It was a bold choice for team Ico to eschew the image they had established with their previous game (and namesake), Ico, for something so purely action driven. Not that I'm complaining, of course. As a fan of Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, other games equally as focused on creating large and bombastic boss encounters, Shadow of the Colossus hits all the right notes. The ultimate in power fantasy, and a gaming classic.

You play as Wander (cool name), a man who is out for revenge after the death of his girlfriend. Meeting with the mysterious yet benevolent entity Dormin, you form a pact to eradicate the evil Colossi, which will grant Dormin the power to restore your girl to life. Hell yeah.

The game is essentially broken up into a series of contract killings. First you speak to Dormin who explains which Colossi to take on. After that, you get on your steed, Agro -a reference to the term "aggro," which is suitable given the aggression of the Colossi you face - and set out into the open world to find your target. Each Colossi is essentially its own puzzle. Figure out how to mount them, expose their weak point, then kill them. The amount of variety in each encounter keeps the game consistently engaging, as there's no real dungeons to explore or upgrades to be earned. I still think there's room for something like a skill tree, and perhaps Wander could be given more tools to work with. An axe, hammer, or maybe even some kind of mini-cannon would be a lot of fun, but Shadow of the Colossus prefers to keep it simple, with a focus on creating tightly curated combat sequences.

This is the part of the review where I pull out one of my little anecdotes. Everybody loves that, that's why they read Weatherby reviews, it's my whole thing! I was playing this via emulation while working from home a couple years ago. I was in the middle of a fight against the bull Colossus when I realized it was time for my lunch break, so I decided to get up and go grab a Spicy Italian from Subway. When I got home, I found that my computer had totally lost its video signal. Nothing seemed to restore it, so I had to manually power cycle my system, and when it restarted, I was met with an error message saying there was no bootable device. Long story short, I wound up replacing nearly every component of my PC and lost my progress in Shadow of the Colossus. The cost of rebuilding my computer was rough, but having to replay this game from the very beginning? Easy. It's just that good. Give me the list, Dormin. Let me kill again.

I have eliminated 300 million Colossi from the planet today! In human terms, I've killed them all!