You've probably heard this game called "true art" more than enough by now, but it really is staggering how self-assured, intelligent and emotionally vulnerable this game was able to be in 2005. A lot of my favorite games came out then, but nobody would ever accuse something like Halo 2 of being emotionally resonant and introspective.
Well before Spec Ops: The Line came around, well before anyone ever uttered "ludonarrative dissonance," gaming's true auteur, Fumito Ueda, was helming a spiritual successor to Ico that would become one of the greatest and most instantly iconic games ever made.
There's no one thing to point to about Colossus that makes it great, but the entire experience. The soundtrack. The way the colossus' fur floats and sputters in the wind. The true awe you feel when you encounter a new one for the first time. The pangs of guilt you feel when they topple. The quiet beatitude of the Forbidden Lands and the encroaching feeling of unease the further and further you get on Wander's forlorn quest. It's one of the simplest setups imaginable, it works in any language, and yet it hits with a mythic power possibly never before seen in gaming. I could keep going for a thousand more words and still not fully capture what makes Colossus not only the best game on the most popular console ever made, but the best adventure game ever created and one of the truly great pieces of art in recent human history.
Well before Spec Ops: The Line came around, well before anyone ever uttered "ludonarrative dissonance," gaming's true auteur, Fumito Ueda, was helming a spiritual successor to Ico that would become one of the greatest and most instantly iconic games ever made.
There's no one thing to point to about Colossus that makes it great, but the entire experience. The soundtrack. The way the colossus' fur floats and sputters in the wind. The true awe you feel when you encounter a new one for the first time. The pangs of guilt you feel when they topple. The quiet beatitude of the Forbidden Lands and the encroaching feeling of unease the further and further you get on Wander's forlorn quest. It's one of the simplest setups imaginable, it works in any language, and yet it hits with a mythic power possibly never before seen in gaming. I could keep going for a thousand more words and still not fully capture what makes Colossus not only the best game on the most popular console ever made, but the best adventure game ever created and one of the truly great pieces of art in recent human history.