HomeVideo GamesThe ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection - Review

The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection – Review

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The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection - Review 1Title: ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection
Developed By: Team Ico / Bluepoint Games
Published By: Sony Computer Entertainment
Based on: A HD port of the original ICO and Shadow of the Colossus games on the PS2
Console: Playstation 3
Genre: Action-Adventure, Platformer, Puzzle
Subtitles: English
Classification: This game has been classified M and is recommended for mature audiences.
Review Conditions: This review was done on a North American Playstation 3 version of the game. There is no difference between regions.
Special Thanks: This game was purchased out of my own pocket

This review was requested by reader Myst after noticing I hadn’t reviewed the game yet. Unfortunately when it was released, it was one of the big months for gaming and it was drowned out among other titles which unlike this collection, were not ports of games previously released thus took priority. However I now present to you my review of these two games to help you determine if this is worth adding to your collection or not.

I take you back even a year when this collection was announced however very little word was mentioned about it. Both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus at least over here in Australia were near damn impossible to find in stores and for those lucky few who did manage to track them down… it could have cost you quite a bit of money as they were that in demand. Having tracked down all the NIS America titles released over here months ago and having just recently having tracked down the last Shin Megami Tensei game I needed to complete my collection I too set out on this quest to find the long lost Playstation 2 games from Team ICO and even after this collection having been released more than a year after my search began – I have yet to see a single copy in stores. Therefore setting into this game I had my standards raised very high… would my dreams of it being this amazing wonder-game come true? Well… sorta.

The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection - Review 2

Plot

Before anything else I would like to discuss the plot of the games which usually holds importance to me in any review as there is no point wandering around a labyrinth of dungeons without some purpose? Both games have plot presented and that sets the purpose of going through the adventure but at the same time does not invade the gameplay by barraging you with the next cutscene… and I am not fully sure if I appreciate it or would love to know more. In ICO, a boy with a horned hat is brought to a tower labyrinth by some shady looking people but manages to escape from his stone confines. At the beginning of his quest to find the exit, he stumbles upon a girl locked up in a cage who he naturally rescues. There is very limited dialogue at all during the game (Different languages as well), leaving the relationship between the two to be developed through trust and gestures more than anything else as they attempt to escape the temple. While I would have loved more information behind the two characters, it is hard not to appreciate something like this.

On the other hand Shadow of the Colossus had a little bit more plot but was also much darker in nature. Starting his quest on his noble steed, the Wanderer seeks help to resurrect his dead girlfriend. He is tasked by a mysterious being with a quest to defeat 16 colossus scattered around the far edges of the world and upon completion of his quest will be able to reunite with her. As with the previous game everything is spoken in an unknown fictional language and aside from the few cutscenes scattered upon defeating different colossi… that is all there is to it. For both of these games I really would have loved just a little bit more plot, but I can see what they tried to do and it works okay in my books.

The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection - Review 3

Design

In terms of the games design, there is no denying that these titles are from the Playstation 2 era, but even then for their time they were great examples of beautifully designed games. For those with bigger widescreen televisions you will no longer have to worry about a blurry mess as the remastered HD designs did a good job at reflecting the original graphic designs while also improving upon the texturing, tweaking the lighting and a number of other aspects in order to not so much completely change and remodel everything, but to keep the original Playstation 2 charm while supporting current technology to view them on. Irrespective of all this, in my personal opinion it all worked well to bring a well designed and detailed game back to life even if it won’t wow you for overall HD quality. However there were two issues in particular that frustrated me to some extent over both of the games which annoyed me somewhat and were both more relevant to Shadow of the Colossus than ICO. The first was that the camera controls were frustrating at some points while on colossi which while paying attention to the Wander to not have him fall of, I had to spend just as much time fixing the camera. The second issue is more slight but some of the lighting was a bit on the annoying side, at times overly bright and not so easy on the eyes.

But with the design aspect, quality is what I was expecting but as someone who has not played either game before… how does the world shape up? To start off with Shadow of the Colossus I really did appreciate the whole open world which while at some points being barren to facilitate what could be a large colossi battle in the future, included many different forms of terrain to either hinder to aid your path in reaching your next destination. Considering at first I accidently skipped over the advice about the sword pointing you to the next location, I jumped on the Wanderer’s horse and rode around and was impressed with the sparce but well detailed and perhaps even tranquil environment they produced. ICO’s temple designs on the other hand were good in a different way… while obviously being the darker of the two games it was also creatively planned out but perhaps overly big at some points where smaller environments would have been better to perform mediocre tasks than taking a five minute detour. For both games, enemy and colossi designs were also appropriate.

