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1661's Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
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| [February 21, 2008 04:00:40 AM]
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Gameplay 2:
Being required to solve puzzles as to how a particular colossus should be defeated is challenging and very involving. To keep the challenge fresh and prevent the game from being too repetitive after having to defeat 16 colossi, the game adds in a few simple mechanics to make the player focus his strategy. Grabbing and holding on to the fur on a colossus is not as simple as it sounds as the player can only hold on for a limited amount of time before he falls off. There is, in fact, a "grip meter" that gauges how long a player can stay held on to the fur. This meter can be supplemented and the time to hold on extended by hunting non-agressive critters. If the player is to fall off, he will either fall to the ground, accruing damage as he does so, or he might get a chance to land on some parts of the colossus' structure that allow him to stand upright and regain some of the grip meter.
The ability to rebound somewhat from a fall, either by grabbing some more fur or by landing on one of these safe standing spots, can really come in handy when getting up onto the colossus itself was an arduous challenge. Sometimes, getting onto a colossus would require that the player accurately time a jump off horseback onto a moving patch of fur on the colossus' leg, jumping onto the wing of a massive flying colossus as it dives down at you, or grabbing on to the tail of a giant eel-like swimming beast before it gets a chance to dive under water again, etc. But there are many situations where you simply can't hold on and can't land anywhere safe, forcing you to fall completely off and have to try and mount the colossus again. Having to repeat this over again can become quite frustrating, especially if having to get onto the colossus in the first place involved one of the aforementioned strategies.
On top of figuring out how to grab on, the player must also avoid being killed. These colossi are large and for the most part, slow, but if they land one hit on you, it might be game over. Taking damage can be a result of simple carelessness and getting trampled on, falling a great distance, or being actively attacked by one of the colossi.
One such colossi wields a sword so large and has such a lengthy wind up to strike phase that it would seem impossible to actually be hit by it in the 5 full seconds it takes for the thing to actually swing at you. But even a near miss can do devastating sums of damage to you as the ground around the impact spot will buckle up and still send you flying. Even so, the awesome spectacle of seeing the equivalent of a city block length of sword swung down at you from the sky is a sight to behold. This brings me to another fantastic aspect of this game: it's visual appeal.
Design:
Much of the time I played the game, I was simply awestricken by the environment. The world you must travel through is beautiful and expansive with rolling fields and ranges of hills and mountains to gaze at. A particular thrilling visual experience is found while riding the back of a flying colossus. Being able to see the scenery fly past you at mach speeds while you stab your sword into the back of a giant flying beast instills in you the sense that you are fighting an unfathomably monumental battle.
The design of the game greatly adds to this sense of grandeur by featuring impressive cutscenes when colossi are on scene with equally epic musical scores to set the mood. The use of camera angles to depict the relative size difference between the player and the colossi truly makes you feel like you are a helpless mortal pitted against the most beastly of foes. Being able to create a fun and interesting game with the unique game mechanics found in Shadow of the Colossus is powerful as it is. This game takes it a step further and uses very effective design elements to make this game worthy of it's name.
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| [February 21, 2008 03:18:02 AM]
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Summary:
In Shadow of the Colossus, my task is to find and defeat several enormous giants in order to free the soul of a sacrificed girl. Aside from these giants, called Colossi, there are no other adversaries in the game to fight. The game does not provide a great detail of backstory as to why I am doing as I do and it doesn't explicitly outline the extent of my objectives from the start. In this context, the game presents itself as simplistic and the objectives, trivial. I assure you, however, that despite it's seemingly unelaborate outer appearance, the intricacies in the game content and the strategies required to successfully defeat the colossi create a tremendously enjoyable game experience. The demand for puzzle solving skills and dexterity combined with a beautifully immersive expanse of a gameworld make Shadow of the Colossus a game unlike any other I've played before and an instant classic.
Gameplay:
The game is quick to put the player directly into the action of the game with very little introduction, and if you're like me and don't like to read manuals or instructions, this can create a very confusing first few minutes of gameplay. To become familiar with the the controls, the first thing the player must do is traverse a sort of mini-course involving such actions as riding a horse, climbing vine covered walls, and jumping onto ledges. All of these actions will become crucial to master in order to defeat the colossi as you encounter them.
Eventually, the player makes his way to an open field where suddenly a giant club-wielding colossus appears on the scene. As I previously mentioned, I had no idea at this point how to go about defeating a colossus. My character is here armed with a meager sword and a bow and I somehow need to take down an adversary the size of a large office building who can crush me simply by stepping on me, or worse, demolishing me with it's elephant of a war club.
After combining my brain power with that of nearby friends, we discover that the trick to defeating these colossi is to climb onto them and look for weak points. This colossus, much like ones found later in the game, have patches of fur dispersed all over it's body/structure (whatever it actually is) which can be climbed on much like the vine covered walls early in the game. The trick is to find a safe way to grab onto the fur without being crushed and then climbing your way to the weak points on the colossus. Once discovered, you must then stab your sword into the weak point to do damage to the colossus until it is defeated.
The strategy to defeating each colossus in the game follows these basic actions, with each successive encounter being more difficult than the previous one. Once a colossus is beat, the player is magically transported back to the temple from which the game began, and after a brief cutscene, he must travel to find the next colossus. Eventually, the player must defeat colossi that can, for example, fly in the air, swim under water, or even buck and sway with such intensity that the character actually loses his grip and flies off. Finding the weakpoints becomes increasingly nontrivial and being able to access them safely becomes a more demanding challenge likewise. Furthermore, finding the next colossus by traversing the landscape and bypassing obstacles adds to the complexity of the game.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 21st, 2008 at 03:18:56.
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1661's Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Thursday 21 February, 2008
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