Burton's Bytes

Like its criminally under-rated predecessor Ico, Shadow of the Colossus is breathtaking in its scale, grandeur and sheer aesthetic magnificence. If you feared the PS2 was going to quietly shuffle off centre stage now the X-Box 360 is with us, take a look at this game - some of the visuals are every bit as good as first-gen 360 stuff.

What's more impressive is that everything is done in real time. You don't sit around waiting for the game to spool data off the disc; there are no annoying "loading" screens.

Essentially a series of battles - with no distracting side quests or "mini games" to pad out the running time - the gameplay is to die for.

In a bid to resurrect your lost love, you have to ride across country and slay a bunch of giant monsters. It's a simple plot but beautifully told.

The monsters (the colossi of the title) are an awe-inspiring sight, packed with detail and beautifully rendered on the ageing PS2 hardware. The battles you have with them are the stuff of legends.

(It reminded me of the sequence in the classic movie, Jason and the Argonauts where the giant bronze statue of Talos comes alive. The first time I saw that as a kid I was awe- struck and you'll get the same feeling the first time you clap eyes on the colossus in this game.)

Interestingly, when you defeat one of these giants there's no up-lifting music and no triumphal pre-rendered sequence. Instead, the soundtrack is mournful and you're meant to feel sadness at the passing of another colossus. Are they the monsters or are you? The game is deliberately ambiguous on this point.

Still, it's not quite a ten-out-of-ten solid gold masterpiece. The way you control your character and the maddening precision with which jumps need to be accomplished will have some gamers throwing away their joypads in frustration.

The camera too, occasionally selects the most impressive viewing angle rather than the one that gives you the best chance of character progression.

And the aspirations of the team behind Shadow are sometimes held back by the PS2 itself. Occasionally the frame-rate plummets because the hardware just can't compute the data fast enough. If ever a game cried out for a next gen redux on the PS3 then this has to be it.

On completion of your quest the game opens up new modes and few players will need encouragement to start the adventure anew.

Shadow of the Colossus will go down as a genre defining moments on the PS2. Every serious gamer should track down a copy as soon as they can.

GUN

Publisher: Activision

Formats: Xbox, PS2, PC, Xbox 360, GameCube

Price: £39.99

Family friendly? 18+

GIVEN the gaming industry's voracious appetite for utilising popular movie genres the relative dearth of Wild West themed titles has always been a strange one.

Lucky Luke and Mad Dog McRee aside, there have hardly been any gun-slinging games in recent memory.

GUN owes more to Sergio Leone than Howard Hawks. It's a gritty (and rather nasty) depiction of life in the old west. In fact, it's probably got more in common with games like GTA and True Crime than Lucky Luke.

There's a story (of sorts) and various side missions (take a bounty hunting commission, rustle a few steers, etc.) but the real reason for buying this game has to be the gun fighting. Rest assured if that's your bag then GUN represents true value for money.

It doesn't matter if it is cowboys or Indians - if they move you can gun 'em down. And if you don't move quickly enough, they will probably gun you down.

There are some nifty features, like the way the "quick draw" showdowns are done in slow motion which are reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah's classic movie, The Wild Bunch.

There's a great professional cast: Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman and Lance Henriksen would be a pretty good line-up in a genuine movie western. Here they represent an all-star line-up of vocal talent.

It's a pity, though, that the developers couldn't have recorded more sound samples to avoid the voiceovers becoming repetitive.

Fans of Spaghetti Westerns, in particular, will enjoy riding the range with GUN. Gamers who have mined every last mission in GTA and still yearn for more should take a look too.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/leisure /bytes.html