10 Video Games That Made You Face Your Own Worst Nightmares

Wander is like the rest of us. He has a mission, he has a direction, and he has a way in which he hopes to achieve this. Unlike most of us, Wander’s goal is to resurrect the soul of the maiden named Mono, who he carries on the back of his horse to the Forbidden Land.

When he’s there, a disembodied voice promises the revival of the girl (girlfriend, sister, lass who sat three rows over from him in maths?) if Wander can slay the sixteen colossi who roam the land. And so off we go, finding these giant creatures and felling them as though they were nothing more than dead trees, regardless of whether they attacked us or not.

Most don’t, opting instead to go about their peaceful business of living and letting live, but in we barge and snuff them out. It is only as the game progresses do we realise that maybe these colossi aren’t the bad guys, maybe it’s Dormin – the owner of that disembodied voice – and, by extension, us.

Shadow of the Colossus forces us to think about what we’d do to save a loved one. Would we unwittingly slay a peaceful and majestic race of creatures for the promise of magic? Would we do it in the full knowledge of just how destructive our actions were?

This game asks us just how dark our own shadows are, how selfish our hearts can be. It asks us these questions and, as we ride across the lush vista of the Forbidden Land, the sun glinting off our sword and our resolve ever hardening, our answers are terrifying.