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Friday 25 January, 2008
Gamelog Entry #2
GAMEPLAY
After playing Shadow of the Colossus for the rest of the day, I quickly realized how boring the game was going to be. It was, again, EXTREMELY frustrating because I spent a good hour just trying to LOCATE the stupid colossi. The scenery consists of nothing interesting and there are no "games within the game" or side tasks/obstacles. All I could do was meander around on a horse and try to find my way to the next object of excitement. Unfortunately, even the challenges of defeating the colossi quickly became repetitive and not very entertaining. Also, looking down the line of how long it would take me to defeat this game, I have around eight colossi left to defeat and locate. I have no where near enough patience to do that.
In addition, even after I have been playing this game for a good seven-eight hours, I still found the control design/set-up to be ridiculous. Riding the horse continues to be a rather dumb attempt to cover ground relatively quickly. There were some times when I just dismounted the horse and walked...because it was faster (something seems to be wrong with their physics engine if you ask me).
DESIGN
The design of this game can overall be described as poor. Shadow of the Colossus fails to keep the player interested because of its overly expansive maps and lack of interesting and engaging environments. I understand that the essential "levels" are the colossi themselves - however, climbing giant after giant can get a little tedious, especially when the goal is to simply reach the top of each one. The level design is not varied at all. The goal is way too repetitive and fails to keep the player guessing and on their toes.
Despite the fact that I disliked this game overall, I will give the game designers credit for implementing potentially creative design ideas. I think the designers just failed to fully max out the potential of these ideas. For example, one idea that I thought was interesting was the light beam that comes out of your sword to show you where to find the colossi. Over the time I played this game, I realized that the designers were very strategic in deciding where they would allow the environment to provide you sunlight and where they would not. I found that many times during the playing of this game I desired to gain some guidance from that sword, only the game did not permit me to use it because of a lack of sunlight. This is a very ingenious way of creating conflict and controlling spacial relationships in my opinion.
Another game design concept that I thought was a creative idea, but not executed well, was the design of the colossi as "levels." I have to say, this is the first time I have ever seen a moving, 3-dimensional, "live" being be the main level. It's very creative and I found it interesting for about the first four colossi. I think the game designers could have made the game a bit shorter. This way the originality and uniqueness of this idea would be preserved, instead of being beaten into the ground.
Overall I was pretty disappointed with Shadow of the Colossus. However, I recognize that it did have its creative aspects and it does, in my opinion, deserve to be on the classics lists for this class. The game design is definitely unique and attempting to push the boundaries of what we consider normal gameplay.
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