|
Wednesday 31 January, 2007
Wow. I have to say, music makes a huge difference in the way games are approached... I got sick and tired of the in-game music from Shadow of Colossus,so I decided to listen to the soundtrack of Tekken 5 instead... and to my amazement, I found that more action-suited music immediately got me 'into the zone' and defeat the last Colossus in less than 15 minutes, making me curse the game for the hours I spent yesterday being continually blown away and tearing up my headphones. I now realize how powerful the effect of different kinds of music can be if used well, and how horrible it can be if used badly. The music in Shadow of the Colossus was very poorly applied in the final boss fight; it sounded more like of a long haunted house trek, and I just couldn't get into it.
Also, the final cut scene, which ended up telling most of the story which previous cut scenes hinted to very abstractly, confirmed by suspicions about the player ‘protagonist’--the wanderer’s appearance does indeed get more sickly as you progress through the game. A minor detail, I guess, which leads me to fruits and lizards. What the hell are fruits and lizards? They’re a miniscule detail, and the only other thing that actually populate the map during the game. Apparently consuming them seems to increase your health and stamina--upgrades, so to speak--but seems to be merely a test of patience and an eye for obscure detail, much like the rest of the game. I’d say its probably a pathetic excuse for collectables and people with too much time on their hands--pathetically easy for the developers to add and insanely hard for players to find.
Finally, intriguingly, the most of the cut scenes actually allowed you to manually adjust the camera within the cut scenes, allowing you to zoom in/out and pan to view within a certain extent. Not entirely useful, but an intriguing feature. Additionally, in between the last cut scenes, there were a few segments where the player got the opportunity to ‘play out’ certain parts of the scene, although the finishing conditions of the cut scene were fixed and inevitably unchangeable, which was a drag, but an interesting feature never the less.
After beating the game, hard-mode is unlocked, and you can play in time-attack mode to unlock special weapons/abilities. Given the difficulty of defeating the Colossi with a total game play-time of over 17 hours, I think I can safely say that I’d find it much more enjoyable to play Tetris than endure the horrors of back camera angles again. From start to finish, Shadow of the Colossus was a big let down, both storyline-wise and game-play wise. While it does bring interesting innovations to game design, the game play--in my opinion--is abysmal, rendering it difficult and not very enjoyable to play.
|
