Shadow of the Colossus. Your Thoughts?

[Simalacrum]

selfish dickhead killing some poor doods to get his gf back.

man what a jerk.

you could look at it that way... or you could look at it as

"all you need is love"... daa da-da da-da

 

[pillaysteven]

In a word EPIC. Probably the most epic action/adventure game ever made.

It's an unforgettable game. One piece of advice. DO NOT look online for help with any of the colossi no matter how stuck you think you are. It will ruin your experience. I didn't and my memories are so much sweeter because of it.

 

[LordKraven]

I don't own a ps2 but every now and then I barrow one from a friend and he barrows my 360 or what not. I played the game and was amazed, I dident expect much out of it because it was never rated, not in game informer, and or 75% of clearence but it slaped me to next week. I love the game and the first time through I was confused why he was becoming a demond and turned to a baby with horns but then I remembered that the god at the start said that if you do this it will have unexpected consiquences so it made sence. I have to say though that the water boss and the lion were very frustrating on easy because it was limted and gave you just a little life and grip, but on the harder difficulty it was nice because of the fruit and lizards, made it easy, plus the cool weapons as gifts.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

If there was ever a case for "Games as Art", this is it.

I didn't like it. I found it frustrating. I found getting to the first giant thingie to be an exercise in tedium and once I got there, I disliked having to read the game designer's mind to figure out just what I was supposed to do to bring this thing down.* I thought that kind of thing died with adventure gaming and text adventures, but I was wrong. I still didn't kill it but at that point the camera decided that I was having too easy a time of it when I could see what I was doing, so it stopped letting me do that. So I gave up in frustration.

I honestly cannot see what anyone else saw in this game. Maybe I'm too easily frustrated, or maybe the kind of dogged determination that is necessary to play games of this ilk only occurs a narrow stretch in a person's life. Mine was during the NES reign. I plowed through many a crappy, unintuitive game in those days. Now I have the audacity to expect games to be fun to play.

Which is pretty much my bottom line assessment of this game. It's not very fun to play. You get enormous satisfaction by overcoming the challenge, but the basic action of play is not much fun on its own merits. It's tedious when you can get it to work and frustrating when you can't.

So, I guess I didn't get past the poor first impressions the OP notes. Interestingly, I found the gameplay to be similar to Sonic Unleashed, namely the werewolf portions. Which most people agree is not a very good game. I find the similarity in the control scheme interesting.


* Much less why I needed to bring this thing down. but that's what I get for skipping the opening cinematics. However, if I wanted to watch a movie, I would watch a movie. Which is exactly what I did after giving up on this game.

Erm, you found riding the horse across a very short distance, then clmbing a mountain side as the basic tutorial section that takes all of 5 minutes boring, then couldn't even work out how to beat the first collosus? Seriously, am I reading that right? How could you not figure out how to kill the first collosus? Did you not realise that you have to climb these things so you can stab them in their weak points? Cos that's like... the whole premise of the game. Or would you prefer to have everything blatantly signposted by the developers in flashing green neon with arrows telling you where to go and what to press?

And why would you skip the cutscenes? Do you do that on all the games you play? I honestly don't understand the mentallity behind that.

I just... I don't get it. Clearly you just missed the entire point of this game. I pity you.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

One of the few truly great games of the past five years.

 

[ViviFFIX]

Very hard to get hold of, different but a fantastic game!
Especially all the extras you can get in it, definately gives it a little replayablilty!
I borrowed it from a friend but alas I cannot find a copy of this game or Ico (though I haven't looked in a while).

 

[CeeJay]

I was sad when I finished this game. Not because of the story, because I wanted it to carry on and on and on.... No other game has had that affect on me since

 

[SimuLord]

Never had any interest in it. As soon as I saw what kind of people went all juicy for it I shunted it over to the arthouse pile and never gave it another thought.

