Shadow of the Colossus review – a game of majesty and melancholy steps back into the light

Sony Japan Studio/Bluepoint; PlayStation 4
This 2005 game, remade for the high-definition era, still stands out as a work of extraordinary beauty and quiet profundity

In Shadow of the Colossus, beating a boss prompts not triumphant music and a sense of accomplishment, but uneasy self-reflection. You play a skinny, clumsy young man who arrives in a beautiful, forsaken place with a limp woman on his saddle. Upon placing her upon an altar in an empty cathedral, a disembodied voice promises that she can be revived if the man finds and kills the 16 colossi imprisoned in this cursed land. These enormous beasts - thousands of times your size - take the forms of birds, shambling ogres, aggressive lizards, equine giants. Figuring out how to scale them is the challenge, clinging to handfuls of their black fur or hanging by the fingertips from their stone armour, searching for a route upwards. Driving a sword into their bodies, however, feels disconcertingly savage and uncomfortable. Defeating the colossi is not designed to feel good. You aren't killing these creatures to save the world, or test your skill, or for any of the other reasons with which video games justify their violence. You're hunting them because someone you love is gone, and you selfishly want them back.