Think of the Statue of Liberty: crazy tall and impossibly massive, composed of heavy, durable materials like cement and iron. "She" is in the shape of a person, but that shape exists on a physical scale that utterly dwarfs us, and her age is almost impossible for us to comprehend. We are, literally, like ants to her.

Now imagine the Statue of Liberty has come to life, but she's a nightmarish, twisted version of the Lady Liberty you know. She's covered in armored stone plates and matted fur, her eyes glow with cold aggression, and she's stomping around like Godzilla, doing her best to crush, bludgeon, or otherwise bust up any living thing in sight.

Finally, what if someone you loved more than life itself had just died, but you could bring them back by killing this horrible Statue of Liberty ... and fifteen or sixteen other raging, titanic creatures like her ... with nothing more than a sword and some arrows?

In case you're not there yet, trust us: you have never, ever played a game like this.

At its most basic, Shadow of the Colossus could be described as a classic, hack-and-slash action game. But we're obligated by our love of video games to spend the rest of this review gushing about how different from the herd SotC really is.