I remember playing the game many years ago and liking it. I never actually completed it, but got close. I think I stopped around the 11th one. Well, a couple days ago I found a used copy of the game and said to myself, "I really need to beat this. It is such a great game and I just can't respect myself as a gamer if I never do it." When I got home I put it in and started to play...
I don't remember hating the controls as much as I do now. I actually threw my controller during the second encounter. I can count on one hand the times I have done that in my life. In 24 years I have done it exactly four times. The aiming and combat are fine, its moving from place to place and positioning the camera that are the problem. The character just refuses to transition from ledge to ledge in some places. When you have a limited grip and need to move along in a hurry this becomes an issue. Also, I actually had the camera get stuck in the arm pit of the third colossus and made it impossible to see my character. My only option in the end was to just let go and fall down, and climb all the way back up again. Very tedious.
The flying colossus, number five or six, I think was another tedious fight. It took my a few attempts to figure out what I needed to be trying to grab on to when he dives at me. So I would
jump and miss, or he would hit me or something. Now, when he hit me it would send me sailing across the room, and forcing me to have to swim back to the platform. This gave him
enough time to reset and start flying around again. Waiting for him to come back around, then getting his attention, then waiting for him to fly back and forth a bit more
before finally attacking again takes like two minutes. After going through this three or four times it became sort of annoying. However, once I saw what I needed to do it was pretty easy.
The fight after that requires you to hide behind some pillars and get the colossus to kneel down and start looking for you. I had some complications moving up his arm and ended up
falling off when my grip broke. It kept reading move right as go up and jump up as jump down. I'm wondering if there might be an issue with my controller... But that isn't the bad part
here. See, he never crouched down again for me to give it another go. The moment I would move into cover he would lose interest and turn away. He reminded me of Treebeard in a
way. His turning away took quite a while, and his rediscovery of me took even longer. My final attempt to get it to work consisted of me running out, shooting him in the face with a couple of arrows, slicing at his foot for a while, running in random directions and then slowly backing up to the covered pillar area. Again, he got bored and decided that staring at the
wall would be a more productive use of his time.
I think if I was actually dying during these encounters and being forced to try again and again I wouldn't mind as much. Unfortunately, I'm just experiencing prolonged and frustrating fights. And out of all the people in the world, you would think I would have the patience to do this and it not bother me. I've completed games like SMT: Nocturne and Siren. Yeah, the original Siren. The one on PS2. The one that is known for being a game for crazy people. I like slower paced games. I like games that require me to stop and think. And I liked this game for how reserved it felt and how it presented it's action as almost a puzzle of sorts. Now, I don't feel that way. I'm not enjoying it. I am going to finish it, though. There is just too much here to appreciate and take in that it would be a shame to not see it and experience it. Even if the game is doing nothing but forcing me to rage quit constantly, I am still going to give it a fair chance and hope it can redeem itself.
Shadow of the Colossus
Game » consists of 9 releases. Released Oct 18, 2005
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