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Codiekitty · 12-01-2006, 07:54 PM

Note: I had to break this up into two posts because it was too many characters.

If I were to ever make a list of the 20 most overrated games I've ever played, this game would be in the top ten and maybe the top five depending on how my thoughts ferment. While I'd be hard pressed to say the game sucks, I'd be equally pressed to give it anything above a "lame". Meanwhile, everyone else wants to treat it like it's some unparalleled never before and never again gift from God to gaming. I've run into three people who could not freaking shut up about this game. The first was a Gamestop employee who pushed preorders and sales and playing the store demo on everyone who came in. The second was somebody who registered on Flying Omelette's to do little more than declare that Colossus (and I'm copy and pasting everything that's in quotation marks) "...was the greatest gaming experience of my life" and that it "has the best soundtrack I've ever heard. Not the best soundtrack in a game, mind you, the best soundtrack I've EVER heard, in anything. Mainstream music, games, film, classical, nothing can compare to Kow Otani's work in Shadow of the Colossus." and "To rank Kow Otani amongst composers like Nobuo Uematsu or Yasunori Mitsuda is a crime. They simply aren't even close to being in the same league." and then leave (On a side note, I love how the translation landed a guy who I think is named "Kou" with a name that can't be written in Japanese and consequently I always want to read as "Cow"). I think we all know who the third one is.

That just is not the case. For one thing, I have played better. I've played MUCH better. Secondly, EVERYTHING this game does I've seen before. Okay, I can't recall off the top of my head another game with a meter that tells you how long you can grip stuff, but I'm sure one exists.

Colossus is supposed to be one of the games where all the challenge comes from the bosses' puzzles and afterwards you could beat them with your eyes closed. Well, to an extent. The bosses are actually rather easy (especially because of something I'll mention in a moment), and I beat most of them on my first try. Truth is, virtually all of the difficulty comes from a broken camera. Other sources of difficulty come from debris that gets kicked up during several of the fights rendering you blind (as if the camera wasn't doing a good enough job of that) and what the folks at Flying Omelette's call "Record of Lodoss War Syndrome". Basically, it's where a boss hits you, knocks you down, and as soon as you get back up it hits you again, knocks you down again, and they keep doing this over and over, usually until you die and there's not a damn thing you can do about it (the 11th Colossus was bad about this, and the 14th Colossus was absolutely awful). Folks, none of this is legit game design.

Colossus is one of those games that needs microphone support so you unlock some camera options when you say "I HATE THIS STUPID MOTHER ****ING CAMERA" enough times. As soon as you release the right analog stick the camera returns to where it originally was, appearantly because people only move cameras to temporarily get a different view of things rather than to help them see what they're doing. Then the damn thing likes to whip around and get stick on walls or in crevices on the colossus and other crap that doesn't even look good and I'm more focused on the giant statue anyway. The third boss comes to mind, where the camera liked to randomly teleport to the other side of its arm and all I could see was stone and fur when I was trying to make a crucial jump onto its belt. There have been other occasions where the camera just randomly went somewhere else, usually causing me to change directions at a time where time was of the essence (Turtle/9th boss). There's an option to lock on to the Colossus, but then you can neither look for ways to damage it, nor can you see the arena (I actually ran off the stage once during the third boss because of this), nor does this do you any good when you're actually on the colossus.

The game blows any legitimate challenge it could have had out the window with a system in which the character is constantly healing. Vagrant Story did this same thing, but in a way that was much less spammable. First, Ashley healed very slowly with his weapons and shield drawn, and while he healed faster with his gear put away he was completely vulnerable, both with much lower defenses and no offense. Secondly, you couldn't use this feature in the middle of a fight, both because of how slowly Ashley heals and how enemies are always attacking. In Colossus, there's often places to hide from bosses, if not ways to simply avoid them (i.e. follow them), so if you get a booboo just hide from the boss for a little while and try again. I remember I once screwed up on the crow (5th) boss when it dove at me, got hit and a nice portion of my life meter depleted, so I parked the kid in one of the little temples, went to write about my progress on Flying Omelette's, came back, and was fully healed. In fact, if you're careful you can have all your health replenished during the normal process of beating the boss.

Death Tally:

3x Catfish Colossus (7th)
1x Gila Monster Colossus (8th)
3x Colossus of Lodoss War (14th)
1x That bridge just before the final boss, I took the kid across instead of the horse and fell to my doom.

When I died three times against the 7th boss then again on the very next boss I thought the game might be picking up. Hooboy, was I wrong. I died more times against the first Schwang Schwing in MDK2 and he was twice the boss all the colossi were combined.

