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BlackIvory32's Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
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| [January 24, 2008 10:05:42 PM]
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Gamelog Entry #2: Classics List: Shadow of the Colossus
Gameplay
Its been about 12 hours since my first post and I have gotten quite a bit father in the game since then. The gameplay itself hasn't changed much except a few things have been added/come to my attention. First off, in my pervious post, I wrote that there was no music when roaming the countryside. Since then, I have found certain parts of the map that play subtle music for ambiance. These areas are often dark or moody. That said, other things I have found since my pervious post are the ability to swim, do tricks on my horse, and climb parts of temples. Swimming was a bit interesting because few games allow you the ability to dive, swim, and do any water related. Other, not so interesting things I noticed, were no real noticeable load times and checkpoints. By this I mean, I spent hours wander around and the game never had a "now loading" type of message or pause. Also there are checkpoints, but are activated only after you find a colossi.
As for the new colossi I have encountered, each seems more epic than the one before it. Also what I found really interesting about the colossi was that they weren't all land creatures. I found one colossus that was airborne and one that was underwater. Also the colossi don't share each others weaknesses. This makes each colossus its own challenge. There was one colossi in particular that was difficult because it was covered in armor, was small (just a little bit bigger than my horse) and ran really fast. This required me to interact with the environment to figure out its weakness. Overall I found the gameplay really fun. The only downsides were that it takes forever to get places and that the game gets monotonous if you don't take a break in between colossi. Other than that the gameplay was awesome.
Design
So what makes this a good game? I feel that the story's simplicity, great music, and innovative colossi are the cause of this. To start, this is game is VERY simple. No long drawn out plot. Straight up kill 16 colossi to bring your girlfriend back to life. Second, great music. Music equals atmosphere, and this game as tons of it. Third, innovative colossi. The interesting this about this is that each colossi is a puzzle. You can't just run up a colossi and kill it, you have to figure out how to climb it and where to stab it. The design of each colossi is also really neat. They remind my of aztec monsters or something from a culture that has been long gone.
In terms of the mechanics of the game the controls, load times, menus, and map were all really good. The controls were really easy to learn and get used to. During the first mission, even before you see the colossus, you are given a quick tutorial to help you get oriented. The load times, as I said before, are virtually undetectable. The only time the game stops play is when you beat a colossus and are give the option to save your progress. The next thing is the menu/map. When you hit the pause button during play, the screen zooms out really fast showing a cool effect. Think google earth, but like a drawn map instead. From here, you have standard, OPTIONS, LOAD, QUIT. The option menu has pretty basic options which I don't need to get into. Overall everything is well thought out in the game. My only annoyance/pet peeve is the camera. In the game, you have total control of the camera, but it also tends to move on its own. This can be annoying if you are trying to aim with your bow, or swimming underwater. Its something that is easy to get used to but always annoying. Overall, amazing game.
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| [January 24, 2008 03:19:22 AM]
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Gamelog Entry #1: Classics List: Shadow of the Colossus
Summary:
I would describe Shadow of the Colossus (SotC) as an adventure/puzzle game of epic proportions. The game revolves around a young man and his horse who are trying to bring a beautiful young woman back to life. In order to do so, they must destroy 16 colossi which are hidden throughout the land. However, destroying the colossi is no simple matter. Each colossi is a puzzle of its own, and the main character must figure out each ones weakness. To give you a mental image of the game, imagine David and Goliath. Then imagine that Goliath is an enormous stone creature the size of the statue of liberty, and David is a regular guy with a horse.
Gameplay:
Though this isn't the first time I have seen SotC, it is the first time I actually have sat down and played it. My initial reaction was, "yeah... alright this is kinda cool I guess..." but after spending a few hours playing it, I can say that this game is defiantly something special. The first things I noticed, before getting to the colossi, is the attention to detail. This game has by far the most realistic horse and scenery I have ever seen on the PS2. The landscape especially is both visually and emotionally moving. I found myself wandering around on my horse just exploring the landscape. The developers of the game did an amazing job making the game seem vast and almost endless. I say almost endless because the game obviously as to end somewhere, but it feels like your really wandering around a real countryside. In fact, the landscape is so vast that even with the horse it takes a while to get from one part of the map to the next. Another important thing to note is that there are no houses or people. There is a temple that you start out in, but other than that your alone.
Ok, now for the colossi. I only have beaten the first two colossi so far, however, based on that I can definitely say the game is worth buying (The copy I am playing is borrowed, but I definitely intend on buying it). The first colossus I encountered was enormous, was bi-pedal, and could stop the hell out of my character. Using some skills I learned in the very beginning of the game, it was pretty intuitive how to scale the colossus. After the first colossus fell, I felt a sense of accomplishment and amazement. Seeing a gigantic creature fall is very moving. The second colossus was a lot more difficult because there is no explicitly told way to bring down the colossi. The second colossi is even bigger than the first and resembles a bull. Upon killing the creature I felt accomplishment and amazement with a strangely guilty. I believe that a lot of this emotion stems from the amazing music during the battles. During normal gameplay, when your wandering around the countryside, there is no music. When encountering the colossi, orchestrated epic music kicks in. More specifically, the music gets more intense when you finally figure out how to mount and kill the colossi. When the colossi finally fall, the music gets epic-ly mournful and you have a sense of guilt for killing such a majestic creature. Anyways, this concludes my first gamelog. Hopefully by my second game log I will have beaten a few more colossi.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Jan 24th, 2008 at 03:21:35.
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BlackIvory32's Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 23 January, 2008
GameLog closed on: Tuesday 4 March, 2008 |
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