Shadow of the Colossus
To my lasting shame, I only just managed to get around to playing Ico a year or two ago. This makes me a terrible person! It also means I still haven’t tackled its sequel of sorts, and Ben’s excellent write-up makes me want to play it now. But it also makes me realize that it’s only the sort of game I can thoroughly enjoy if I have time to take it slowly and really soak in the exploratoin. Maybe after I retire?
13 thoughts on “GameSpite Quarterly 2, #35: Shadow of the Colossus”
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You’ve already committed to playing every SMT game when you retire in the past…which means you won’t have enough time for anything else. Sorry.
Screw those other games! When you retire, play this one. (It’s shorter, anyway.)
I defeated the first two colossii and decided I could no longer take the guilt I was feeling and set the game aside. I might come back to it, but the fact that a game made me feel this way is a testament in itself.
“Whether there is truly a concrete connection between the two — prequel? sequel? — is unclear, and the subject of considerable fan debate. I have my own theories, of course, but I’ll spare you wild speculation better suited for message board debates.”
About half a year after the game was released, Ueda came out and said that it’s definitely a prequel to Ico. It was already pretty obvious, anyway.
I really wanted to love this game, given how gorgeous it is, and how much I loved Ico, and plenty of other reasons to love it. But the broken controls and terrible framerate really killed it for me. Like The Bavis above, I put the game down after the second colossi. For entirely different reasons.
Good article though. Almost makes me want to give it another chance. Almost.
Then again, maybe they’ll get The Last Guardian right.
@Nicola Ah, I wasn’t aware Ueda had made a definitive statement, but yeah, while the game itself is purposefully open to interpretation, prequel was always my conclusion as well. As for the details, I have plenty of theories for fleshing it out which I narrowly avoided wanking on about in the article.
Not to turn this into a debate, but I never really saw how it could be anything BUT a prequel, anyway.
It’s like the guy who wrote this article actually knows me. I’ve played through Shadow of the Colossus more than a dozen times for the very reasons laid out in this article.
Exploration is my very favorite thing to do in games. Where other people might hate exploration for the sake of exploration, I loved sailing in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker as well as driving across the savannas of Far Cry 2. Colossus plays into land-based exploration like no other game does. For me, much of the enjoyment was in the journey rather than the destination.
As has been said, I also agree that a lot of Colossus’ scenes could make good framed pictures, or at least desktop wallpapers. That’s why I set up a collection of them at the link below:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1C2AANM9
I really, realy want an HD version with a steady framerate. This is truly one of those landmark titles that you only get to see once per generation.
Part of me want a sequel because the game was so damn fun. I wish some developer would come in and refine it with a similar game of their own. I mean sure, we fight big bosses all of the time, but it’s basically slashing and hacking until we can jump on it and beat the living heck out of a pink weakspot, rinsh and repeat. SotC did it right by making the bosses an ever-evolving puzzle.
This game does make for some great screenshots. Because it is a slide show. Seriously, if any OTHER game had a framerate this bad, it would be ridiculed. But no, this game has positioned itself in the japanophile gamer’s mindset as the artsy fartsy antithesis of GTA and Halo, so it gets a pass. I too put the game away after two bosses because I simply could not tolerate the framerate; it made me nauseous and the controls unresponsive. If you were able to enjoy the game regardless of this, more power to you. I guess I’m just a little bitter that I couldn’t.
A little bitter?
Oh hey, it’s the game I just hit with my monthly spotlight on underrated games! I really do find it interesting how it isn’t a more universally loved game. The technical achievement of how they handle keeping your footing alone is darn impressive, not even getting into the novel premise, the aesthetics, or how much personality they managed to give that horse.
It is rather horrifying to realize just how much more detail they put into the world than you’re ever going to see if you don’t actively go off sightseeing though. Not to mention the effort involved in making the central tower climbable.
I loved this game, but yeah, the recent announcement of that God of War 1&2 pack for the PS3 really makes me wish we could get an upgrade of SotC with a better framerate and a greater draw distance.