This week marked the release of Bluepoint’s Shadow of the Colossus remake, bringing Team Ico’s PS2 masterpiece to a whole new generation of players. Despite originally launching 13 years ago, the game remains one of the most stunning achievements the industry has ever seen due to its simple, affecting story, beautiful soundtrack, and hauntingly vast world, and it looks even more breathtaking on PS4 thanks to the care Bluepoint took in modernizing the title for the current-gen hardware.
Shadow of the Colossus places players in the role of Wander, a young man who journeys into the Forbidden Lands in search of a way to bring his beloved back to life. He’s instructed by an omnipresent being known as Dormin to travel across the sprawling, desolate landscape and hunt down the 16 colossi that make their home there. Each colossus is a towering puzzle unto itself, and players must figure out how to scale the monolithic beings and spot their weak points in order to bring the giants down.
Despite the vast scope of the game, Shadow of the Colossus is a fairly brief adventure, running from eight to 10 hours on your first playthrough. Fortunately, the title also features a New Game Plus mode for those who want to continue adventuring in the Forbidden Lands. We checked out New Game Plus in a recent livestream, which you can watch above. In the video, we surf atop our horse as it gallops across the vast expanse of the Forbidden Lands and hunt down some of our favorite colossi in the game.
Shadow of the Colossus is available exclusively for PS4. You can learn more about the game and how it holds up in our Shadow of the Colossus review. For more gameplay footage of Shadow of the Colossus, check out our video of the game’s first five colossi. We also took a look at all of the new filters you can use in Shadow of the Colossus and explain just why the game remains a masterpiece, even 13 years after it first released.