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Thursday 24 January, 2008
GAMELOG ENTRY #1 Classics:Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
SUMMARY
Shadow of the Colossus is a strategic action game for the Playstation 2. The game involves a young man and his faithful horse on a quest to ressurect a young woman with the help of a god-like entity. In order to fulfill this task, the man is given the task of slaying 16 large beings called colossi. The entire game consists of 16 epic boss battles with the task of traversing a huge map on horseback to get to the location of each colossus.
GAMEPLAY
The first time I started playing SotC, the introduction cinematic blew me away. With the already then aging hardware of the Playstation 2, team ICO (the developers) managed to create an amazing engine that is capable of rendering breathtaking landscapes, intricate ruins, and monstrously detailed colossi. Hours can be spent just wandering around the map on horseback and exploring the gorgeous scenery and climbing the various temples (that denote savepoints) and structures scattered around the map.
As for the actual fighting, the game focuses on the task of finding a way to mount each of the unique creatures and stab its magical weakpoint to take it down. Each colossus has multiple weakpoints that each hold a fraction of the colossi's health. When one point it completely destroyed, another appears on its body. There is a catch however. The weakpoints are invisible until the player reflects sunlight off of his magical sword onto the area of the point, which reveals it for a short period, or if the player is extremely close to the point, which reveals it indefinitely until the player gets too far away or if the point is destroyed. The colossi themselves vary in size and behaviour. Some are two legged, some are four legged, some soar high in the sky, some are towering behemoths, and some are only slightly bigger than you. The developers did an amazing job in creating so many unique creatures.
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