So there I was, about roughly two and a half weeks ago, playing the Shadow of the Colossus demo on my PlayStation 2. Watching me play it were a couple of friends, who were just in awe by the size of the sucker I was taking on in the singular level it provided. Then they saw me mounting it and working my way up to its vulnerable spot and they were further wowed. One of my friends noted the amazing graphics that it had offered, and I said, in the midst of my attacks, "Well, that's team Ico for you."

Wanna know what he said? Lunkhead replied, "They made that dolphin game? Wow, they grew up." This resulted in me pausing the game as my other friend Russell cracked up on the couch. I looked at the other one and sighed. "You're kidding, right? I'm not talking about Ecco: The Tides of Time. I'm talking about Ico. Released on the PS2 a few years back? An adventure with a horned kid who was trying tor rescue this girl that spoke this funky language?" And he shrugged and said, "Nah, I skipped it."

And I started to think. This is the kind of logic that made some people miss out on one of the PlayStation 2's finer efforts over the years. Sure, some people might have been driven to task in getting this strange cryptic-speaking girl from point A to point B, but there was no denying the breathtaking presentation or the enjoyable gameplay, which was clearly different from most platforming/adventure games before it. I appreciated it every moment I played it and kept it in my library, to this very day. In fact, I ran upstairs, grabbed it, and came back down with it, waving it to my friend.

"You need to play this," I said. Russell just looked at me. "You know he won't. He'll probably want to play your Shadow of the Colossus first before he even touches it." And maybe there's hope that Colossus will open doors for Ico, and give some gamers who missed it the first time around a second chance to see what SCEI (I'll call them Team Ico) has achieved in a matter of four years' time. And if you did manage to catch it? Boy, are you in for a treat. Shadow of the Colossus is a mighty predecessor that cannot be ignored.

The game puts you in control of a lone hero who has brought his fallen love to a temple, where stone beings stand around as she lay in a comatose state. It is there that it is explained that the girl can only be awoken if sixteen colossi (colossuses, basically) are taken down. Sounds easy, right? Well, upon your first encounter with a colossus, you'll find their size immense and their power downright ridiculous. Even your bow and arrow with distance shots will not cause any remarkable damage, instead creating an annoyance factor where they attack you at any cost. The goal to beating a colossus is finding a weak spot, which has a nice indication system behind it, and then taking advantage of it to the point that damage is done and the colossus is defeated.

This is no easy task, however. Each of the colossi is different in terms of design and attack patterns. The first is a lumbering giant who's rather predictable, coming after you and occasionall pausing to take a swing at you with his mallet. But as you proceed, the colossi become more complex, ranging from a spider one who has a habit of crawling all over you to an airborne colossi who must be mounted at just the right time. Otherwise, you're left on a skyward fall back to Earth, in which much pain is bound to follow.