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Thursday 24 January, 2008
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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