As if being easy wasn't bad enough, boss fights drone on for way too long and often border on tedious. How to beat the 8th boss:

1) Run down about six flights of stairs
2) Shoot it in its glowing legs with the bow and arrow a few times
3) Run back inside and up one fight of stairs.
4) From one of the huge holes in the wall, shoot it in the leg again to catch its attention and it starts climbing the wall.
5) Run to the other hole in the wall on the side of the colosseum.
6) Shoot two of its legs, it falls off the wall belly up.
7) Run back down the stairs.
8) Jump on its belly and stab it in one of its runes. You can only stab it in one rune once, because it flips back over when you hit it.
9) Try to jump off it right after you stab it, but end up under it when it flips over and fight to figure out where the hell you are.
10) Repeat steps 3 through 9 about 9 more times.
Note: If you ever sustain any damage (most likely in Step 2), just hide out in the area between a flight of stairs for a while.

Does that sound exciting, challenging, or blood pumping to anyone? No? Good, because it isn't.

The 9th boss is an annoying pattern of running around for ten minutes hoping that maybe, just maybe you'll catch the boss in a geyser, except it usually just sits there and fires a projectile attack that's impossible to dodge. But don't worry, if you take damage you can just hide under/behind the boss for a few minutes while you heal.

Out of 16 bosses, I had to go to GameFAQs for four. One was that turtle/horse thing you fought in the giant lake with the three little temples, and I had already figured out you needed to use the Colossus to get on top of the temples, I just didn't know HOW to use it. One was the Colossus of Lodoss War, because if the game wants to bull**** me I'm not even going to try to fight against what they're pulling. One was the 15th boss, all I read was how to get on top of the arena and took it from there. Then there was the final boss, where all I needed was how to get from the right hand onto the shoulders, and that was it (and I would have gotten this myself if not for the fact the sword beams not working under a tree led me to believe it wasn't going to work in a rainstorm at night). With the exception of the Colossus of Lodoss War, I didn't go to GameFAQs until I found a way to keep my health up and make it impossible for me to die, so I decided to just get the battle over with. Another reason I don't feel guilty about doing it... can anybody guess what my feeling was after I beat each colossus after maybe the third one? Was it "Woo! I toppled a giant statue that posed some sort of threat to me"? No, it was "Woo! I'm one step closer to getting this game out of my life!"

So, enough about the broken gameplay. Let's go on to other things.

Nobody is going to tell me there is no other game out there with an atmosphere, or an atmosphere as heavy as this game's is hailed; anybody who wants to tell me otherwise is going to be told to either get more serious about their hobby or find a new one.

The plot about a kid going through unbelievable trials to resurrect his dead love was already done in Threads of Fate. And there's other forms of that, like when the plight in Blaster Master: Blasting Again becomes more personal when the one who backstabbed your mother and killed your father kidnaps the last of your ruined family. And while the PS2 Shinobi may not have been about resurrecting a dead love, it was about cleaning up the mess somebody else made when they wanted to resurrect their dead love.

By itself, Colossus' plot has problems from the start; the only thing they ever say about the girl's death is "She was sacrificed because she had a cursed fate". This isn't good enough. I mean, WHO sacrificed her? What was her cursed fate? For all I know it's some lameass ICO reference, and it really feels more like an excuse to have a boss-a-thon than somebody's attempt at a real plot. I found it hard to feel for the kid's plight because (a) the Colossi were about as frightening as a basket of puppies, and (B) the kid had next to no personality. For being so "emotional and gripping", the first I ever felt any kind of emotion besides steaming anger at the camera in the entire game was at the end of the game when the horse fell off the cliff, which turned to lame when they used the exact same "ARGO!" from when you call him during a colossus fight. This then becomes giggling at the idea that the hero opts to resurrect the horse instead of the girl. There's no act structure, and basically stays "Beginning" until you beat the last colossus and are then treated to one of the most assed endings I've ever seen, and it involves a plot twist that anybody who stopped to think for five minutes could have seen coming. Colossus's plot has no magic that that prevents it from being joked about.

While searching for the colossi, you have to trek long distances through fog, dust, brown, and grey, and maybe a little green here and there. Or how about the trip to the third boss, where you slowly, SLOWLY swim through a huge, uneventful lake to get to the bridge leading to it (and if you loved that, you get to do it again while fighting the fifth, seventh, and twelfth bosses!). I think it's hilarious that this is annoyance in Wind Waker and atmosphere in Colossus.

Where are these lemmings going? Not the Super Nintendo Super Shire! They know to go to Codiekitty.com now!

