Genre Character of the Week: Wander

A few months ago I reviewed the videogame ICO and listed its main character as my genre character of the week. This week I go back to a game from the same company Shadow of the Colossus and will take a close look at its main character, Wander.

Remembering that ICO had a really basic setup (captured kids escape from castle), I was thinking that this game would have a similarly simple plot, and you know what it does – basically a guy named Wander heads in to a forbidden area with his dead girlfriend and demands that the ruler of this land bring her back to life. He is told that to perform this action sixteen statues must be destroyed, and each of these statues have a living representative in the real world that must be destroyed as well. So Warder heads off with his trusty horse Argo and begins the process of defeating each of these Colossuses... Colossi... Colo... Creatures.

So yeah – simple premise, very little dialogue, virtually no supporting characters, but wow – the graphics are amazing and the battles are shocking in how amazing they are. Rather than thinking of this game as a fighting game or an RPG game, it might be best to think of it as a puzzle game, as each of the creatures has to be defeated in a certain way. So far I’ve flat-out fought one, hidden from another, rode two and climbed the beard of a third – I’m only halfway through at this point but this game is pretty freaking cool.

Wander doesn’t have any obvious connection to Ico (the main character of ICO) and his horse Argo is a heck of a lot easier to deal with than Yorba, but like the previous game, Shadow of the Colossus is stunning in its music, visuals and overall concept.

Definitely a personal favourite.