Some of them take flight, soaring high into the air, while others dive deep below the surface of a lake. Your smaller foes are only comparable to, say, a house, but the largest ones are the size of skyscrapers, reaching heights hundreds of feet high and sundering the ground with every footstep. Simply put, the battles with the colossi are among the most frantic and exciting action sequences in gaming. Climbing up the back of a thrashing enemy the size of a skyscraper is quite the experience. The battles with each great beast are exceptionally hectic and thrilling. In fact, Shadow of the Colossus feels almost as much like a puzzle game as it does an action game, or an adventure, since you'll frequently have to make creative use of both the environment and your weapons just to reach a monster's weak points, much less strike at these points effectively to bring it down. Your sword and bow are indispensable tools in the appropriate situations, but your most important weapon against the great beasts is your wits, which you'll need to use in full to puzzle out the right way to defeat each colossus without being ground under one massive heel after another. The real challenge of the game is figuring out how to defeat the colossi, each of which is unique in its own way. Just as often, though, reaching a colossus is as simple as pointing your horse in the right direction and just running there. On occasion, you'll have to circumvent such obstacles as canyons or mountains to get where you're going, and you'll sometimes be faced with light, Prince of Persia-style platforming elements that require you to climb moss-covered walls or hoist yourself over a few ledges. Once you've pinpointed your destination, it's a relatively simple matter to navigate the environment until you reach the area in which the colossus makes its home. When you hold it aloft in the sunlight, the sword produces a beam of light that becomes more focused as you point it closer to the location of the next battle. You embark on your trusty steed armed only with a simple sword and a bow and arrow, which you'll keep with you till you've seen your quest through to the end. In the spirit of that singular design, your tools of battle are basic and unchanging. Indeed, it's one of the game's most commendable traits. In other words, don't mistake Shadow of the Colossus' purity of focus for a thin or potentially unsatisfying adventure. But that would have only diluted the experience of fighting these beasts that tower hundreds of feet above you and shake the very earth with their footsteps. The designers could have doubled or even tripled the length of the adventure by placing hundreds of lesser foes between you and your ultimate objectives. If all this sounds like a series of massive boss fights that make up an entire game, it's more or less what it is. You'll fight each colossus in quick succession, and you'll finish the game in essentially the same state as you began it. There's no quantifiable leveling up, and no menial combat to get in the way of each encounter. Once you've slain and absorbed the essence of that colossus, you return to the temple in a dreamlike haze so you can repeat the process all over again. You leave the temple in search of the next colossus (under instruction from that disembodied voice), and when you find the beast, you engage it and kill it. Your focus and sole occupation is the defeat of the colossi themselves, and these striking, larger-than-life beings are the real stars of this show. Is the girl your wife, or perhaps your sister? Is she dead or merely injured? What is it about the colossi, exactly, that will confer upon you the power to bring her back? This is all you know as you set out on your quest, and it's all you need to know. According to a mysterious presence that dwells within the sanctuary walls, the only way to save this girl is to hunt down and destroy the 16 colossal beasts that roam the varied lands surrounding the temple. From the introduction, you know that you'll play the role of a young warrior who has brought his fallen love to a faraway temple in the hopes of restoring her to health. There's only a bare pretense of story at the outset. Now Playing: Shadow of the Colossus Video Review By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's
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