Music

For the games music, I fell in love with both of the games theme songs, especially ICO’s which is titled “You Were There”, which is a beautiful song which accurately reflects the implied innocence of the main characters and the nature of the game. The rest of the soundtrack for both games was not intrusive to the gameplay and consisted of more quieter songs with the occasional loud one to suit the mood of colossi battles which was good for me. As I mentioned before, there is very little actual dialogue in this game, with all of it being spoken in a fictional language – therefore I have nothing to comment on it.

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Gameplay

ICO

While both of these games are usually referred to as a set, the gameplay for each is very different with ICO focusing on more puzzle solving while Shadow of the Colossus is more around action and questing to kill colossi. First, to discuss the gameplay of ICO. The game is essentially one big escort quest where you must help the mysterious girl Yorda to escape the castle through several forms of puzzles ranging from pulling switches to jumping over short distances to the general pushing and ledge climbing among other things and they do end up pretty challenging at some points. The game also utilizes the use of a simple melee system in order to protect yourself and Yorda from the shadows which occasionally attack you but is nothing all that complicated.

As I just mentioned, this is an escort quest sort of game and Yorda’s AI isn’t what I would consider the best in a game and will therefore wander around aimlessly if you go too far ahead or seemingly struggles to contemplate you have gotten past a simple puzzle. You can however at points hold her hand and direct her to where you need to go which is a helpful little system to avoid some of the hair pulling annoyances. Either way, as you may have thought… this is a temple and there are locks and doors which no ordinary boy can open – but a mysterious girl in white can. After a few mis-jumps leading to your death, it is a pretty straight forward experience and a moderately fun one at that albeit a bit dull and annoying at points. The game is also short… so short in fact they have included a Gold Trophy for beating the game within two hours. It is one I would play through perhaps once, but then wouldn’t play for a while at least.

The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection - Review 5

Shadow of the Colossus

In a completely different gameplay style, throw away your puny stick sword from ICO and grab a real blade as you set of on your quest to scale and defeat some of the biggest bosses you may have ever faced in a game…. all 16 of them! As I mentioned in the design, you are presented with an open world environment which you must navigate to find all 16 with your sword. When holding up your sword it will emit a blade of light pointing in the right direction which does get frustrating while riding a horse but it works. While the open world is one thing about this game, most of the fun will actually be had taking down these baddies even if the first few may turn you off doing so due to their tedious nature. Starting from the ground… or perhaps a bit more of an elevated platform you must grab onto the giant beasts and scale their backs only holding onto their fur and find weak spots (Through the power of light) to stab your blade in… all the while they are free to shake you off or attack you. The most annoying part being if you die…. they get a gift of their entire life bar back which is slow to deplete in the first place.

Equipped with weak weapons that only slowly deplete the colossi’s health in the first place, you are looking at a lot of trial and error, dying and rewarding satisfaction when you finally down the enemy so you are looking at a much longer playtime than ICO and is perhaps the one I would suggest diving into first. It proved to be quite a lot of fun after my original hesitance of potentially finding this to be a dull game. The game also includes trophies however none of these are about completion time but more focused on doing extra ordinary feats, defeating the colossus and completing the games difficulty levels.

The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection - Review 6

Personal Opinion

In the end, this was a game that had to be released considering its original impossibility to find on the Playstation 2 and with the upcoming release of The Last Guardian hopefully sometime this year. Overall I think these are two good solid games that will appeal to those who have desperately wanted this game for a Playstation 3 release and/or find slower paced puzzle/platforming games enjoyable. Even Shadow of the Colossus however is relatively slow so you won’t just be able to jump into the action straight away and down colossus left right and center. The benefit of having 1080p and stereoscopic 3D should appeal to fans and newcomers alike. I just wish I could have enjoyed ICO more… it was the game I had most hopes for and while the game wasn’t bad by any means (Perhaps showing its age more than anything), it just needed more content and a less temperamental AI companion.

Final Score (Combined Scores of Both Games)
Storyline/Character Development: C+
Design: B
Music/Voice Acting: B
Gameplay: B
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: B
Overall Score: B

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Aw, thanks for taking the time to do this. ^.^

    Thanks to you and Kidd, I picked this up and started playing. I haven’t had a lot of time for it yet, but I will say that I get an immense amount of satisfaction when I finally down a colossi after all the trial and error to learn the fight. Great overview of the two games!

    • You are very welcome, I have to thank you as well for reminding me to review the game – was actually good getting to replay it before doing this review. Hope you enjoy the game ^_^

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