My girlfriend asked me to explain Ico and Shadow of the Colossus to her, and that isn’t nearly as easy as explaining something like Call of Duty or Dead Rising.  You can’t just say “you kill Nazis with guns” (to me, CoD never went past WW2) or “you kill zombies with improvised weapons.”  In fact, despite there being combat in those games, I don’t think of them in terms of their violence as I do with many others.  I remember the environments of Ico and the interaction between the two characters.  I recall the majesty of the first time I saw the living monuments of each of the colossi.

These are two of the greatest examples in an argument for video games as an artform.  While most games, even ones that are a great deal of fun, don’t stand up well when evaluated artistically, I think this is because they don’t really intend to be.  The same can be said for the bulk of content in other artistic genres as well.  I challenge you to make a case for the works of Ke$ha or Michael Bay to be featured in a fine arts museum.  Ico and SotC, on the other hand, were crafted by an artistic mind, and a great deal of effort was clearly put into them both by the many who worked on them.  It is artistry and effort that shines through in epic and touching moments, and of all the games coming out with HD-remakes, I feel these two may be the most worthy.

If you haven’t played those games, I feel you owe it to yourself to give them a try if you have a PS3.  It’s $40 for the pack, and that seems an extraordinary deal.  Even though I already own PS2 copies of the two of them, it doesn’t bother me in the least to buy them for a second time, especially at a bargain price.  I have been waiting for this excuse to play them again, and it has arrived just in time.  Happy early birthday to me!

Addendum: In poking around on the web a bit, I’ve found that Eurogamer has a nice comparison of the original and new versions of the games, and I’ve also found an interesting annotation someone did across all of Ico.