ICO & Shadow of the colossus Classics HD Review.

It has been way too long.

Like a retired hero asked once more to strap on his breast plate only to find that his once rippling abs have turned to jelly, his sword is seemingly much heavier than he remembered after 5 years of enjoying life once again I set off on my quest to save a fair maiden by killing 16 innocent monsters, knowing in the back of my mind that I no longer was the colossi killing god I once was, but accepting the task without fear regardless.

It didn’t go well.

I'm confident that this will end well.

Whilst I remembered the strategies to take down each individual colossi I just couldn’t do what I knew needed to be done. The controls felt alien, yet familiar and completely counter intuitive as to what I wanted to do. But, the more I played the neurons began to fire and the spark of being a hero had the same effect of going to the gym and began shedding the pounds accumulated over the years returning me back to my heroic physique and my colossi killing ways.

Soon I had tracked, ridden, climbed and slaughtered my way across the forbidden land once again standing victorious.

Yes it is an empty world where you only have a disembodied voice and your horse for company. Yes it is exactly the same game that was released in the UK in 2006 only prettier but, if asked to chose my favourite game from the last decade I would chose this one every single time.

The same is true for ICO.

In 2002 this game blew my mind. Nearly a decade ago I was getting bored of the usual games and took a punt on a game with beautiful, intriguing cover art only to find a game of friendship, survival and discovery hidden beneath.

This game had a huge impact on my 17 year old brain, the lessons learnt through playing ICO have stuck with me through my working life and I continue to apply today. But that is for another time.

Pretty girl + amazing view = ICO being a player.

You play as ICO, a young boy with bullhorns that is taken to a castle to be locked away only to break free from his restraints, discover Yorda (a 16 year old girl) and begin an epic adventure escaping the castle by utilising each characters skills to ensure you both make it out alive all the while monsters attack trying to return Yorda to her cell.

The two characters are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of abilities, Yorda is flaky, physically weak with little to no mobility (a typical 16 year old girl) but possesses a strong will and the ability to open magically sealed doors whilst ICO is always on the move, climbing anything he can reach and willingly attacking anything he perceives as a threat with an ever trusty stick (a typical young boy!) but he has horns.

Using Yorda as my benchmark I still maintain to this day that ICO is the prime example that 16 year old girls are essentially useless in the real world where we don’t have magic doors!

It is impossible to talk about and review these games without discussing the endings, which has made writing this review extremely difficult as I don’t wish to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t played these games before. These games are not only about the endings to stories but the journey and how you got there. It’s about the character you were when you set out on your adventure, what you have done to reach the climax and how that has changed you in the process with events happening in each game which make you realise that despite the lack of speech, narrative or other story telling mechanic you have become emotionally invested in the characters and the games do an excellent job of eliciting the response out of you that the game wanted to continue the story. The fact that any back story between characters is merely hinted at allows the player to imagine their own tale of events leading up to the game, and no two people will ever come to the same conclusions.

These are the only games I have ever forced upon other players, commanding them to play, watching them experience the same emotions I had been through previously only for them to turn around and tell me the latest news about the next game from the same developer that is of the same ilk.

I mentioned earlier that the controls took a bit of getting used to but I believe I once read somewhere (or possibly made up) a number of years ago that the developer, Fumito Ueda, once said that the controls were specifically designed like this to give further impress upon the player the feeling of uselessness when confronting the adversaries found in the games, if this is the case then it works extremely well, whilst keeping the controls simple despite attempting some quite complex manoeuvres.

Fumito Ueda, for me at least, is up there with Miyamoto, Kojima and Schafer as the name of a developer that I know I’ll be buying any new game they release, on release day, safe in the knowledge of buying a game I'll enjoy.

Seriously, stop reading this, go out, buy the HD collection of these games and be enlightened.

Score: 9/10

P.S. PAL the Squirrel is back!