Video Game Corner: Shadow of the Colossus Pt.1

You may or may not have noticed that over the past few weeks I have struggled to find movies to review. It is a slow season if you have seen a good amount of the awards season movies already and don't care about 50 Shades of Anything. The same goes for the thing that probably wastes the second most amount of time in my life, video games.

I can't play Monster Hunter World because the thought of having to follow any type of injured creature (except human) to its nest and killing it as it sleeps gives me more moral issues than Chidi Anagony. Just when I thought I was going to have to start reading books, the fine folks over at Sony Interactive Entertainment released an ultra HD remake of the cult classic Shadow of the Colossus.

Shadow of the Colossus was originally released in 2006 for the Playstation 2 by Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan and Team Ico. The game was met with widespread critical and financial success upon release and was praised for it's music, sound, art, landscapes, minimalist story and emotional journey, you know, basically all the most important parts of video games.

Despite it's success, Shadow of the Colossus is not a game that I have ever had the chance to play. For all of the great things about the game there also have been some huge issues with it in the past. The control scheme has been unintuitive, the camera, while working effectively cinematically, got in the way of the gameplay at times and the world has felt a little empty. Some of these problems may actually have been in the game on purpose (such as the difficulty of climbing), as ways to tell the full story of the character, but the main "issue" that kept me from the game was the lack of instruction.

Shadow of the Colossus is like a David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson movie, where the audience is considered to be above average intelligence (at least an expanded video game knowledge) where the minutia of a movie is not spelled out for the viewer but instead they are tasked with putting some of the pieces together themselves. As a non-intelligent person this was always what turned me off from Colossus, while I like to be challenged by video games, I don't like to be confused by them, let's leave that to the movies and the president.

I now believe, possibly foolishly, that I have the mental wherewithal to not only get through Shadow of the Colossus but also to enjoy it. So on this rainy weekend I ran out and picked up a copy of the recently released remake for Playstation 4. No matter how much I love or hate the game I will check back every day or so with updates to my journey. Wish me luck and see you guys again soon.