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Wednesday 20 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay of this 'game' consisted of running around, rolling, grabbing, riding a horse, and stabbing into the ground, which 90% of the time will end up being a giant monster, and the other 10% of the time you will find that you actually fell off the monster while he was rolling around in the ground and you actually just shoved your sword into that patch of dirt you were desperately clinging onto. You also will find yourself trying to figure out how to kill this particular patch of dirt. That's the game. That's the entirety of the game, and it sucks. For more information, see the 'design' part of the game below. I honestly don't feel like that information belongs under 'gameplay', because the majority of this game clearly was not gameplay.
DESIGN:
I kept hearing how great and amazing this game was, and how it was such a pity that it was such a short game and could be beaten so quickly because of how great it was, so I decided to stick this one out to the end. Honestly, I don't know if I am glad I did or if I am not glad that I did. On the one end, I hate cliffhangers and there was an interesting story behind the game that I enjoyed seeing played out. On the other hand, the majority of the game felt long and drawn out, repetitive and simply irritating.
The wikipedia article on this game states that the designers spent the grand majority of their time on this game working on the Colossus themselves, to the extent that they purposely excluded all other forms of monster from the game, so that the design team could spend the majority of their time working on designing each colossus... and it shows. Although the boss battles were interesting and undeniably fun, the rest of the game was pure drudgery. Even the cut scenes immediately after each boss battle were boring and predictable, in fact, the first 15 out of the 16 colossus have the EXACT same cutscene, in the exact same order, right down to the very dialog:
1) You finally destroy the colossus by stabbing its glowing weakpoint with a tremendous jab.
2) The colossus crumbles and collapses to whatever part of the world was below it in a predictable fashion, whether that be land, water, or sand.
3) you stand about for a few seconds admiring your skill
4) Giant black tentacles unexpectedly fly from the colossus's corpse and impale you
5) In complete and utter surprise, you fall to the ground and pass out
6) You see some strange glowing white light
7) You appear back in the temple, lying unconscious on the floor, with (insert number of colossus you have killed) standing around you, staring at you.
8) The camera pans to the statue representing the colossus you killed. It explodes. The camera pans back to you as you stand up. You turn around and stare at the glowing hole in the ceiling.
9) The glowing hole in the ceiling states, "Thy next foe is..." (I swear to god if I see that phrase one more time I'm going to go on a rampage)
10) The glowing hole in the wall finishes his sentence by describing the next colossus's location in a horribly grammatically incorrect style, as if he had NOT just dramatically declared, "Thy next foe is."
The cookie cutter style doesn't even stop there though, no. In fact, the entire game follows a predictable pattern from the very onset, disappointingly so in fact. When I firt started playing, I had to navigate a small maze on the side of a mountain to get to the first colossus. I remember being amazed at how much control I had over my character, and how realistic the controls felt. I was incredibly happy that I had such control over my character, and I looked forward to using those controls to fight a dynamic army of baddies with unpredictable fighting styles that would stretch my skills to the limit...
But it wasn't meant to be. There is so very, very little skill involved in Shadow of the Colossus. In fact, I don't even think Shadow of the Colossus should count as a game. I'm even going to go as far as to declare Shadow of the Colossus to be an elaborate lie masquerading as a game. I think Shadow of the Colossus should count as a sub-par foreign movie, and not much else.
The much lauded boss battles consist of not much other than figuring out the boss's weak point, figuring out how to get there, and then doing it. Once you figure out what to do and how to do it, there is no skill involved in actually doing it. The one part of the game that would make the boss battle require any skill, the element of having to decide when to hold onto the boss and when to let go to regain some of your gripping strength, is further trivialized by a grip meter and predictable boss moves that pretty much tells you exactly what to do in every situation. In the end, it's a lot like playing chess against a new and exciting opponent, only to discover that your opponent not only always make the exact same moves every time you fight him, but repeats the moves that he does every 9 moves or so while you are actually fighting him. In the end, the only enjoyment that you gain from the boss battle is the temporary enjoyment you get from figuring out how to beat the boss, and the immense enjoyment you get from actually watching the battle play out. Again, though, what are you left with at that point? That's right, a movie. I bought this GAME with the intent of playing a GAME. If I wanted to watch a fancy CGI movie, I would buy a fancy CGI movie.
The characters in Shadow of the Colossus speak a fictional, non-English language. As a consequence of this, all the dialog in the game is subtitled. Although there is nothing wrong with listening to a language other than English and having to read subtitles in order to understand the game's story line, I couldn't help but be mildly annoyed by it. I can understand the designer's perspective, they probably wanted to help immersion into the game world and separate your view of the world from that of your previous schema associated with the English language. Just because I can understand their perspective in creating the game this way, though, does not mean that I have to enjoy it. In my opinion, games should only use made-up languages in cases where characters are fully voiced during dynamic scenes where it is not plausible to voice everything that a character could possibly say, to make it harder to tell that the player is simply repeating the same few phrases over and over again. Shadow of the Colossus definitely does NOT fit that criteria -- the only time that any character speaks is during a scripted cut scene, and even that speech is few and far between.
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