Shadow Of the Colossus OMG

@Lulu_Lulu: Poor comparison. Two very different types of gameplay experiences. One's a puzzle game, one's a stealth game that's half-movie, half-game.

@chessmaster1989

No point.... Just wanted to skip straight to the part where we disagree to agree. I'l give you the full "Lulu thinks cutscenes are stupid" experience some other time.... I Got a headache right now.

@mastermetal777

I wasn't comparing their genres.

@chessmaster1989: Don't argue with Lulu. It's a pointless struggle. I do it cuz it's hilarious and I need a good laugh every now and then.

I'm sorry, but I just don't think your argument holds any water. Shadow of the Colossus is both an amazing emotional experience AND gaming experience as well. It has strong gameplay that can actually be defined. Every colossus you approach is a puzzle and boss battle rolled into one. It has a clear defined goal, which is to kill all 16 colossi. As you encounter them, you need to analyze them for a climbing pattern, and then find their weakness and strike. It calls upon reflexes and it calls upon urgency or you fall off and you have to try it all over again. Even after the game is over, you can continue to search the open world looking for items and you can also challenge the game in harder modes and speed run the colossi. It is far more a game than your other examples such as Journey and Heavy Rain.

I would like to hear specifically from you why Shadow should not be considered a good game.

Clear case of apples and oranges. Tetris is one of the best puzzle games out there. MGS4 is one of the best action games out there.

About the control movements in this game, those of you who don`t like it, i hope your didn`t play with the default controller settings? For some reason the default controller settings in this game which is sat to (normal) is actually southpaw and is the complete opposite of how most games are played today, i had to change the Vertical Camera Control to inverted and the Horizontal Camera Control to inverted, then the control movement felt as good as any other 3rd person game of today. Personally i had no problems what so ever with the movements of the character or the camera angle, a little bit off angle from time to time and some minor issues when i was jumping from ledges to ledges to grab onto something but that was nothing that bothered me to much and i got used to it very quicly. Btw, im sure the reviewers based this game on the gameplay as well, they are basing games as a whole package, everything counts and this game has it all, gameplay included.

@JustPlainLucas: That was a very good explenation of what this game is all about and why it has been rated so high amongs so many people. The gameplay in this game is one of the most important factors of why it has been rated so high and the story and the emotional experience you get from it is also another huge factor.

@JustPlainLucas

Its more than Welcome to be called a game..... Just not a good one.

Let's just rephrase that statement. "It's more than welcome to be called a game. I just don't think it's a very good one." There's no way objectively you can make that assertion.

@JustPlainLucas

I don't need to..... What I do is make the objective assertion that if it is a good game then others are great.... If its an average game then others are good, if its a bad game, then others are average. The oppinion of the game's quality is of little concern to me, I just know the scale of the quality remains constant when you factor in better games.

@Lulu_Lulu: That makes absolutely ZERO sense. Your thoughts on a game's overall quality are absolutely that: AN OPINION!

"I just know the scale of the quality remains constant when you factor in better games."

No, it does not. Even with games in similar genres, they're always doing something to make themselves as unique as possible. If you thought a game was better, it only means you liked it better than another. Someone else might think the opposite. And that's completely fine, as long as you acknowledge that it's an opinion and not a fact like you want it to be.

All you seem to be doing is wording your opinion as fancifully as possible to avoid it being called an opinion (somehow I think you're allergic to that word). Everything you say qualifies as an opinion. It's not a fact if there's no way to prove if it's good or not. Games are difficult to prove facts with in terms of how people view each individual game. It'll all boil down to opinion regardless, and you're no different, no matter how hard you try to hide it.

@mastermetal777

I know the Gameplay specifically, in other games is better. Yes it s an oppinion and its a damn good one.

You cannot factor in a scale of quality when it comes to such a vast assortment of games. You also can't apply it to games whose target audience changes drastically based on its genre. You can only scale a game's quality among games of similar nature, and with a game like Shadow of the Colossus, that's almost impossible to do, as there are very few games like it.

