As a young boy climbing Barba’s snowy-white beard fit for a giant dwarf and at times, hanging on for dear life hoping that I wouldn’t be shaken off and sent flying across the room, I felt the exhilaration and thrill of trying to slay this mighty giant. I had to utilize the environment just to climb aboard and strategically release and grab the fur on its skin while trying to reach stable ground to ensure I had enough stamina to stay on the beast. Once on the beast, the beautifully crafted battle music began to pick up and it truly brought out the adventurer in me. I began a search for its weak spots which could take anywhere from 5-15 minutes to find and even upon finding it, I had to make sure I had enough stamina to stab it and hold on in case he tried to shake me off. Upon finally slaying the giant beast, I couldn’t wait to find out how to fell the next one and to experience its epicness first-hand.
Welcome to Shadow of the Colossus
This multiple award winning game created by SCE for the PS2 and heralded as Destructoid’s #1 one game from its top 50 games of the decade (2000 – 2010) and earned a 91% rating on metacritic is such a unique game even by today’s gaming standards. The HD remake was released for the PS3 and bundled together with ICO, its spiritual successor which also achieved renowned success from critics and players. In Shadow of the Colossus the only enemies you can slay are the giants and each one takes about 10-30 minutes to take down. Completing the game takes 6-8 hours making it a relatively short game when it retailed in 2005 for $50 at launch. The PS2 version sold about 1.1 million copies worldwide which was decent for the time.
I haven’t completed the game yet and I’m only half way through, but the art direction, game design and gameplay feel as if it would have been a great indie game if released during this console generation. To put it in perspective, what thatgamingcompany’s Journey is to the PS3 Shadow of the Colossus was for the PS2. Can you imagine if this game was released (with enhanced graphics) nowadays with all the additional sales channels to Kickstart, Steam Greenlight, and publish on multiple platforms at a lower price point (assuming that Shadow of the Colossus available for multiple platforms)? With gaming’s vibrant indie scene now bigger than ever, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a game like Shadow of the Colossus receive more recognition among the indie community, higher sales, and a deeper brand awareness.
A game with its uniqueness and innovative approach in creating a compelling gaming experience deserves to played by gamers and non-gamers alike. We can only dream, “What if?”, but one thing’s for sure, it would still stack up as one of the best games ever created.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Good blog, always happy to see gamers are still picking up Shadow of the Colossus for the 1st time and enjoying it.
I do have a few minor corrections though, Shadow of the Colossus and Ico where in fact developed by Team Ico and published by SCE, also Shadow of the Colossus is the follow up game to Ico, although both games chronological settings are debatable.
Here's hoping The Last Guardian will live up to the brilliance and originality of ICO and SoTC, if it ever releases that is. Personally I preferred ICO since I had a few issues with the controls in SoTC, but nonetheless SoTC was a beautiful, incredible game. Just reading up on comments by Ueda and Kaido about their thoughts when developing games can be so refreshing at times and how well they incorporate those ideas into their games. The best thing for me is how well the games engross the player in the story when there's only an extremely small amount of dialogue in such an empty, lonely world.
Being that it would be Sony publishing it, rather than say EA or Activision, for one thing it would still be published. For another it would look better.
It is very much the kind of game which would have to come out first before others tried to improve upon it. Not that anyone has tried yet.
A majority would complain about the graphics. Which is sad.
Do you guys think this type of game would thrive on Steam or get massive funding on Kickstarter?