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Idle Forums Game Club 2 - Shadow of the Colossus edition

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Props to Tegan for the amusing logo.

So i guess we're doing this, huh? The first Idle Forums Game Club came crashing down screaming and on fire, so having learned nothing about our failure, let's try again!

I guess we're doing Shadow of the Colossus, Team Ico and Fumito Ueda's famed Ico sequel. (prequel?)

Shadow of the Colossus is another game that defies easy explanation, trying to pin it down with an existing genre label can be highly misleading. Superficially it shares a lot of common traits with action adventure games such as The Legend of Zelda, but the focus is entirely different. The open-ended world is just context for a series of enormous boss battles that incorporate the kind of climbing mechanics normally reserved for traversing a dungeon.

The dynamic is an incredibly interesting one, scrambling across an immense monster that wants very much to shake you off, seeing horizontal paths suitable for running across shift into sheer walls to climb as the beast underfoot struggles against you. It's a thrilling and original game with phenomenal art direction, a wonderful soundtrack, and a memorably ambiguous narrative.

Beyond that, I suspect there are probably a few people here who are more familiar with Team Ico and their games than i am, so maybe i'll just leave the trivia bombs up to them?

There are two versions of the game, the PS3's HD re-release and the PS2 original. The HD re-release is by all accounts the way to play the game, offering a smooth framerate and a widescreen perspective. For the PS2 version, there are apparently some slight differences between the North American release and the European release, but they sounded fairly inconsequential.

Myself, i do not own a PS3, so i will be playing the North American PS2 version. (I kept telling myself that i would buy a PS3 for Last Guardian...) I don't know if i still have my saves, but if i do, i'll probably play through on hard.

As for the schedule, the plan apparently is to try and conquer one colossi every two weeks. With sixteen of them in the game, that would make this a pretty lax eight month endeavor.

Interested individuals should make a post here and we'll talk about a start date.

As an aside - Killer 7 is still a pretty rad thing you should totally play. Most of the conversation that happened in there was gameplay centric since we lost momentum just before the game goes off the rails in the best possible way, so i would encourage people to check that game out and keep the thread going. There is discussion yet to be mined concerning that game.

It's on!

Be careful with spoilers, try not to get ahead, and read the latest posts to see which colossi we're on.

Old plan was too slow, new plan is to do one a week.

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I'm in it and totally excited!

I think starting on January 1st seems like a good plan. January is usually a pretty dead month as everyone's burned themselves out from the holidays.

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I am up for this.

I bought the HD collection a while ago, completed ICO for the first time then moved on with the intention to come back to this at some point and obviously still haven't. A collos every other week would be a fairly leisurely way to take it in and a thread like this would make me feel like I'm making progress without forcing me to play in big chunks when I maybe don't feel like it.

Incidentally Killer 7 is magnificent.

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I might have to just go back and finish my Game Club playthrough of Killer 7 for my own edification and then make a couple posts about it, I really want to know if the ending holds up relative to my memories of it.

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I wanted to buy the HD version last weekend, but couldn't find it anymore :/

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Tada:

http://www.amazon.co...55767599&sr=1-1

1st of January sounds good to me. My copy should arrive just before Christmas so count me in.

Incidentally, I have a video capture unit at home so I will try and get some good pictures of the journey as long as I don't have any problems with the 720p capture (I think there might be something wrong with the cable I am using).

Edited by twmac

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I've read on a the ps3trophies.org forums the HD version is a bit harder to control in some areas, but that could all be changing perceptions. No clue if something got messed with. Either way that's how I'll be playing.

I used to have the PAL version of Shadow of the Colossus for PS2 but I never got around to playing it. I thought there were no differences outside of an

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I have the HD release and have done the first few colossi. I'd be up for listening to your stories of dealing with those and then joining in once it gets to the stage I'm at - I've wanted an excuse to finish that game for a while.