12-01-2006, 07:54 PM	#1
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 175 Times in 120 Posts Points: 80,643.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,102,094.46 Donate	Shadow of the Colossus Note: I had to break this up into two posts because it was too many characters. If I were to ever make a list of the 20 most overrated games I've ever played, this game would be in the top ten and maybe the top five depending on how my thoughts ferment. While I'd be hard pressed to say the game sucks, I'd be equally pressed to give it anything above a "lame". Meanwhile, everyone else wants to treat it like it's some unparalleled never before and never again gift from God to gaming. I've run into three people who could not freaking shut up about this game. The first was a Gamestop employee who pushed preorders and sales and playing the store demo on everyone who came in. The second was somebody who registered on Flying Omelette's to do little more than declare that Colossus (and I'm copy and pasting everything that's in quotation marks) "...was the greatest gaming experience of my life" and that it "has the best soundtrack I've ever heard. Not the best soundtrack in a game, mind you, the best soundtrack I've EVER heard, in anything. Mainstream music, games, film, classical, nothing can compare to Kow Otani's work in Shadow of the Colossus." and "To rank Kow Otani amongst composers like Nobuo Uematsu or Yasunori Mitsuda is a crime. They simply aren't even close to being in the same league." and then leave (On a side note, I love how the translation landed a guy who I think is named "Kou" with a name that can't be written in Japanese and consequently I always want to read as "Cow"). I think we all know who the third one is. That just is not the case. For one thing, I have played better. I've played MUCH better. Secondly, EVERYTHING this game does I've seen before. Okay, I can't recall off the top of my head another game with a meter that tells you how long you can grip stuff, but I'm sure one exists. Colossus is supposed to be one of the games where all the challenge comes from the bosses' puzzles and afterwards you could beat them with your eyes closed. Well, to an extent. The bosses are actually rather easy (especially because of something I'll mention in a moment), and I beat most of them on my first try. Truth is, virtually all of the difficulty comes from a broken camera. Other sources of difficulty come from debris that gets kicked up during several of the fights rendering you blind (as if the camera wasn't doing a good enough job of that) and what the folks at Flying Omelette's call "Record of Lodoss War Syndrome". Basically, it's where a boss hits you, knocks you down, and as soon as you get back up it hits you again, knocks you down again, and they keep doing this over and over, usually until you die and there's not a damn thing you can do about it (the 11th Colossus was bad about this, and the 14th Colossus was absolutely awful). Folks, none of this is legit game design. Colossus is one of those games that needs microphone support so you unlock some camera options when you say "I HATE THIS STUPID MOTHER **ING CAMERA" enough times. As soon as you release the right analog stick the camera returns to where it originally was, appearantly because people only move cameras to temporarily get a different view of things rather than to help them see what they're doing. Then the damn thing likes to whip around and get stick on walls or in crevices on the colossus and other crap that doesn't even look good and I'm more focused on the giant statue anyway. The third boss comes to mind, where the camera liked to randomly teleport to the other side of its arm and all I could see was stone and fur when I was trying to make a crucial jump onto its belt. There have been other occasions where the camera just randomly went somewhere else, usually causing me to change directions at a time where time was of the essence (Turtle/9th boss). There's an option to lock on to the Colossus, but then you can neither look for ways to damage it, nor can you see the arena (I actually ran off the stage once during the third boss because of this), nor does this do you any good when you're actually on the colossus. The game blows any legitimate challenge it could have had out the window with a system in which the character is constantly healing. Vagrant Story did this same thing, but in a way that was much less spammable. First, Ashley healed very slowly with his weapons and shield drawn, and while he healed faster with his gear put away he was completely vulnerable, both with much lower defenses and no offense. Secondly, you couldn't use this feature in the middle of a fight, both because of how slowly Ashley heals and how enemies are always attacking. In Colossus, there's often places to hide from bosses, if not ways to simply avoid them (i.e. follow them), so if you get a booboo just hide from the boss for a little while and try again. I remember I once screwed up on the crow (5th) boss when it dove at me, got hit and a nice portion of my life meter depleted, so I parked the kid in one of the little temples, went to write about my progress on Flying Omelette's, came back, and was fully healed. In fact, if you're careful you can have all your health replenished during the normal process of beating the boss. Death Tally: 3x Catfish Colossus (7th) 1x Gila Monster Colossus (8th) 3x Colossus of Lodoss War (14th) 1x That bridge just before the final boss, I took the kid across instead of the horse and fell to my doom. When I died three times against the 7th boss then again on the very next boss I thought the game might be picking up. Hooboy, was I wrong. I died more times against the first Schwang Schwing in MDK2 and he was twice the boss all the colossi were combined. As if being easy wasn't bad enough, boss fights drone on for way too long and often border on tedious. How to beat the 8th boss: 1) Run down about six flights of stairs 2) Shoot it in its glowing legs with the bow and arrow a few times 3) Run back inside and up one fight of stairs. 