Among the hundreds of adventure games and platformers, each with its own gameplay and story elements, there is generally one trait that they all share: boss battles. Try as they might, developers (and gamers) just can’t seem to get enough of those pesky bosses, be they terrestrial, extra-terrestrial or completely imaginary.
Several games in the past year, most notably Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath (read DailyGame’s review) have tried to focus as much on the bosses as they have on the battles leading up to them. In fact, in our review of Stranger’s Wrath, we indicated that one of the best elements of the game was, in fact, the feeling of being engaged in one big, multi-staged boss battle. But if you’re just as fascinated with figuring out bosses’ patterns and weak points, then Stranger’s Wrath has nothing on Shadow of the Colossus, which is looking to redefine your notion of a “boss battle.”
Shadow of the Colossus is ultimately a romantic tale, as are many adventure games, but the plot takes a backseat to the boss-based gameplay. Players ride through a vast, seamless world on the back of their trusty steed, searching the landscape for larger-than-life colossi. These giant creatures (and we mean giant) each hold a key to the main character’s quest to revive the object of his affection. Naturally, these big guys aren’t too keen on just handing the secrets over, which is where the whole “battle” thing comes into play.
Like the bosses in other adventure games, the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus each have their own patterns and vulnerabilities, and it’s up to players to find them, exploit them and use them to their advantage. In essence, Shadow of the Colossus is a puzzle-heavy, pattern-finding action game, one in which the vast, open fields are matched in scope only by the massive, hulking colossi standing in players’ way.
With such immense bosses, players must climb from foot- to eye-level to claim their victory, avoiding at all costs a toe-to-toe battle with these rock-hewn beasts. After all, when one of those toes is at least the size of the main character, a toe-to-toe battle is far from even. Using their sword, bow and pattern-solving skills, players scale each colossus and fell it like a 2,000-foot Redwood. And yes, even the smallest of colossi are that tall. In all honesty, unless you’re a great distance away, you’ll never see above a colossus’ ankle on your TV screen until you scale up its shin and move toward its noggin.
Making your way up each of these gargantuan bosses involves a bit of the old-school platforming action as well as some new-school adventure fare. For example, jumping from one section to the next often involves both jumping and clinging to the adjacent surface, much like in the Prince of Persia games. It’s not a complex maneuver, but it definitely requires some coordination, considering that the colossi will be trying to swipe you off and knock you down the entire time.
With such large monsters, it would’ve been easy to see the developers of ICO slap together a few large textures, but they’ve actually created a host of incredibly detailed colossi. From the hair/fur to the slow-moving (due to their size) animations, each boss looks gorgeous, making Shadow of the Colossus one of the better-looking games to hit the PS2, even in spite of its relatively bland color palette. If there’s a misstep, it’s the game’s incredibly loose camera, which is both hard to control and can lead to some inadvertent moves. But considering we’ve been playing a preview build, Sony may fix that issue before the game ships.
When it comes out in mid-October, Shadow of the Colossus will try to take the best parts of action-adventure games, the boss battles, and combine them into a cohesive series of linked battles. Only a few adventure games have tried this, generally meeting with mixed results. But from what we’ve seen of Shadow of the Colossus, this could finally be the game that lets gamers actually string together epic boss battles in a tangible and satisfying way.
— Jonas Allen