VGChartz: Best PS2 Game

Shadow of the Colossus: It's a Poem  screenshot

Shadow of the Colossus

Game released: 2005

Developer: Team Ico

Production: Commercial

Platforms: PlayStation 2

Price: $19.00

Get it from: Amazon
Jordan Magnuson's picture

My life is flashing before me, and I wonder if I will get down from here alive. “Here” being the back of this behemoth of all ancient beasts, this blue whale monster of the air. Like an elephant senses a fly it has become aware of my presence, and it is writhing to shake me lose: I am an inconvenience, a tickle, an insect that it would rather be free of. And so I cling to my life by the hairs of its back, and pray for the strength to hold on. The world spins around me, and I wonder at my power, and my weakness: the fact that I have in my hands the means to end this creature for all time—though it does not know—and the fact that, if it does not stop spinning, my body will be crushed against a desert rock within the space of three seconds. I wonder what has become of Agro. Dear friend; she will miss me.

Such moments as these are not uncommon while playing Shadow of the Colossus, a game released in 2005 by the same people who made Ico. And what I mean when I say this is not that such moments in their factuality are not uncommon—not that you often die, or often fight large creatures—but that such moments of epic poetry are not uncommon. Shadow of the Colossus, more than any game I’ve ever played, brought me close to Tolkien and Beowulf and Sagas of Icelanders: the game is a setting, a feeling, a long waterfall of tumbling verse. Read more »

Syndicate content

Jordan Magnuson Games Portfolio | Loneliness game.

Site by David Lerin Web Design. All articles copyright their respective authors, some rights reserved.

Theme based on AD Blueprint by Avioso Designs. Logo background from an image by roland.