Shadow of the Colossus

Here's another classic from a PlayStation console more than one generation ago- Shadow of the Colossus. I had never heard of this game until I watched the 2007 Adam Sandler flick Reign Over Me- if you don't remember it was one of Sandler's few dramatic roles, where he plays a guy whose whole family died in 9/11 and he basically turned into a shut-in for years until an old friend tries to help him out of his stupor. The game plays heavily into the movie- at first it appears to be just another form of escapism for Sandler, like so many video games are to so many people, but as the movie progresses Sandler and his old friend bond over the game and you find out the basic plot and gameplay and it actually seems to be a very appropriate choice when it would have been pretty easy to just have Sandler get addicted to, like, World of Warcraft or something. In Shadow of the Colossus a man brings a dead woman onto sacred grounds and it's clear that he will stop at nothing to see her alive again, similar to Sandler and his family in the movie, but of course in the game there's a possibility of this actually happening- the boy, Wander, is told that if he makes a great sacrifice and slays 16 colossi throughout the sacred land his girl may live again. And so this makes up the entirety of Shadow of the Colossus's gameplay- much like how it was very easy to sum up the action in Team Ico's previous game, Ico, the same goes here. Wander will ride his horse across the land with nothing to do but reach his destination, at which point he needs to figure out a way to start climbing onto a giant Colossus and finally attack its weak points enough to kill it. The boss fights are all surprisingly unique considering how few actions can be taken in the game. Unlike Ico there is a small HUD, which kinda annoyed me because I loved Ico's extreme minimalism, but it made sense here. Unlike Ico, Wander can be killed by his surroundings and the colossi so he needs a health bar, and since the colossi will try to shake him off, he gets a little strength bar too, which forces Wander to act quickly whenever hanging on and stabbing a colossi- he'll eventually have to let go and fall to the ground. Still though, that's the entirety of the game- few cutscenes, no smaller enemies, a couple really quick platforming parts. Team Ico's refusal to conform to the status quo is the reason why they always get brought up in the "games as art" debate and the minimalism here combined with the melancholy that pervades the whole game (these colossi are rarely aggressive and the game really wants you to feel like an asshole for killing them all) is what allowed the game to make for such a good fit in a movie that covers a topic as heavy as post-9/11 depression. It's got all the great style of Ico with a much better game, and I was a huge fan. If you haven't played Shadow of the Colossus yet, do it soon.