Shadow of the Colossus

I give it a 9.5/10 because I wished it was longer. Otherwise 10/10!

One of the games I played the most when I was in Secondary School was this game, "Shadow of the Colossus". In this game, you control a young guy named Wander, who is trying to revive a girl, Mono, in the Forbidden Land. In order to revive her though, you are instructed by a voice, Dormin (DormiN, NimroD, get the reference? Wiki Nimrod for a bit of history lesson), to kill 16 Colossi. So Wander and his horse, Agro, sets out travelling throughout the Forbidden Land to kill all 16 Colossi... 

 

And that's it... That's basically what you do throughout the game. No side quests. No enemy mobs, except for killing and eating white-tailed lizards and fruits to extend your grip/health bar. All you do is ride horse, find place with shiny sword, go to place, kill colossus, repeat. Now I know it all may sound boring but it's not, mainly because of how well thought out each Colossi is. Sure the game concept is simple, but defeating the Colossi requires a lot of brain power. They don't give you any tutorial on where their weak point is or how to defeat them. The only hint you get is if you run around doing nothing and Dormin would give you a VERY vague hint. Yes he will only give ONE hint and that gets pretty annoying cause he keeps repeating the same thing over and over when you're like "I don't know what to do D8!!!".

The problem I kinda had when I first started out this game was just the controls, I didn't know you could climb onto the Colossus's fur and reach their weak spots, but right after that, the first Colossus is very simple, like a tutorial. It doesn't attack you unless you provoke it like shooting an arrow at him. The second one, and that is pretty simple too, except for the fact that instead of being passive around you like the first one, it attacks you on sight. Now you got him, on to the third. You're then introduced to a new problem. Colossi are moving statues, some part of them are made out of stone, like an armor, so you can't climb some of those unless they have some sort of a ledge. You ain't Ezio, even Ezio needs a ledge to hang on to. So for the third Colossus, you need to start using your head and trick him to break his armor. And I shall not spoil more.

Although all Colossi you meet at first look big and slow, it gets harder from there. There are small agile ones not to mention some can fly, swim, climb walls, dig underground, shoot poison gas, shoot... laser...thingys. IT'S NOT AN EASY GAME WITHOUT A GUIDE! But you should play it without a guide. It's more fun that way.

"Meet Celosia and Cenobia, the more agile Colossi. They run WAY faster than you. Think fast 8D"

So this is my final verdict. If you like a game with a bit of challenge for the brain rather than button mashing combos, enjoy gorgeous scenary/graphics, great and simple storyline (There isn't much dialouge in this game), go get the game. I completed this game numerous times and even bought the HD remake "ICO x Shadow of the Colossus". So happy with it. I think ICO is a good game but not my style of a game so I'm not gonna do a review on it.

Goodnight!