Idle Forums Game Club 2 - Shadow of the Colossus edition

[youmeyou]

Finished up 6th 7th and 8th (since I was on a roll)

 

6th

Was fun, I immediately recognized the strategy. Seeing something prominent like a beard goes a long way to figuring out how to take down a colossus. I think aside from the swimming and flying creatures, the walking ones tend to have pretty significant tells in the form of props like the beard or the other guys sword.

 

7th is definitely fantastic. 

Pretty much any time a colossus 'comes at me bro' and I can latch on it's just the best. So far it's been 5 and 7, which happen to be my faves. I love the feeling of getting swept away by a fast moving colossus far more than the norm of having to find a way to climb up. This was also the closest I came to dying so far. This guy definitely put the fear in me with his electric eel attacks. Also drowning was a problem.

 

I think I'm starting to see the difficulty curve begin to take shape. The next guy, 8,

nearly killed me, as I was not expecting the poison cloud to choke me

 

I have so far found 1 fruit directly in front of the temple. Plenty of lizards but I just never spot fruits for some reason. Are they only in super big trees or are they in shrubbery as well? It doesn't seem to effect the gameplay that much that I haven't found any, I still haven't died so maybe I don't even really need them. The lizard stamina probably helps though, and it helps that I know the save temples are where they are to be found.

 

Also I do see the tedious thing. It's a game that feels like it could have been tested more, and smoothed out a bit. The controls feel a few steps away from being accurate. There's stuff that's constantly hampering my control of wander. It's not always clear when I can pull back the sword to strike, so I often have to press the button repeatedly until it registers. Switching weapons is super awkward, i have to reach over with my right hand while running because if i let go of the left stick wander stops completely and there's a weird pause after switching. Just a lot of rough stuff that could have been smoother but I attribute it to the game's age and origins. It's still a wonderful experience and I look forward to seeing the rest of the colossi.

[elmuerte]

5 was boring because it took an annoying long time to recover when dropping from the colossus.

[syntheticgerbil]

I have so far found 1 fruit directly in front of the temple. Plenty of lizards but I just never spot fruits for some reason. Are they only in super big trees or are they in shrubbery as well? It doesn't seem to effect the gameplay that much that I haven't found any, I still haven't died so maybe I don't even really need them.

They will only be in small trees if there are some in a big tree. The big trees need to either be the ones standing straight up or the ones bent to the side. Sometimes there may only be one in a big tree but then a small tree nearby has 3. It's a bit random and it doesn't help that everything except the orange fruits are really difficult to see.

[Sno]

I guess we should be moving onto the 8th now.

Fuck.

I'm still not caught up.

[tegan]

Eighth Colossus (Kuromori) thoughts:

Fuck this guy. This is the point where the colossi start becoming actively annoying for me. This time took a good fifteen to twenty minutes and I came close to dying a few times thanks to his stupid nerve gas. I also forgot the technique for fighting kuromori for a bit. First death in the game when I accidentally jumped off of a cliff thinking it was the way to the Colosseum. At least I got to ride the fish.

Speaking of the Colosseum, it's one of the most distinctively purposeful structures in the game. I always wondered if Kuromori was supposed to be harnessed for entertainment or something. Is it trapped there? Can it get out?

I've never got the name Kuromori. It's Japanese for "Black Forest." It's the only Japanese name for a colossus and it doesn't describe it at all.

Next time: worst colossus!

[youmeyou]

Kuromori

doesn't really feel like a colossus. Perhaps it is a juvenile colossus. It certainly has the energy of youth, all climbing walls and shooting nerve gas everywhere! This definitely was the toughest fight yet. I'm not sure I'd say this is where the colossi are getting annoying as much as this appears to be the next tier of difficulty in that colossi are more actively fighting back and from range with projectiles. Which increases the chances of dying much more, especially if you don't pay close attention.

 

I quickly gleaned the strategy here, though in retrospect I should have lept off the balcony and taken a little fall damage once Kuro was on his back instead of running down the stairs each time. A few times I couldn't find the stair entrance in time and missed my chance to get to Kuro before he got back up.

 

I found the challenge fun and not remarkably unfair. To this point, the only things I find unfair are the controls and the camera. Especially as the game gets more difficult I start to butt up against the wonkyness of the camera and the way your character performs certain actions. The bow would be so much more fun to use if the camera didn't snap to the angle your character is facing rather than stay where it currently is. You work around these things but everywhere I see little niggles that make impossible a more immersive experience. Grab detection when you jump toward your horse could be expanded 100x more as another example. I'm always jumping at Agro and missing and looking stupid and also nearly dying as with the next (9th) colossus. Sneak peak: first time I've heard wander shout for Agro in panic and fear which is rather affecting.

[tegan]

I quickly gleaned the strategy here, though in retrospect I should have lept off the balcony and taken a little fall damage once Kuro was on his back instead of running down the stairs each time. A few times I couldn't find the stair entrance in time and missed my chance to get to Kuro before he got back up.

 

I realized something this time that I never realized before.

You can roll through the gaps under the bars in the windows and land directly in the pit.

Saved me a lot of hassle.

[youmeyou]

Yeah totally did that by accident once and if I went back and played again that's what I would do, as the ledge isn't always directly adjacent. 

