Shadow of The Colossus

I've decided to broaden the scope of this blog to document all games I complete, with special attention to those that fit my original ambitions.

Title: Shadow of The Colossus
Platform: Playstation 2
Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment
Approximate Completion Time: <10 hours

Shadow of The Colossus was a short but sweet game that I couldn't decide to fully love or hate. As the spiritual successor to Ico it shared the same haunting beauty in visual design and minimalistic but extremely well done audio. The game consisted of exploring a very large outdoor(with some ruins and other ancient structures) area in search of giant entities that looked like structures themselves a majority of the time. Then you have to find a way to bring them down which basically involved clinging to the furry animal-like bits and scaling to a weak point which you then stab repeatedly until they fall. There were some pretty smart puzzles involved in slaying the Colossi, most of which I proudly solved on my own with only a few trips to GameFAQs for the really ridiculous ones.

What I liked about the game was the concept and scale and atmosphere of the experience. It was definitely a game you want to keep playing for the engrossing adventure even if the gameplay makes you want to light the disc on fire and roll it down the street. It wasn't that bad really, just the camera always seemed to be spinning away from what I wanted to look at and was a bitch to control. Everything was a bitch to control. It felt like the developers weren't sure if they wanted to create a unique action/adventure game or a bull riding sim. Hold onto your R1 button for dear life and if you somehow get tossed into an advantageous position, yeehaw! Also the framerate was absolutely terrible at times, it's easy to understand why when you take one look at anything in the game but... I'm used to buttery smoothness, instead the Ps2 delivered jagged tortilla chip parts that got stuck in my throat. Despite it's flaws however, Shadow of The Colossus came through in the end delivering an engaging experience I'm happy I payed $20 for.

Very important fractional Kuni rating: 3/5