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Shadow of the Colossus from Sony Computer Entertainment
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Our Editorial Review
Product Description Shadow of the Colossus is a majestic journey through ancient lands. With your trusty horse at your side, you'll explore spacious lands and unearth anicent monsters called Colossus. Armed with your wits, a sword and a bow, use cunning and strategy to topple each of these behemoths.
Customer Reviews
Beautiful Presentation and Incredible Experience Posted 08 March 2007
This was by far one of my favorite games. For some background, I'm the type of person that looks at things like metacritic to get my info before I purchase and I definitely did my homework on this one. Awesome. And for $20 w/ free shipping you'd have to be seriously on crack not to pick this up. Each battle is unique and memorable, and the ending is great. If you own a ps2, you better pick this one up.
Not nearly as good as I had expected... Posted 07 March 2007
This is a hard game to rate. I had really high expectations and for a while, I thought I liked the game. The art style is unusual. The whole concept is unusual. The task at hand is unusual. The thought of killing a huge colossus appeals to me. So what's not to like?
Well, here's what: The game has a few serious problems and then there are some things that are probably a matter of opinion, but I personally didn't like.
So let's start with the serious problems: For one, the controls for both your character and (in particular) the camera are a complete disaster. Example: You want to line up to see the colossus. This is a problem because the camera constantly fights you and moves away from how you have aligned it, even if you do not move at all. There is a "lock the camera on to the colossus" feature, but it isn't very useful, because it kind of moves the camera off your character, to a point where you can hardly see your own character at times, and you certainly can't do anything useful. But in any event: Let's say you managed to arrange the camera so you can see the colossus. And then, let's say you want to shoot an arrow at it, so you hit the button to aim the bow, and swoooop.... All of a sudden your character turns 90 degrees facing a completely different way. What the...?!? By the time you wrestle the aim back on the colossus he has probably whacked you, or at least got close enough to do some serious damage to you. Not fun.
The whole matter of the controls is made worse by the fact that little mistakes are punished severely. You may be forced to swim for minutes and then run up a spiral staircase for minutes just to fall off the top for the 15th time, because you do not know how to get past a certain point. And perhaps you even found out how to get past the point the first time, but because of the poor controls you ended up making a move that appeared to be so far off the mark that you thought your idea to proceed was completely wrong. I understand that there is supposed to be a puzzle element but how much fun is it to run/swim around for 10 minutes to get back to your 2 second puzzle which you fail to complete because the controls are bad? For me personally: Not even once.
Those are some real problems that everyone playing this game will encounter. Apparently some people do not mind so much (or perhaps they haven't played other games that do similar things so much better) and I guess they feel that positive aspects of the game make up for it. Such as the art style and the idea of killing a colossus. Personally, I feel differently. Here's why:
I do not like the art style. I thought I did at first, because it is unusual and a bit different. But when you really think about it, then all you get is washed out graphics in slightly different shades of a the same color. It really does not look good (even the gold old PS2 can do a lot better), it just looks unusual and odd. And to make matters worse, the entire game world is completely dead and mostly uninspired. Sure, there is the occasional canyon and the nice bridge here and there, but other than the locations of the colossi, there isn't much going on in between. And there is a lot of area in between. Empty grass lands mostly. Certainly nothing alive. And the developers make you ride your horse around in these grass lands for a long time and for no particular reason (other than making the game longer perhaps). It is really a boring rip-off, especially compared to many other games.
I also got to hate the protagonist. Almost to a point where I started hoping he'd fall off the colossus and die. The problem is that he is so clumsy, to a point where he sometimes appears to be handicapped. Now I do not want to upset any handicapped people and I certainly do not have anything against them, but I had not expected to play one in this kind of game. But the way he runs and swims and constantly falls, and how he gets up after he rolls, and how he often jumps instead of diving for safety, and how he jumps head-first against his horses rear end rather than getting into the saddle, and all that, just make the whole thing completely unbelievable.
The other problem is that it just isn't that cool to kill a colossus. I had really high hopes for that part, but all you do is try to find a way to climb up (which has a certain puzzle element that might be entertaining... but there always only seems to be one specific way as far as I can tell) and then you try to hold on while the thing is thrashing around, and every now and then, you manage to get a stab in. Trying to hold on however, is not that cool, because all you do is hold down the R1 button until he slows down and then you stab. It isn't like a heart-stopping nail-biter to see whether you can hold on. You just keep the button pressed and that's it. Frankly, it is mostly boring. On occasion you get a colossus that tickles your fancy more than others and that may be a bit cooler, but by and large, I had much higher expectations based on the fundamental idea.
So bottom line: The basis for this game is an awesome idea. Probably one that appeals to me more than just about any other game idea. But the execution is done so boringly stupid that I really had not much fun playing this game. Maybe my expectations were too high...
Great Graphics do not make a Great Game Posted 03 March 2007
I was disappointed in this game. While the grapics are good, that doesn't make it a good game. In fact, the game gets tedious very quickly. You wander around waving your stupid sword to find the next colossus and then journey over to where you think it is supposed to be. Once you get there, you have to crawl and climb over it's hairy rump to stab it to death. Each colossus has a specific way to kill it so there is a bit of a puzzle approach to the game. Other than battling the colossus in this area and then that area, there is absolutely NOTHING to do. You run around or ride your horse, blah blah. Boring. The voice work is sub-par and the story line is lame and stretched to say the least. Fans of RPG games may like it but if you prefer action games, this isn't it. I honestly don't know why this game got such great reviews because it gets really old really fast. Rent it before you buy.
One of the best PS2 games ever made Posted 26 February 2007
For anyone still picking up PS2 games, this is a must have. One of the greatest PS2 games ever made.
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