[Erkki]

I killed some up to the 11th or 12th last week, which I shouldn't have done because now I can't remember which number was which to write about my experiences here. I guess I'll look them up on youtube later.

[darthbator]

So tomorrow we're starting on 9? I just killed 7 tonight. Figure i can find time to sit down and kill 8 and 9 in one go tomorrow and then actually post some thoughts.

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah what number are we on now? I need to catch up but I am also confused where to get to.

[youmeyou]

Pretty sure this week is for the 9th colossus.

[miffy495]

Yeah. I'm guessing that I'll need to do 8, 9, and 10 in a quick blast over March break. As it is, I'm not finding much time for gaming while teaching. Soon, giant beautiful things, I will end you

[tronhound]

I can't wait for Anita Sarkeesian to run down SotC and ICO and expose them as the male power fantasies that they are.

[syntheticgerbil]

I think that's kind of a low blow, but on that note, I thought I was playing a woman at the beginning of Shadow of the Colossus. I wasn't really sure of the relation of the main character to the dead or sick woman.

[darthbator]

That woman got 150k to talk down at people on YouTube. Really no one needs to go out defending her. While I agree with lots of what is said about portrayals of women in games I really don't see what good she's doing at all.

Also could we maybe not let this thread get eaten alive by this too? I mean I know it's 2013 and we're reaching for legitimacy as an industry. However I would love to go back to a time when we could talk about games without having to absolutely comment on their social meanings like they're more important then the games that bear them.

[youmeyou]

Way to make a cheap shot then quickly pretend you're above the fray. "That woman" is not the subject of this thread and so I refrained from addressing tron's snark. I think it'll be a worthwhile topic of debate once we actually finish the game, but feeding trolls doesn't make for very interesting discussion.

[Twig]

haha what just happened here

 

guys i don't even like sotc at all but i was enjoying reading about you playing it DON'T RUIN THIS FOR ME

[syntheticgerbil]

Way to make a cheap shot then quickly pretend you're above the fray.

 

Was that directed at me? I'm confused. It was dumb to respond to Tron in the same sentence, but I guess it made me remember that I originally thought Wander was female.

[youmeyou]

No, that was directed at darthbator.

[syntheticgerbil]

Derp I guess I didn't read what Darthbator wrote correctly, sorry.

 

Also, does anyone have any clue of what the Japanese manual for Shadow of the Colossus looks like? I found this neato Japanese manual scan from ICO I might get by trolling Yahoo Auctions Japan next paycheck: http://www.teamico.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=11575269

 

I don't know if these are drawn by Fumito Ueda or what (is he an artist?) but I'm curious if there's something similar in the Shadow JP version for PS2. I did get that little artbook for the Japanese HD collection that someone was nice enough to put on Ebay for $20 once without any competing bids. It's kind of neat with storyboards and design layouts on graph paper but otherwise short with interviews in Japanese taking up the other half.

[darthbator]

I'm not above the fray I'm just disinterested in it. It's gotten to the point where it subsumes every single conversation I have about video games. Her particular project is a sore point for me due to how much funding she managed to raise while many less known developers with good ideas/projects are failing all over kickstarter. I'm not trying to knock this thread off the rails, when there is honestly no point in having that conversation here. I should probably just keep my opinions to myself as they are almost always unpopular. 

 

 

 

Is this really the just the Japanese manual? It looks like a child's story book. That's really beautiful!

[Sno]

I'd like to confirm that we're probably on 9.

Probably.

[syntheticgerbil]

Finshed 8 and 9 earlier. Had jury duty and didn't get selected, so I went home and played some video games before I went back to work. NONE THE WISER ARE YOU BOSS?!

8 I maybe felt a little bad about killing, since when he rolled on his back I felt like I should be scratching him like a dog, not stabbing him.

 

However, 9 was fucking obnoxious and I wanted his stupid face dead, that jerk. It took so long to get to his weak spot, getting him to step on a geyser seemed random. He'd either not move and just shoot crap at me constantly, died once also, or he's move way too fast and walk past the geyser. They also would not give me enough time to shoot his feet over and over unless I was very close. Problem is, getting close meant I'd get hit by the projectiles too much. This fight was even more frustrating because Ardo was flipping out and constantly getting in my way. Twice when the geyser was propping the giant up, Ardo ran right in front of my face or blocked a foot and I didn't have enough time to move and re-aim. Why was the horse being such a jerk to me?

 

Also the magic projectiles on those two were pretty obnoxious and felt a bit out of place. Seemed I couldn't do too much to dodge. Is this going to be a theme the rest of the fights?

[youmeyou]

For 9:

I didn't have that problem with Argo as I road him for almost the entire fight. There was some awkwardness in trying to ride parallel to the geysered colossus while shooting arrows but it mostly worked well and felt properly epic to be riding a horse the whole time. I tried briefly to do it on foot but it seemed nearly impossible to dodge the projectiles in time that way. Argo is also super useful for vaulting off of to get quickly on top of the colossus when he actually rolls over. That was a admittedly a very tough fight though, and even Argo took a few licks thanks to his larger role in it. That was heartbreaking, as was Wander's panicked calls while nearly dead and under colossus foot.