I've had a chance to play Shadow of Colossus and I'm finding it very difficult to contain my hyperbole. Let's just assume that I've said every possible, positive thing about the game that I could while using a bare minimum of qualifying statements just to appear as though my assessment were objective.

Which, of course, it is not. A primary indicator of which is that Ico may very well be my favorite game in all of eternity. Every instance that I've had to write of Ico's virtues I have taken on with exuberance. Not just any run-of-the-mill exuberance, mind you, but with unadulterated, Viking exuberance. You know, when they got blitzed on mead and charged naked and screaming into battle in the hopes of dying for Odin so as to join their kin in Valhalla.

So, it's from that place that I am approaching Shadow of the Colossus. I find the story arc, beauty and the overwhelming contrasts of scale to be just as enthralling as they were in Ico, but in a different emotional context. In Ico, the sense was of being lost and vulnerable, yet determined to overcome. In Shadow of the Colossus, this determination of the main character takes center stage and the environment isn't a strange puzzle to stumble through, but a knowable to be foreceably conquered.

It also doesn't hurt that the colossi fucking rock. While I've been told the all-boss-battle gameplay metaphor has been used in the past, I'm certain its never been done like this. Each Colossus is a "level" with a sort of Zelda-like overworld in between. Someone's probably pointed that out already.

Also, there's this. I'm no longer in cahoots with the rest of the intraweb the way I used ta be, so you nerds have probably already seen this and passed it to the AllYourBase bin. Apparently it's a Euro-PS2 price-drop commercial that was banned. Thanks Fira :) - sorry for the delayed response.