FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

If 'Shadow Of The Colossus' Were Made For SNES, It'd Be 'Titan Souls'

You might need to buy a new controller for this one.
Image: Devolver Digital

Sony recently said that The Last Guardian, Team Ico's follow-up to Shadow of the Colossus, is still ​in development, but since we haven't seen a pixel of it since 2009, Motherboard has taken the fatalistic position that it's never coming out.

It's tragic, but Titan Souls, a small project that started as a game ja​m prototype and released on Steam today, is a good coping mechanism. The reductive pitch is that it plays very much like a two-dimensional Shadow of the Colossus.

Advertisement

It has the top-down perspective of The Legend of Zelda and features a bow-wielding kid hero, but is composed of nothing but boss fights. The everything-in-between you'd find in other games is cut out, which is what made Shadow of the Colossus so striking when it was first released in 2005. Yes, that's ten years ago now, and yes we've been waiting for a new Team Ico game for that long (and yes you're old now).

Shooting that yeti in the ass was probably the greatest thing I did last week

Titan Souls is a two button game: one to roll out of harm's way, and another to shoot a single arrow, pull it back like a Jedi using the force, and fire it again.

In the most interesting boss fights, there's figuring out where to put the arrow is a clever puzzle. One titan, for example, a cute lava blob, will swallow your arrow and spit out bombs, and you have to use these abilities against him.

Image: Devolver Digital

In other cases, even when the target is as obvious as a yeti monster's big red ass, the timing can often seem impossible. You'll die over and over again trying to get that perfect shot, and if you're the type of person prone to throwing the controller across the room in frustration, you're going to have to buy some new controllers by the time Titan Souls is over.

Titan Souls is a challenge worth overcoming. It might have taken me the better part of an hour, but shooting that yeti in the ass was probably the greatest thing I did last week. You don't get new powers, weapons, or get magic spells. The only skill that matters is patience, and the only thing that levels up is your ability to play the game.

The difficulty, along with the name, may lead you to believe that this is also a little like a 2D Dark Souls game, but Shadow of the Colossus is the true spiritual predecessor here. if it's a 2D Dark Souls you're looking for, keep and eye out for Dea​th's Gambit.

If you're crusin' for a brusin', you can get Titan Souls ​from Steam for $15, and get the demo for free.