After more than 10 years of the Playstation, you know what you are going to expect from an action/adventure game. You travel through an environment, kill a few low level minions while working your way up to the end of level boss. Well, just imagine a game that only consists of these end of level bosses, each one of them completely different and requiring a different attack stratergy. This is Shadow of the Colossus. The story is simple. A young man travels to a forbidden land on his horse in order to restore the life of a girl. To do so, he must vanquish 12 colossi . But is there a terrible price to pay?

The artistic design of the world that you travel through is amazing for what is now a last-generation machine. Excluding a few strange lizard-type creatures that can be seen scuttling along the ground every so often, 'Colossus is set within a desolate, cursed land tinged with sadness. This feeling of absolute loneliness is amplified by the music which is used sparsely but effectively. Unlike most action/adventure games, there are no power-ups, health items or mind-blowing weapons to unlock. In order to defeat the colossi, all you have a sword and a bow. But this is all that you need, because success depends upon figuring out exactly how to kill them. And this is not easy. In some ways, this is like a puzzle game, but the battles are intense and require stratergy, perfect timing and sometimes a bit of luck. Each of the colossi are beautifully designed. From the moment you emerge at the top of a cliff face to see the first in the distance, to the enormous behemoth at the end, you sometimes forget that you have to defeat them and just want to look at them in all their glory.

This game is a few years old now, and graphically it can't really compare with the next-gen games. Also, the wow-factor is lost after the first play through so you may not be inclined to play it again. These are my only critcisms. In terms of being a truely unique game, Shadow of the Colossus is a real treat and in the twilight years of the PS2, it shows that there are alternatives to mindless gun-fests, hormonal beat-em-ups and po-faced RPG's.