@JustPlainLucas

Its a game where you "battle" massive Creatures, theres fuckton of games I can use as reference..... I can't compare the clinging mechanic itself to other games other than the Obvious Dragon's Dogma, but the mechanic is very shallow, That, I don't need to compare with anything it all... Its pretty unique and innovative but yeah, still shallow. Its just not a very good "game". Great Experience though...

Never played the game, but have seen the play through videos. Looks like a fun RPG with Zelda thrown in. I'm sure I would enjoy, but, meh, don't need it right now.

@Lulu_Lulu: you realize any game you reference came after Shadow of the Colossus, right? It came out in 2006, and you're acting as though it came out alongside the 7th generation. You need to learn a thing or two about video game timelines. Better yet, actually do some research into the games you talk about.

@mastermetal777

What does SoC's release date have to do with its quality of Gameplay ?

@Lulu_Lulu: Consider that nothing had ever been done quite like that in any video game before it was released. A game with only boss battles and nothing but traveling to said bosses in between with lots of scenery porn. The bosses are to be climbed to reach their weak spots, and for some that's no easy feat, as you must use the environment and the creatures' body quirks to your advantage in just about every single fight. Combine that with a story that completely shatters the "save the princess" trope and has made people feel bad for doing what they were supposed to do: kill monsters to save the girl. And that many people still consider it to hold up to today's standards, myself included (I played this game after the HD rerelease too, so no nostalgia points for me).

Back in 2006 though, this was a phenomenal feat to accomplish in gaming, especially for the PS2, which was, at the time, the weakest of the then-current consoles in terms of raw power. That little old console could whip up monsters about 30 times your size that you could climb seamlessly without breaking up the scene. Sure, there were significant frame drops in the original game that showed how much stress the game put onto the PS2, but you have to at least acknowledge what it did back then, and the impact of its design philosophy to this day.

You might not like it, but its impact is nonetheless felt, to the point where games like Dragon's Dogma, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and many others have used its boss-climbing mechanic as part of their gameplay. It showed depth through simplicity, has emotionally drained many gamers, and challenged their critical thinking not through remembering patterns, but using environmental details as pieces of a large, moving puzzle. If that isn't impactful, then I sincerely wish to know what you consider to be a true innovator in the industry if this isn't one of them. To say its not a good game when many developers cite it as an influence in future games is to be ignorant of its current legacy.

@mastermetal777

Nothing had ever been like Portal before either but atleast they gave it alot of Mechinal Depth beyond Emotionally Draining players, but if you're looking for something older then Devil May Cry, or God Of War.

They did nothing new either but damn they had good gameplay......

Forgive me for rewarding developers who make good games instead of chasing after shallow innovation.

FYI, Lost Planet 2 does Clinging to Objects much much better than Dragon's Dogma does, I mean the game only has like two Skills you can use whilst clinging to a baddy, it was usefull but shallow as hell. Atleast if you stand on your own two feet you regain access to all six of your skills again, another good example is Shadow of Modor, its not the 1st game to let you turn the Tables by letting climb on to of a beast and use it against your enemies but damn it was well done.

I honestly don't care about 1st time innovation... I care about Good Gameplay....

Its why I like Gears of War more Than Kill Switch, Vanquis more than Max Payne.....

@Lulu_Lulu: Your loss then. It's a fantastic gameplay experience either way, and many people will agree with me. For those who don't, oh well, not gonna stop me from liking what I like.

@mastermetal777

There far better gameplay specific experiences..... Your loss if you can't see that....

@Lulu_Lulu: I can. I just prefer to see a game as a whole experience instead of focusing solely on gameplay and blatantly ignoring the rest. Doing that just limits me to half the experience, and that's just no fun for me.

@mastermetal777

Actually I take in those other experiences but the good gameplay must be nailed down 1st.... You on other hand use the former to compensate or even outright avoid the latter.