4) From one of the huge holes in the wall, shoot it in the leg again to catch its attention and it starts climbing the wall. 5) Run to the other hole in the wall on the side of the colosseum. 6) Shoot two of its legs, it falls off the wall belly up. 7) Run back down the stairs. 8) Jump on its belly and stab it in one of its runes. You can only stab it in one rune once, because it flips back over when you hit it. 9) Try to jump off it right after you stab it, but end up under it when it flips over and fight to figure out where the hell you are. 10) Repeat steps 3 through 9 about 9 more times. Note: If you ever sustain any damage (most likely in Step 2), just hide out in the area between a flight of stairs for a while. Does that sound exciting, challenging, or blood pumping to anyone? No? Good, because it isn't. The 9th boss is an annoying pattern of running around for ten minutes hoping that maybe, just maybe you'll catch the boss in a geyser, except it usually just sits there and fires a projectile attack that's impossible to dodge. But don't worry, if you take damage you can just hide under/behind the boss for a few minutes while you heal. Out of 16 bosses, I had to go to GameFAQs for four. One was that turtle/horse thing you fought in the giant lake with the three little temples, and I had already figured out you needed to use the Colossus to get on top of the temples, I just didn't know HOW to use it. One was the Colossus of Lodoss War, because if the game wants to bull** me I'm not even going to try to fight against what they're pulling. One was the 15th boss, all I read was how to get on top of the arena and took it from there. Then there was the final boss, where all I needed was how to get from the right hand onto the shoulders, and that was it (and I would have gotten this myself if not for the fact the sword beams not working under a tree led me to believe it wasn't going to work in a rainstorm at night). With the exception of the Colossus of Lodoss War, I didn't go to GameFAQs until I found a way to keep my health up and make it impossible for me to die, so I decided to just get the battle over with. Another reason I don't feel guilty about doing it... can anybody guess what my feeling was after I beat each colossus after maybe the third one? Was it "Woo! I toppled a giant statue that posed some sort of threat to me"? No, it was "Woo! I'm one step closer to getting this game out of my life!" So, enough about the broken gameplay. Let's go on to other things. Nobody is going to tell me there is no other game out there with an atmosphere, or an atmosphere as heavy as this game's is hailed; anybody who wants to tell me otherwise is going to be told to either get more serious about their hobby or find a new one. The plot about a kid going through unbelievable trials to resurrect his dead love was already done in Threads of Fate. And there's other forms of that, like when the plight in Blaster Master: Blasting Again becomes more personal when the one who backstabbed your mother and killed your father kidnaps the last of your ruined family. And while the PS2 Shinobi may not have been about resurrecting a dead love, it was about cleaning up the mess somebody else made when they wanted to resurrect their dead love. By itself, Colossus' plot has problems from the start; the only thing they ever say about the girl's death is "She was sacrificed because she had a cursed fate". This isn't good enough. I mean, WHO sacrificed her? What was her cursed fate? For all I know it's some lameass ICO reference, and it really feels more like an excuse to have a boss-a-thon than somebody's attempt at a real plot. I found it hard to feel for the kid's plight because (a) the Colossi were about as frightening as a basket of puppies, and (B) the kid had next to no personality. For being so "emotional and gripping", the first I ever felt any kind of emotion besides steaming anger at the camera in the entire game was at the end of the game when the horse fell off the cliff, which turned to lame when they used the exact same "ARGO!" from when you call him during a colossus fight. This then becomes giggling at the idea that the hero opts to resurrect the horse instead of the girl. There's no act structure, and basically stays "Beginning" until you beat the last colossus and are then treated to one of the most assed endings I've ever seen, and it involves a plot twist that anybody who stopped to think for five minutes could have seen coming. Colossus's plot has no magic that that prevents it from being joked about. While searching for the colossi, you have to trek long distances through fog, dust, brown, and grey, and maybe a little green here and there. Or how about the trip to the third boss, where you slowly, SLOWLY swim through a huge, uneventful lake to get to the bridge leading to it (and if you loved that, you get to do it again while fighting the fifth, seventh, and twelfth bosses!). I think it's hilarious that this is annoyance in Wind Waker and atmosphere in Colossus. Where are these lemmings going? Not the Super Nintendo Super Shire! They know to go to Codiekitty.com now!