SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS

Developer Bluepoint Games Publisher SIE Format PS4 Release 2018

Sony is unlikely to ever repeat the remarkable three-hit combo of its press conference of E3 2015, when Final Fantasy VII

Remake, Shenmue III and The Last Guardian took the game industry’s annual festival of hype to an unprecedented peak. This remaster, while rumoured in the run-up to the show – and mangled through Chinese whispers to be a sequel, rather than a remake – was as close as Sony got to wet-dream wish fulfilment at E3 2017. Fumito Ueda’s shonkiest game is to finally get the technical execution its design ideas have always deserved, courtesy of remaster specialist Bluepoint Games.

It’s certainly in good hands. Bluepoint’s CV includes some of the best remakes around: the Texas studio was behind the

Metal Gear Solid and Uncharted collections, ported Titanfall to 360 and Gravity Rush to PS4, and has previous with Ueda’s work, having remastered Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus for PS3. This is no rush job, we’re told, but a ground-up rebuild: Sony has tasked Bluepoint with making all-new assets for the game. There’ll also be an overhaul – optional, we assume – to the original’s, um, idiosyncratic button layout. The E3 trailer looks too good to be true at times, admittedly, and perhaps we should be worried that the most exciting announcement of Sony’s E3 is 12 years old. But there is no game more deserving of such a remake, and no finer studio to do it. If the finished product looks this good, we’ll be in heaven.