Ico / Shadow of the Colossus

Actually, come to think of it, the game reminds me a lot of Myst, only with far different design aims.

Shadow of the Colossus looks pretty unbelievable, especially in these two screenshots:

http://ps2.1up.com/do/slideshow?pager.offset=13&mt=0&cId=3134836&mId=2243553
http://ps2.1up.com/do/slideshow?pager.offset=9&mt=0&cId=3134836&mId=2243557

I played it for a couple of hours, it looked good but then I had to fight something and the curse of No Reflexes struck yet again.

: /

I helped a friend play through this by watching her do all the puzzle stuff (saying nothing throughout on pain of pain), then taking the gamepad whenever the ghosts appeared and beating the crap out of them.

Check the video review for this. it looks amazing.

uh kinda weird but, like the 1up review said, you totally do start to question yourself for killing the colossi... their deaths are really bathetic... and the score is awesome, but your mileage may vary on mawkish classicism

I've done the first three. The freedom to approach your problem via trial and error and experimentation is fantastic. And it's beautiful. And the score is good. And it's been a long time since I've felt guilty-ish over actions in a game (last time might have letting one of those asshole knights die in Conquest of Camelot). Good stuff. Unfortunately I have a paper to write.

how you getting on? I've got 8 defeated from the weekend but I've not been relaxed enough to play it over the past couple of days and just found myself stressed out with all the aimless, listless riding...

that's just me after work though so I've been concentrating on other games

yeah Last Guardian looks great but is unplayably janky I think. Trico is cool though!

adding one more voice to say that the last guardian was bad - there are some interesting concepts in there but it's mostly boring and unattractive and a pain in the ass to control. but i didn't really like ico or shadow of the colossus that much either.

i should point out that i think shadow of the colossus was one of my all time favorite games! and i bought a _PS3_ for last guardian. the gameplay is just SO bad.

finished last guardian recently, enjoyed it. controls weren't too bad just annoying that the kid stumbles around like a drunk

Ico is all-time for me, I definitely enjoyed Shadow Of The Colossus as much as I could considering that it's a game where you're frantically and randomly grasping at patches of fur

Ico tho wow

An entire game devoted to the pleasure of architecture and space

Ico’s one of the few games I ever played co-operatively - a friend heard about it and liked it and came over to play my copy, handing off the controller to me for the hitting shadows with sticks bits.

SOTC was good to play and complete once, and I’d consider the remaster assuming it’s got the hidden secret fruit thing from the original, which I heard about after I finished it. But it’s a very different game.

Hidden secret fruit??

it's a game where you're frantically and randomly grasping at patches of fur

FINALLY

(i mean finally someone gets it, not finally a game where you're frantically and randomly etc etc)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/924364-shadow-of-the-colossus/faqs/58447

Right?

Good game! but I think I played it around the same time as Grand Theft Auto and the gameplay is reallllllly repetitious

Ico is perfect tho, perfect game, want a remaster, want a sequel that’s the exact same game but in an enormous tower built into a wintry mountaintop.

I’ve never felt an unique a pleasure as being somewhere in Ico and seeing a parapet or a windmill that I’d struggled with hours earlier, way off in the distance

Oh the soundtrack to Shadow Of The Colossus is hilariously bad imo, this dramatic James Newton Howard in top gear bullshit that completely doesn’t suit the slow motion climbing up a snuffleupagus

Hidden secret fruit??

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, February 15, 2018 2:43 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I have the PS3 upgrade and I was baffled when I looked through the list of trophies you could acquire for a number of things I had no idea you could do in the game.

Huh... interact with fish and turtle...

I tried to interact with the birds a number of times on the PS2 but the camera made it kind of a nightmare and I gave up.

One nice thing about the PS3 version (that I THINK was absent from the PS2 although I might have just never utilized it) is the ability to remap your buttons and tweak the camera movements in several ways. I assume that carried over to the new remaster?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQNeYbBiCKw

!

That was pretty great. I made it 16 minutes in before I suspected there could be significant spoilers (which the video impressively avoided before that, for the most part), but when I finish the game I'll definitely finish the video. I love the idea of game designers hiding things that are bigger than mere jokey easter eggs (almost as much as I love posters being citing by their dumb screen names). One of the best aspects of Breath of the Wild was all the substantial stuff you could do or get lost in that was completely irrelevant to the completion of the game. I suspect people are still figuring that one out, too.

That was amazing, thanks so much ulysses!

really, really good video

Tremendous

I've taken down ... six or so Colossi, and it's all kind of the same? I start at the ruins, the sword points the way, I take as long as I want getting there, thing eventually makes its grand entrance and I climb up it somehow, hold on and stab it where I need until it's dead. Fortunately, the scale and spectacle itself is pretty thrilling, so that makes up for the actual battles (so far). I wish the Divine Beasts in Zelda were this impressive.

well yeah the game is from the ps2 era when full production console games had a smaller scope and focus

josh

The actual battles do a good job of twisting the formula iirc

The game looks absolutely gorgeous.