@Lulu_Lulu: You're making too many leaps in your "logic". I love a great gameplay experience, but I also love those experiences that try something new and different. If you saw my list of games I own, you'd see I love a large variety of games, whether they're focused on gameplay or not. And if you saw my top 10 list, you'd see that even more. But seeing as how you've refused my offer several times, I can't expect you to truly listen.

@mastermetal777

Considering your version of "gameplay" I'm faily Brazen in the accusations I throw at you..... I wouldn't mind seeing your list though... It should put things into perspective.

@Lulu_Lulu: Check both my top 10 list and my list of games I currently own. I have them as stacks on my profile.

@mastermetal777

oh right right.... Uhm..... Just as a hypotheticle.... How does one do that exactly ?

@Lulu_Lulu: click on my profile and once you're there, go to the stacks tab. Navigating the forums for years, and you don't know that by now? *shaking my head*

@mastermetal777

I'm a very closed off person .... I don't like being under a microscope and I don't go snooping through other peoples profiles.... It just feels wrong ! it also seems very impersonal.... People should share these things when they are ready to....

@Lulu_Lulu: and posting something for anyone to see on a public profile doesn't qualify?

@mastermetal777

Is what we post here always personal ? Nope.... So there we go.

Now Let me Snoop through your virtual diary.... :p

The original version is better than the HD one. They changed it so that you lose your grip on every tiny bump. It's not more challenging, just more tedious, and this is a game that required a lot of patience to begin with.

@NeverMore0: I played the HD version, and it's not as bad as you think. At least for me it wasn't. I still beat the game in under 5 hours.

once again lulu derails and destroys another thread, not enough boom boom for you lulu bay, we get it, now gtfo to another thread where you can whine about something else.

@Krelian-co: That's nothing. you should see the explosion on the most recent story thread here.

I remember playing the year it came out. Absolutely amazing :')

This is a long post.

Shadow of the Colossus is without a doubt my favorite title released on the PlayStation 2. Everything about it is just pristine. The atmosphere and score are probably my favorite parts of the game. The latter is particularly interesting because for most of the game, there is no music. When you add in that there's no one else save for a few random birds for the entire game, the atmosphere is easily the best of any game I have ever played.

The entire setting is just mystifying because there's only half a dozen characters in the entire game, and none of them are ever explained; the setting itself is even more mystifying, deserving of only one sentence in the entire game: "a forbidden land;" and even your relatively straightforward objective is cloaked under the guise of 'some supernatural being can restore your friend to life, provided you first free this supernatural being's energy (or something) from being trapped within these colossi.' It takes pretty much every storytelling convention and throws all of it out the window. It sounds overly simplistic, confusing, and possibly dull—and you could argue it is all of those things, but it still works, and it's still engaging.

The controls are a bit frustrating at times though this is only really apparent later in the game or for a few individual parts. The learning curve is super short and after you've beaten just one, you're pretty much golden with the controls. Also I don't want to say the control issues are excusable, but this game is so incredibly unique, it's at least understandable. Some of the parts are incredibly technical.

All of that being said, I have no idea why I like it so much. If I had to guess, I think it's because you are given so little information the entire game, you travel enormous distances to fight these creatures, and you have no idea how to defeat any one of them till you're actually fighting them trying to not die horribly. It's truly the best narrative conflict I've ever seen.

When I took down that first one, I just felt like such a bad ass. That triumphant feeling I felt has never been matched by any game I've ever played before, or since.

I could talk about this game all day, but that's enough for now.

This is so true, i remember i was looking into this game back then and i knew it was one of the absolute best games out there at that time but i was to busy playing other games back then and as years passed by i was thinkng about picking it up because i knew i had been missing out on one of the best and most intuitive games ever created. Im so glad i finally picked it up and played through it last week. This game is one of those few games that has stood through the tests of time and still you wont find any games like this. It`s pure magic and a masterpiece of a game.