Whether you're wearing noob goggles or rose-colored glasses, Shadow of the Colossus on PS4 is a stunning achievement any way you slice it. In one playthrough last week, it shot to the top of my favorite games of all time list [Gaming Nexus score: Perfect]. Easily. Like, I don't know which game got bumped off the list and down to #11, but I don't even care.
Developer Bluepoint, who also handled the PS3 HD re-skin of Shadow of the Colossus, did a from-the-ground-up rebuild of the entire game. Bluepoint somehow made everything run harder, better, faster, and stronger without compromising the core gameplay tenets. This is 100% the Shadow of the Colossus from 2005. Yet the climbing is better (but still just wonky enough to remind you that you shouldn't be climbing a 50-foot giant in the first place), the fur is furrier (whereas before the suggestion of fur was merely a suggestion), and the landscapes preserve the enormity and moodiness of the whole affair.
For the love of everything, please, if you've never experienced it, or you maybe only did one or two colossi before moving on, then you owe it to yourself to make this year's Shadow of the Colossus a priority. It's 10 hours of your life that you'll never want to give back to anything else. But don't take my word for it. Take the word of over a decade's worth of accolades from new and old gamers that will forever harbor a glowing, blue vulnerability point in their hearts for one of the first games that ever made us question the morality and motivations of our protagonist.
Now get out there and kill a colossus.
Shadow of the Colossus PS4 is out February 6.