 

[Deacon Cole]

And why would you skip the cutscenes? Do you do that on all the games you play? I honestly don't understand the mentallity behind that.

Yes. I do skip cutscenes in every game i ever play. I repeat: if I wanted to watch a movie, I would watch a movie. Which hangs a question mark on your "games are art" comment, because is this art a game or a movie? If you must know why, it's because they're always badly written, badly acted, badly animated, badly "shot" with the virtual camera, and just go on for too god damned long because they cannot get to the frickin' point.

I just... I don't get it. Clearly you just missed the entire point of this game. I pity you.

No, I got the point of the game. Clamor around the exterior of some giant thing to kill it. I just found it too tedious to be worth the effort. And I pity you for liking such things.

 

[Deacon Cole]

Never had any interest in it. As soon as I saw what kind of people went all juicy for it I shunted it over to the arthouse pile and never gave it another thought.

Oh, I'm probably the biggest "games are art" twit you're likely to find.

This game was not art.

It only has the pretension of being art what with the overblown music and such. This probably could have been a cracking good game that made an artistic statement if they'd only spent the time making cutscenes on playtesting.

 

[Snugglebunny]

BOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGG

We ended up trading it for Time Splitters, a much better game, but then the guy we traded with wanted it back because he hated it just that much.

 

[Beefmiester]

I got really excited. I really did.
And I feel it failed me.

It wasn't so much the trudging around a barren landscape joining endless boss fights, that was cool.
Not so much the Sepia-washed out-"how the developers imagine their Greek Myth fantasies" look,that was also quite cool.
Also probably not the unituitive nature of the "Sword lighting the way to kill certain boss by hitting point 'A' and then 'B' although reaching 'A' is a mystery you will need to solve with trial and error or waiting for a moment of cerebral brilliance. I like a challenge.

It may have been the focus on the artsy - this game knew it was trying to be deep and tried to present it in a way that did not appeal to me.
It could have also been the story, which is about something, or not, but it is, but then you don't worry about that in the end anyway because the ending is so meaningful. Meaningful and Deep. Like a Bob Dylan song,or Gangsta R.A.P.

I didn't get it.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Never had any interest in it. As soon as I saw what kind of people went all juicy for it I shunted it over to the arthouse pile and never gave it another thought.

Heh, in the other thread you only play hardcore strategy games and sports games now you buy everything apart from arty games. SotC isn't like one of those self concious art games as it's more a continuation of 90's action advetures like Another World and Flashback than, I dunno, some game where you can walk a character around in an empty room that is art because it plays Bartok in the background and has a grainy effect filter.

 

[Utarefson]

Well, the game sounded always like the kinda game i would make if i would work for a big developer, but unfortunatly i don't own a ps2, so i couldn't try it

 

[GloatingSwine]

Didn't make any kind of connection with me at all. Nowhere near as impactful as Ico. I think I poddled around, did in the first colossus, and then got bored of it.

 

[songnar]

Deep Art + Native American Themes + Active Puzzles = Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[PauL o_O]

I was so sad when the new console generation missed out on it. It was such a great game, I can't even describe my thoughts in words. They did everything either perfectly, or completely originally. In my opinion, I play most levels to get to the crazy boss fights. That's why games such as Halo and Call of Duty disappoint me so badly. They try to make the game more "realistic", by not making any special boss fights; while you can get shot 20 some times, keep running, and then sit for 10 seconds to heal your explosion wounds.

I don't play video games to do something I could just go do in real life. They have games like "second life", for those sort of people. I play games to be a mutant raccoon, who has to save the world by battling the Goo Monsters from The Evil Refrigerator. Which is why Shadow of the Colossus is such a great game. It's all the fun of a crazy, creative boss fight, it has ridiculous graphics for the PS2, there are no tedious game fillers, and every single fight was different and creative. (Besides the whole tattoo stabbing, which is still pretty epic.)

In short, Shadow of the Colossus isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn close.

EDIT: 69th post hehe.