5 Games in 2005 #1: Shadow of the Colossus

Shadow of the Colossus

Note: In order to fully appreciate Shadow of the Colossus, I'd recommend you not read anything about it beforehand in order to discover all it offers on your own. With that said, here are my thoughts on the best game of 2005:

Shadow of the Colossus has a lot going for it. It's got Ico's sublime puzzle/platforming gameplay. It takes place in a mysterious land that seems to unfold endlessly in every direction, yet as you explore you'll come across a tiny forest tucked between some mountains, or caves in a cliff that seem to just be there at the designers' whim. I could write an entire entry full of superlatives in praise of Kow Otani's powerfully evocative, symphonic score. And there's little that compares with the feeling you get after climbing to the top of one of the game's towering colossi and sending it crashing down in defeat.

Yet, it's not without some very unfortunate and glaring faults. It's evident that Shadow of the Colossus is squeezing every last bit of power out of the aging PlayStation 2, and if the gorgeous environments and effects don't tip you off, then surely the abysmal framerate will. That, and the clumsy control scheme, including the most recalcitrant camera in recent memory, constantly chip away at the otherwise immersive experience of this game, and that is truly a shame. The game is so captivating right from the first battle that I wanted to focus only on the content and ignore the game's technical faults, but they're so persistant that it became impossible. It's been an amazing trip, I thought, facing off against the final colossus, but it looks like Resident Evil 4 will be taking the #1 spot after all.

Then I watched the ending, and everything changed.

There's an ongoing debate in the gaming community about whether or not games can be art, or whether their stories can compare with great movies or literature. In general, I think game storylines have a long way to go before they reach that point. You'll probably wonder what I'm getting at if you play the game after reading this, since, except for some vague exposition at the beginning, Shadow of the Colossus only offers the slightest hints of a story all the way up to the end. But it's the ending that made me look back on the rest of the game and reevaluate everything that had just taken place. Even after the credits roll, the story's events remain pretty ambiguous, but something that always seems to surround great stories is the endless reevaluation and speculation about what they might mean. And if Shadow of the Colossus is able to prompt a discussion like that, then maybe games are further along towards being considered art than I thought. Maybe they're already there.

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