If Ico and Shadow and the Colossus were novels, they'd be getting the Penguin Modern Classics treatment around about now. They'd be done up in paperback with a jarringly appropriate bit of art stuck on the front, while inside you'd get an introductory essay with a name like, "Shadow of the Beast: Manichean belief structures and Agro the horse", written by Tony Tanner - if he wasn't already dead. You'd plod through that intro because you wanted to get your money's worth, and after all that, you might end up with the strange feeling that there weren't too many reasons left to re-read the actual stories anymore.

Luckily, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are video games, and video games have their own impulses when it comes to curatorship. In Sony's new HD collection, both of Fumito Ueda's classics are reborn in high resolution and 7.1 surround sound with improved frame rates and it's left to the player, rather than Tony Tanner, to unravel what they think of the games themselves. Instead of scholarly essays, there are downloadable themes - one for each game - and making-of videos (none of which we've been sent in our review copy, alas). Instead of the unusual cover image, there are trophies and stereoscopic 3D for both titles.

Best of all, there are still plenty of reasons left to play these games again. Let's check them out.