So I've killed three colossi, each one more tedious and annoying than the last. Is this going to get any better?
― ledge (ledge), Wednesday, 15 March 2006 09:34 (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

(that video was good though, and i've gotta have some respect for a game which can make people disappear into insane yet seemingly plausible conspiracy theory rabbit holes for years on end)

I'm on the ... 8th monster? And this is the first one (maybe the second?) I had to look up online, since I had no idea what to do or how to do it, and the cryptic hints were no help. In fact, knowing the solution now, there is literally no way, even with those hints, I would have figured out what to do. (I'm sure I'm not the first one to joke that the camera is the toughest colossus to beat of them all.)

Fingers cramping up from holding down the grip trigger button all the time the ultimate boss iirc

Another monster or two down. I'm going to chalk this up to a great experience but probably a bad game. Equally repetitive and novel, thrilling and boring, which is weird but it's a mix that makes it worth playing even if playing it is not particularly interesting or challenging, imo. ("Challenging," that is, after you spend forever figuring out the thing you need to do to make the monster do the thing, which doesn't feel like solving a puzzle so much as a PIA you just have to do.)

Holy shit, monster number 11 or so - the one in the lake - was so frustrating and lame it made me want to quit the game. For starters, it's a bullshit "hint" to say "get to higher ground" when you are on the back of a monster taller than everything except the giant bridges and mountains you can't reach. Beyond that, this is the first time the camera totally fucked me and trapped me under water, but since you can't drown (apparently) I had to quit the game and try again. And then once you figure out the monster mechanics, you once again have to do the same shit, again and again, over and over. I couldn't ask for a better looking game, but this thing plays like a demo.

Maybe it was the 12th colossus? Gah, I hope so.

i've probably already said this multiple times in this thread but ico/shadow of the colossus/last guardian are all cool, innovative concepts undone by terrible clunky controls and bland environments. such overrated games.

Dragon monster was more fun, but still ultimately kind of lame. I think I am almost done? might as well just finish it.

This game was from before 3rd person 3d games had good controls

i played the tony hawk ps2 games so i know that isn't true

Regardless, they made it all snazzy for PS4 - it looks gorgeous and there is clearly a ton of work put into it - so it's a mystery why so much of it kind of runs like shit or seems sort of underdeveloped.

That said, the second bull monster that involves knocking down towers, that was a bit more fun, too, so that's two in a row after a tedious fallow period. It's an aggressive boss, which is more engaging than giant things that just lumber/fly/walk around sort of aimlessly while you patiently (or impatiently) wait for it to lift up its foot and check to see if it stepped in colossus poop or whatever. It's not really puzzle solving if the solution is mostly patience.

I dunno, I wish there were more challenges or enemies or something between bosses. Now I see why so many people said Breath of the Wild sets the bar so high for open world games. Then again, this is really no more open world than Dark Souls, and that game was a blast, constantly interesting/challenging.

Ico has no flaws - I don't remember problems with Shadow of the Colossus, but I only played it the once.

OK, last couple of monsters, particularly the final colossus, were pretty cool, even if the combat (as such) remained pretty simple. The ending was very satisfying, too, though I felt sad for the horse. As well you're supposed to, but honestly I felt bad throughout, since you're forced to take him along and he's such a loyal steed who puts up with so much abuse.

*spoilers*

jeezus christ the end sequence

the sleeping lady finds the baby (where Wander fell into the pit of darkness) while the limping horse he killed off slowly climbs up the stairs? that's kinda fucked up

hahaha, you have discovered one of the great endings

it was a very nice surprise after what happened just before (regarding Wander's fate), which i unfortunately jokingly predicted before playing the game. i didn't think it would actually happen!

overall i had a blast playing it, though!

of the two notorious issues with the game that are frequently mentioned, i found the controls to be sluggish but functional, and the camera to be awful in certain sections (like swimming under a beast) but ok for the most part. maybe they were improved a bit for the remaster?

also, lol, i didn't realize until the very last shrine that i was supposed to shoot the lizard, and soon afterward also realized i could pick up the little glowing piles of dust. oops! up until then i was very impressed at the restraint in adding "collectibles" to the game

the glow piles were new to the remaster! there's an insane story behind it.

a story within the game behind it, or a developer story? either way i'm curious to hear it!

also i see that there were also piles of fruit i was supposed to be collecting?

and probably also hidden locations near each of the shrines. i ran across in the woods, a little cave hideout with some human stuff in there, and an -ACHIEVEMENT- popped up. that was the only one i found, so apparently i was very bad at exploring despite spending literally hours trying to hop up the sides of mountains that i didn't realize were impassable boundaries

I didn't learn about the lizard thing until well after I beat the game. I don't think it was common knowledge back then.

tread lightly with this i suppose
https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/11/17001204/shadow-of-the-colossus-sword-of-dormin-how-to