Shadow of the Colossus - Review

As I mentioned before one of the reasons I bought a Playstation 2 was to play this game. I couldn't step on to a gaming forum without people talking about how excellent this game is. Hell, even Yahtzee liked this game... and that says a lot. I knew almost nothing about it, and yet wanted to play it. When something has been built up this much you have to wonder though, can it meet those expectations?

In a simple answer: no.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Shadow of the Colossus, I really did. It was a very unique, interesting video game experience. SotC is a game like I've never played before. However, unique does not always equal good.

There's always the possibility that because I didn't play SotC when it was first released I just didn't get the "oomph" that the game properly deserves. I'm a generation late. I came to the party late on this one. I can admit that my gripes about the game can easily be put off because I'm playing this game a half decade after its release.

First off, I hate the horse. With a passion. If 80% of your game is going to be spent riding on one creature and be your only means of transportation besides walking I would hope that perhaps that creature would handle well. Nope. The horse may be one of the most frustrating experiences in recent memory. I don't know how many times my horse just stopped. Not be pressing something, not me doing it... just the horse deciding to stop for no apparent reason. Or run into something... I don't know how many times my controller was telling my horse to do one thing and it would do the complete opposite. If there was a tree with open space for a 100 yards on each side I guarantee my horse was running headfirst into that tree no matter what I did. There were times when the horse riding felt very normal, and there were times when the horse felt like verged on being broken. It's not a good sign when there were times I would get off the horse and just walk because I was tired of wrestling with it.

The way you find the colossi. Bear with me on this one. I know that using your sword to find the next colossi is a somewhat cool idea, but to me it seemed flawed. To me it seemed like if google maps only gave you directions as the crow flies not taking into account obstacles... also it only worked when it was light outside. Listen, I understand that it's what they were trying to do. It's not broken if it's what they were meaning to do, I said it was flawed. Essentially you're supposed explore to find the next colossi using that as a guide. Only problem is... there's no reason to explore. It doesn't matter if I take 30 minutes finding that colossi or 5, at the end of the day the outcome is the same. If I take 30 I'm not going to find some new cool armor, or some new weapon... I'm going to find the colossi. There's no carrot at the end of the stick for exploring... so why would I bother? And frankly there were times when the light was just flat out wrong. It would point me in a direction but what it didn't tell me is that there's a impassable mountain between me and that colossi, sure I can follow the light but if I do there's absolutely no way to reach the colossi. There were times when even though I had explored I still couldn't find the damn colossi because the light had put in the completely wrong area. I don't particularly enjoy being frustrated in games, but there were several times in SotC where I was.

The camera. Honestly, the camera was kind of awful in this game. There were times when I would be using L1 to follow a colossi and the game decided that the best camera angle was below my horse staring at it's junk... which isn't all that helpful when I'm trying to leap onto a fast moving flying behemoth. On the final colossi fight there was a part I had a very difficult time beating it because every time I would get to a certain point the camera angle would go wonky and give me an insiders view of the colissi's arm... when I'm trying to make a jump from three hundred feet off the ground I kind of want to be able to see what I'm doing.

Okay, those are my complaints... but I said I enjoyed the game. So that must mean that there is praise as well.

The fights with the colossi were pretty damn epic. Most games where you fight a bad guy that size you're most likely going to do it with some sort of quick time event. Here you got to feel the satisfaction of taking down a humongous bad guy with nothing but jumping, climbing, and your sword. Some of them felt pretty damn awesome to take down. I want to say that it seems like they could have used something more than weak spots and changed it up a bit, but I'm not really exactly sure how so I'll just go with the flow.

It was a unique experience... and frankly that's not something you always get in video games. When you start talking about a game and using words like "Doom Clone" or "Diablo Clone" or "Halo Clone" you know that there's not always a lot of uniqueness in the gaming industry. I don't think I've ever heard the phrase "Shadow of the Colossus Clone". I applaud them for trying something different even if it may not all work out in the end.

I enjoyed Shadow of the Colossus, even if I have my gripes about it. It was a fun, unique gaming experience and maybe I just showed up a little late to truly appreciate it. If you haven't played it yet, I would honestly say to give it a shot there's really no other game you can compare it to, and that's a compliment.

Squid.