t its strong suit, it is still good and there is a strong vein of morality running through it that runs pretty deep. So if you want to be amazed by what Team Ico can do, and give you a reason to anxiously anticipate The Last Guardian like me, then give this a play through. Depending on how fast of a learner you are I would gage this at 15 to 20 hours of pure potent amazingness! Now on to Ico.

Ico, as you might have guessed was the team’s first game. Through this game the laid the framework, and improved upon it, to make Shadow. Ico can best be described as a platformer. There is some combat thrown in but platforming and puzzle solving are first and foremost in this title. You play a kid named Ico who rescues a girl, Yorda, from a cage and spend the rest of the game trying to escape the castle with her. There is an evil queen who only makes two appearances but provides the good plot point for the game in attempting to foil your efforts. You will spend your time figuring out how to escape all the while leading the girl, who for some reason is completely helpless without you dragging her around and helping her climb and jump. It is important to note that you never control her directly. You just hold her hand and lead her along. The puzzle solving aspect is primarily you trying to figure out how to help Yorda get to where you are.

So if you are making a platformer, what would be your first focus? Did I hear you say controls? Well if you did, that is obviously correct. Controls in platformers are critical for the success of the game. Ico, sadly has some flaws in its controlling. There will be frustration as you attempt to play through this game. Many instances of miss-timed jumps, facing the wrong way, even the camera gets in the way. When the camera changes point of view, your controls immediately change as well so if you were going straight and the camera switches to in front of you, you will turn around and head backwards. Now I know this isn’t acceptable in today’s age of fine tuned controlling, but if you keep in mind when Ico came out (all the way back in 2001!) it becomes easier to forgive it. Plus even with the control shortcomings, you will still manage to get through the game, so it isn’t completely crippling.

Now the best part of this game is that it looks amazing. Even in its first conception, on the PS2, it was a beautiful world that the team created. They intentionally keep everything else, like sound and music, minimal to let you focus on what they intended to be the main point of the game, atmosphere. So with that in mind the atmosphere of the game has been upscaled for the HD age and it looks better than ever. You will be tempted to just stop and move the camera around to take in the surroundings. This has to be one of the very first examples of a video game as art.

The story though it is minimal, is still not bad. In keeping with the pace set by Shadow of the Colossus, it is a tale of romance, or at least as close as you can get to romance when dealing with children. Ico feels compelled to save Yorda from the evil queen and even passes up chances to escape by himself to go back for her. The previously mentioned combat is you fighting off the queen’s ghostly henchmen who continue to pop up at various points and attempt to suck Yorda into a black portal and back into the queen’s clutches. So you must always keep her in sight because if you go too far from her she will be snatched away. There is even a boss battle, if you can call it that, which is the culmination of the game. So basically the story is hit of miss, but I for one found it interesting enough to keep spending time in that world.

I just want to air one more grievance with the game before I conclude. The absolute worst part of the game, and Shadow had a bit of this too, is that there is absolutely no way of figuring out what you are supposed to do next or where you are supposed to be going. I am sure the developers thought that they made the path linear enough but no. There will be instances where you are stuck banging your head against a wall until something clicks in your brain and you figure out where you are supposed to be going. At least in Shadow they attempt to give you a little hint when you get stuck, obviously since this is their first crack at it, they failed to realize that a frustrated player is less likely to finish their game. Okay I’m done.

So after looking at these two games, remastered for the current generation of systems, I feel as though this is not something you should miss. They are both well enough to still be meaningful all these years later and this may be your last chance to experience all they have to offer. Though I will concede that they are pretty short, well Ico especially which clocks in under 6 hours your first playthrough there is some slight replay ability in them and they still make up for all their various flaws in being just really well thought out and great games. I can’t honestly say that they are something that everyone will enjoy, but they still rank up there in my book and if you are getting the impression that you and I like the same things, I would urge you to go out and pick up this collection while you can, because I would guess they didn’t make a lot of these.