Regular readers will know that I really, really liked God of War III. It wasn’t perfect, far from it, but it’s a cracking example of what a video game should be like – exciting, dynamic and utterly beautiful. And whilst the standard EU version of the game should, as a “thank you” from SCEE, come with the God Of War Collection, rumours abound the double pack of PS2 ports will launch at some point later anyway.
Regardless, thanks to our very own Lewis, I’m currently having a blast playing through it. Of course, the original God Of War was a landmark achievement for the PS2 and although I played it at the time it now looks better than it even has before updated and upscaled for the PS3. Sure, the 60fps is retained but the increased resolution is welcome and at points Kratos looks nearly as good as he does in God Of War III.
But that’s not really the point, what I’m (eventually) getting at is that the ‘Collection’ has shown that it’s possible to redo a ‘classic’ PS2 game and grab plenty more sales if a) the game being redone is good enough and b) the redoing is of sufficient quality to warrant the re-release in the first place. And do you know what would benefit massively from appearing as a double pack later this year? Ico, and Shadow Of The Colossus.
The Last Guardian, Team Ico’s third title, will be with us later this year (we’re banking on September-ish) and how incredible would it be to be able to revisit Ico and Shadow’ in HD at 60 frames per second? The tech is there, it’s just a matter of someone deciding it would be worth the investment to undertake the challenge. Would I buy it? Yes, I loved Ico, and Shadow’ is a title that really deserves to be replayed at a decent frame rate.
And then I started thinking about how the oft-rumoured ability to download and play PS2 games on the PlayStation Store. Would you pay extra for a remixed version of a PS2 classic that looked better and came with a handful of Trophies thrown in? I would, for sure, despite still clinging onto a launch PS3 that still happily plays the majority of the last generation PlayStations’s most popular gems. There are dozens I’d plump for immediately.
Of course, any, all or none of the above might actually come into play, but when the current torrent of brand new AAA titles starts to slow this Summer, I’d be delighted if I could actually get my hands on some of the games I loved from the PS2-era. But why stop there? What happened to the Dreamcast games coming to the Store rumour from last year? Bah, it’s all just a pipe dream. I’ll just stick to God Of War and be thankful for that at least…