Do We Really need All of These Remakes and Remasters?

I evolved a lot as a gamer throughout my life, especially over the past decade. Though I have always love playing video games, I would tend to focus on multiplayer experiences over single player experiences for many different reasons. One of which was skill. Though I have always loved to play games, I wasn’t always good at them.

Growing up, games like Super Mario World and Mario Kart were my bread and butter. Experiences that I could share with my siblings and parents. Games that even when I failed, fun could still be had by all.

As Goldeneye ushered in the first person shooter, I began to switch my attention to games in that genre. Perfect Dark, Time Splitters and Nightfire were my best friends during my late teens and early 20’s. While I always dabbled with single player games like Splinter Cell, Dark Cloud 2 and The Mark of Kri, I never completed any of them.

My love for shooters led me to a little game called Bioshock. Though it had no multiplayer I still had to give it a shot. The next few days of my life changed me forever. Bioshock is the first game I can remember ever completing and the feeling that I had when then credits rolled stick with me to this day, I was addicted.

Now if I start a game, I’m never satisfied unless I’ve beaten it.

This was 2007, that means anything released before that remained untouched or incomplete. Since the video game industry is always changing with new technology and experiences being released every day, it can be extremely hard to go back and play older games that you’ve missed out on.

When Shadow of the Colossus released in 2005, it looked like a game that would completely overwhelm me in every way. Half the reason I never finished games was due to boss battles and it just looked like nothing but boss battles. Not only that, but they were truly Colossal. Having enjoyed Ico, yet never completed it, this really bummed me out. After a few quick looks I decided that the game wasn’t for me and just like that I forgot all about it.

In 2017, during Sony’s E3 conference, I was sitting there with the Handsome Phantom crew watching all the reveals and right in the middle was the Shadow of the Colossus remake. Reverting back to how I felt when the game originally came out I completely disregarded it. This disregard continued all the way up until the week of the game’s release. I even had hands on time with it at PSX in the media room and was underwhelmed. After wandering around aimlessly for a while, no Colossi in sight, I gave up.

After taking a lot of flak for having never played Shadow of the Colossus, I decided to rent it and finally give it a shot. My life as a gamer was changed that day. The moment I started to climb the first Colossus, I was hooked. After two or three more I finally understood what everyone had been saying for the past thirteen years. The game was a masterpiece, a work of art unlike any before or after it. The influence that it has on games like Breath of the Wild are astounding. Had Sony and Bluepoint never remade it for PS4, I never would have given it a shot and that and that would have been heartbreaking.

Every Colossus that I take down becomes a part of me, of my story and time with Shadow of the Colossus. I rarely replay games, but I know that I will be coming back to this game many many times. If I’m sitting around and have half an hour to spare, I will pop it in and take down one Colossus. The desire to better your time and continue to master each one is a driving force for replayability and, in a game that is fairly barren outside of you and your foes, there are tons of collectibles to keep searching for. I’m incredibly thankful that I finally took the leap and gave this one a shot.

In the film Reign Over Me, Adam Sandler’s character plays Shadow of the Colossus to help him cope with the death of his family. I always felt that it was a strange game to have portrayed in the film. Having now spent significant time with the game, I get it. The time spent tracking and conquering the Colossi can be such a cathartic experience.

How many of you out there share this same story, but maybe it was with Bioshock or Crash Bandicoot. Thanks to these remakes you now have the opportunity to either play these classic masterpieces for the first or one hundredth time.

So do we need the remakes? You bet we do. Studios like Bluepoint need to continue doing what they do and give us the best version of the games we all love and should still be playing. I hope they continue to do remakes and remasters for as long as the video game industry exists.