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I have the HD rerelease. I'll give it a shot to be in on this, but no guarantees once school starts up. I don't think I turned on a game console for about 2 months this past term.

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So, how many of you will be playing this for the first time?

Were the horse controls intentionally sloopy so as to give the feeling that you were controlling the rider and not the actual horse? This was something I found frustrating on my first play through but fell in love with on my second. I love the idea that the horse has a mind of its own

Games like ass creed 3 have perfected 'horse riding', but a horse isn't a car, and I'd much prefer it if my horse had a mind of its own, just some subtle little path finding AI

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Were the horse controls intentionally sloopy so as to give the feeling that you were controlling the rider and not the actual horse? This was something I found frustrating on my first play through but fell in love with on my second. I love the idea that the horse has a mind of its own

Really? It SotC was one of the first experiences in a game where the horse riding felt more natural than any game I've played before that. But I guess gameplay-wise, Agro was not the best for precision riding. That's one of those things that I found endearing about it though.

Anyway, this game sounds like it might make for some fun discussion, so I will definitely be watching this thread. I actually did buy the HD collection (still unwrapped), but my brother borrowed my PS3 so that sucks, ugh.

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Maybe I worded that poorly. Not sloopy, more natural like you said. There's times when you have to ride along a narrow ridge and argo will move really slowly much like a real animal would. I didn't fully appreciate that on my first play through, I understood the reasoning behind it, but in my youth I just wanted to gallop everywhere at 100mph

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I have the HD rerelease. I'll give it a shot to be in on this, but no guarantees once school starts up. I don't think I turned on a game console for about 2 months this past term.

Ditto, except I'm at a conference from January 2nd until the 6th and school starts on the 7th. I know that this is going to be tough for most of you. I will however get the game because I'd love to be in on this. I've always wanted to play Shadow and Colossus.

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Should we reconsider the one-a-month plan? Maybe it'll let more of us partake?

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It'll take 16 months to get through the game but I am okay with that.

I hated Agro with a passion. I ended up doing most of my playthrough on foot as I couldn't stand the little blighter.

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Were the horse controls intentionally sloopy so as to give the feeling that you were controlling the rider and not the actual horse? This was something I found frustrating on my first play through but fell in love with on my second. I love the idea that the horse has a mind of its own

Actually, reading up on this game while writing up the game club pitch, i came across an interview where Ueda talked about Team Ico struggling to make Agro feel like a real horse, which doesn't always immediately obey, but without going so far in that direction that it would affect playability. So yeah, it was totally intentional.

Should we reconsider the one-a-month plan? Maybe it'll let more of us partake?

I'm just really, really wary of slowing this down that much, but if there's a demand for it, let's talk about it.

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I dunno, the game isn't really even that long. Each colossus takes no longer than 15-20 minutes to beat (maybe more on hard?), so I don't think it's too ambitious to do two a month. That said, I'm in either way though I can see my interest trailing off if we do this for 16 months.

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If this turns into a once a month thing and it takes a few hours to do in each colossus, there's no way I'm going to be able to follow this schedule. I'm just going to go ahead of everyone at that point. I think two weeks is more reasonable, can't some of you just commit a weekend afternoon or something to a section? Killer 7 was tough because the game was really intense for me and at times frustrating, a very taxing game per chapter. If Shadow of the Colossus is anything like ICO, it's probably going to be hard to put down.

(Also my first time playing.)

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I also think it's not a big deal if we're ambitious with our goals and some people go at a slower clip, as long as we're fairly vigilant about using spoiler tags.

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The game is a breeze and really quite addictive, i'd be amazed if anyone could actually turn the game off after each and every colossi,

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http://www.amazon.co...55767599&sr=1-1

1st of January sounds good to me. My copy should arrive just before Christmas so count me in.

Ok, ordered. Hopefully I receive it before the end of the year. I'm not sure if I can start on the 1st, might not be home yet (or still drunk)

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