Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection

Yorda; so gentle and serene, an innocent girl taking silent, neat little steps, looking at pretty birds and wondering around, glowing like she does… HURRY THE FUCK UP, YOU STUPID COW! The colossi; ancient wise creatures, slowly blinking huge lashes over innocent, solemn eyes… STAB IT IN THE FUCKING HEAD. HURRY UP! This is Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection in a nutshell. These are some of the greatest artistic games ever made. Their influence and relevance rather than fading with time has only increased. These are perfectly pitched gaming experiences, masterclasses in exploration and subtle emotional manipulation, rarely matched but often mimicked. Still though, Ico is a decade old and Colossus six years old. They have aged a little. The platforming controls of Ico are too loose and Yorda’s AI leaves a lot to be desired, to the point of questioning her parenthood and sexual morals. With Shadow of the Colossus the fundamental gameplay mechanism of hanging on for dear life to the fur of a big beastie while your grip meter gets ever smaller until you fall off and have to start over again, verges on mean-spirited.

The HD makeover is an interesting phenomenon and this collection could be the perfect example of why it’s such a great idea and the perfect way to preserve gaming’s greatest moments and honour them while making some cash. Both games play exactly how I remember them although my memory of them is a fallacy. I remember dust in sunbeams through castle windows, I remember expansive landscapes, crumbling ancient walls with little bits of greenery growing out of them and all that is in the HD versions, beautifully picked out against a bleached world. In the original game though it was a blurry, jerky mess but I could overlook that back in the day. We all could. No one can now, not those of us who were there the first time round and certainly not gamers coming fresh to these titles in the run up to the release of the third game from Team Ico – The Last Guardian. This collection brings those great memories into sharp focus and shows younger gamers just why the older generation keep banging on about them and making wanky remarks about melancholic isolation.