Heck, I'm just happy to see Shadow of the Colossus getting an approving review that doesn't degenerate into "OMFG IS TEH MUST AWSUM THING EBER111". That was my biggest problem when I was trying to decide whether or not it was worth pursuing -- the reviews were extremely polarized between "OMFG IT SUX" and "OMFG IT ROX" and of the two, only the negative reviews seemed inclined to tell me why. The vague clues they gave seemed to imply that the game was a vast, empty and very boring wilderness where you wandered around for fifty hours and didn't do jack squat. Really, could a game truly feature sixteen enemies in total, almost no storyline whatsoever, no new weapons or special items until New Game + mode, and still be good?
Answer: Yup, shockingly, it really could. And did. I played Shadow of the Colossus from morning to night for a couple of days until I finished it. What explains how it could succeed is the fact that the developers made this glorified boss run a suitably epic experience. Bringing one down feels like an epic feat, and it should. With a sparse storyline filled with more innuendo than substance, Shadow of the Colossus evokes emotion by the sheer scale of what you do. Whether it's leading a colossus shaped like a yeti through an obstacle course of stone pillars that it smashes through with ease or climbing the gigantic sword of another in order to climb up its arm to its head, the game repeatedly recreates the staggering accomplishment seen in The Return of the King when Legolas climbs the mûmak and brings it down. Even the few small colossi are fierce and powerful enough to make you scramble to keep out of their way, and yet you know you'll have to somehow kill them as well.
What I loved about Shadow of the Colossus was how few cinemas there were in battle. At no point will you push a button and watch as your character leaps and flips and stabs automatically. This enhances the evocation of those emotions because it always feels like your task and your accomplishment, never something you're merely watching as an observer. Likewise, if you can't do it, the computer won't be doing it for you either.
I do have to admit that I never picked up on the fact that you can increase your grip gauge by killing lizards (you don't automatically get stronger by dint of killing them; you actually have to kill them and eat the tail) or raise your health meter by eating fruit (I've still yet to even find any). If you can do the time trial version of the bosses in a New Game +, you obtain items which allow you to better track down and find these, but some of those challenges feel more like a luck based mission.
I can definitely see why the average player wouldn't really like it -- it's very different from the average game. Short of epically missing the point about what kind of game it is, though, I find it difficult to understand how doing something like the shot below fails to evoke the proper response of "Holy crap awesome."
http://ps2.ign.com/dor/objects/490849/ico-ii/images/shadow-of-the-colossus-20050419055232107.html