Friday 25 January, 2008

GAMEPLAY
As I continue pursuing the colossi, no more of the story has been revealed. It is a mysterious plot that continually peaks my curiosity to play. Each colossus becomes successively harder to defeat. It takes more than just climbing and stabbing as I progress. With each new colossus, you must utilize more resources, such as Agro and the environment. This difference began aorund the third colossus: you must climb a spiraling tower in the middle of the sea to reach him, and in order to climb the beast, you must get him to strike a stone platform so his armor is weakened. This reveals hairy areas for Wander to clutch.
In later colossus battles, Agro is also key to defeating the giant. You must stand on top of his saddle and aim at the colossus' weak points with your bow and arrows, while remaining balanced on Agro's back. That way, you can keep up with the colossus and strike his weak spots.
The mysterious storyline keeps me excited to play every time, hoping for a new plot twist. Although nothing significant has happened, other than every time a colossus is defeated, Wander's skin pales and the woman's skin glows brighter, it isn't as if the game is stuck in a rut. Each colossus provides a unique lair and enviornment with which to work, and a new challenge.

DESIGN
SotC has an interesting design. Put into laymen's terms, it sounds rather mundane: no character interaction, no separate "levels," no other playable lands, and no immediate reward system. Sounds boring. However, SotC instead transforms these aspects into a simple, goal-oriented game without excess confusion. It provides for a quick, challenging, and direct game: defeat shadows. This way, maybe you, as the player, will learn more of the mysterious story plot.
The space within its gaming world is enormous and free of confinement. I could ride Agro around the map for hours and be satisfied looking at the gorgeous light rays, clouds, and scenery of the game. The colossus almost seem to be part of the scenery. Each colossus is more terrible and beautiful than the one before it. These open spaces are also difficult at times, since it is easy to get lost or barred by mountains.
The game's realism is also striking. One realistic element is the movement of Wander and Agro. Wander's moves are not fluid, but awkward and humanistic - if he has the sword in his hand, he runs slightly lopsided, and when he jumps, he lands hard, as if he were truly leaping heavily. Wander is easy to control, however Agro proves more of a challenge. He is oftentimes very hard to turn around and change direction. You must continually press x for him to gallop as well, which is irritating. If you don't keep pressing x, he will slow down in a short span of time. Aside from these slightly irritating control schemes with Agro, the rest of the game's controls are fairly simple.
The simplistic beauty of Shadow of the Colossus makes it a refreshing change from the typical action-adventure game. There is no button-mashing (unless you're riding Agro), no onslaught of mediocre enemies, and a whole lot of open wilderness. If you enjoy this game, I highly recommend its sequel, Ico. You get even more story development, shedding light on the shadowy game of enigmatic majesty.

Good this is exactly what we are looking for, but when looking at the different design aspects try to separate them into separate sections. Levels should have one, music, and so forth, they don't have to be longer it just helps to separate your thoughts and concentrate on these things separately, it really only needs another line break in between to separate them more clearly.