As cult hits go, Sony’s Ico probably hovers around most people’s most-revered lists. Released in 2001 with minimal fanfare, the game didn’t sell well in North America and was soon disappearing from shelves quicker than melting ice on a hot toaster. It was at this very point that the majority of people decided that it was a game more than worth a look, and the resulting spiral of hype saw already limited supply dwindle and eBay prices rocket. The news that there was to be a follow-up title from the same development team was, therefore, highly anticipated news.

Shadow Of The Colossus is a very different game to Ico, although that is certainly no bad thing. Whilst it certainly bares hallmarks of its predecessor in style and presentation the game itself sees you controlling Wander, a young man whose other half – a girl called Mono – has been sacrificed. Obviously not terribly pleased about all this, Wander embarks on a quest to resurrect Mono and ends up placing her to rest in a forbidden shrine.

This shrine ends up becoming the main hub for your adventure. In order to resurrect Mono, Wander is informed that he must go and kill the sixteen colossi whom inhabit the realm. Although this initially sounds a simple task, it becomes very clear as soon as you encounter your first colossus that this is no mean feat and will take a lot of time and effort to achieve.

The word ‘colossus’ in the title probably indicated to you right from the start that the beasts in the game were of the large variety, but nothing can quite prepare you for the enormity each monster commands. Towering over Wander and in some cases standing in equal height to surrounding mountains, the enemies with which you are tasked to defeat are a mixture of animal and human forms which need to be climbed, jumped and navigated before you can even start about thinking of attacking them. Each essentially presents a moving series of platforms to which you must help Wander cling, and the methods by which you do this vary from one beast to the next.

Not that getting a hold of the colossi is a simple matter in the first place. In most circumstances the player is required to use his surrounding scenery to lure the colossus into offering up a weak point for Wander to grab and progress from. Each beast is covered in some sort of grass material, and it is only to these that the player will be able to grasp if the colossus should move or swing his appendages around in an attempt to remove Wander from their person. This leads to a few minutes of frantic dashing along arms, backs and necks between patches of grass trying to locate each beast’s weak spot: a swirling blue tattoo in to which the player must plunge their sword.

Wander isn’t alone on his adventure, and for the majority of the time his trusty steed Agro accompanies him. Not merely a way of getting between locations quicker, Agro sometimes finds himself pitched into the epic struggles against the colossi as an essential method of avoidance or in other cases a way of getting you on to the monsters in the first place. For whatever reason you become rather attached to Agro as the game progresses - possibly due to him being the only friend a desperately isolated Wander has for the majority of play.

Wandering (ho ho ho) around the landscapes finds the game to share the same washed-out, pastel-toned look of Ico. This adds greatly to the slightly surreal, magical atmosphere the game depicts and almost seems to wrap the protagonists in a cloudy, mystical ambience. Rolling hills and vast stretches of desert sit beside looming mountain ranges and forebodingly hazy swampland and each is given their own blend of appropriate textures and shades. At times, mainly during your fights with the colossi, the action does cause the frame rate to stutter, but this doesn’t adversely affect play and is more of a slight annoyance than a major issue.

ike a beautiful painting or a calming piece of music, Shadow Of The Colossus is a fine piece of art that can be enjoyed by a wide range of people. The game isn’t the longest around and it certainly isn’t one to play when your mates are round with a crate of beer, but as a proper single player experience it offers a fulfilling and strangely charming slice of gaming. One can only hope that this time around the paying public realises this before it is too late.