Digital Foundry Tech Analysis: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection HD

As development of Sony Japan's The Last Guardian enters its final stretch, the platform holder has finally released its high-definition PlayStation 3 remakes of the new game's predecessors: the epic Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

To ensure a quality product, Sony handed off the conversion work to Bluepoint Games - the development studio that handled the original, really rather superb God of War Collection, who in turn worked closely with the original developers to ensure an authentic recreation of the games.

It's safe to say that this is the most eagerly anticipated high-definition remaster since Bluepoint's debut outing, so we were especially curious to see how the conversion would be handled. Could the original games scale up to high-definition resolutions and still retain their magic?

[andron]

Can't wait to play these games in HD. I never finished Colossus because of the frame rate issues, but now it's rock steady thankfully...

[Bathyj]

Dude, you let the framerate stop you from finishing SotC?

Would you let being in Black & White stop you from watching Schindlers List?

[redking315]

actually, my uncle refuses to watch any movie in b&w, he says real life is color so movies should be too, he watches colorized versions of It's a wonderful life and Miracle on 34th street, and he outright refuses to watch citizen kane and schindlers list

[andron]

Nah it wasn't just the framerate. I bought a PS2 late so I had many games to play, I just forgot about it.

And I was more into shooters and action games then. But now I really want to finish it. I could just pop the PS2 game in my phat PS3, but now I'll wait for the HD versions...

Edit: And I don't mind BW movies. I'm a huge film fan and made a point of watching the BW versions of Mist and The Man Who Wasn't There. Both movies where the studios pushed out a colour version to cinema, while the directors wanted the films to BW...

[Laypoof]

I am quite disappointed that Shadow of the Colossus doesn't run in native 1080P (I'm sure the PS3 can handle it?). Now I'm going to have to switch the XMB to 720p mode when playing it, although MLAA is a huge PLUS.

But honestly I never thought in my dreams that they would remaster these two classics for the PS3...*sniff*

[AKS]

It's two of my favorite games of all-time remastered (and well done, apparently). ICO was probably in my top 3 favorites.

It's still somewhat amazing to me that Shadow of the Colossus was able to run even as well as it did on the PS2. Some complained about the low frame rate of the PS2 version, but personally I was amazed my PS2 wasn't emitting smoke when it ran that game.

[Laypoof]

@AKS

I 100% agree. Shadow of the Colossus is FACTUALLY one of the most technically impressive last gen games. It's actually the only game I can think of that used HDR lighting.

[DigitalAnalog]

ICO:

Glorious to play in 1080p and 3D implementation works wonderfully without any framerate or quality hitches.

SoTC:

Widescreen 1080p, Game is too beastly that 3D support can drop to 10FPS. Most advised by article to run natively at 720p and non-3D :( :( .

Bonus points. Re-worked textures to give a more solid look, along with the cloth-physics, lighting etc.

-End statement

[Oldman100]

I'm very happy that ico runs perfectly consistent at native 1080p, but i'm disappointed sotc does not. I would have expected the ps3 to handle it no problem, especially when it's only rendering at 30fps without 3d. Oh well, at least the frame rate runs consistent this time around which is what matters the most.