I’ve been waiting all day to get to this. But after seeing kleinbl00’s hideously incorrect remarks, I decided I needed to respond in a separate post. And these remarks were so hideous, that the only person who could prove klein was wrong, was himself, with a bit of my own spin thrown in there.
Bear in mind that this is a joke, because satirizing the way people I like act is fuuuun.
So, without further adieu…
— First, some music to set the mood:
Welcome to my 8-Bit Domain, Kleinbro.
We serve pancakes, chocolates, smoothies, and A DISTINCT LACK OF MERCY.
Everything you’ve said about Shadow of the Colossus is wrong. You’re so wrong, I’m inclined to think that literally every thought that’s passed through your prefrontal cortex involving Shadow of the Colossus is wrong as well.
So I’m going to go through and tell you why you’re wrong.
PAUSE.
Each of these three statements are wrong about Shadow of the Colossus, for the same reason.
You know what’s awesome about videogames? You get to do stuff in them. It’s pretty fun, doing stuff. I don’t pull out a game to read a ridiculous amount of text (looking at you, Xenogears). If I wanted to read, I’d drop the game, go to my bookcase filled with thousands of intellectual, large texts, and pull out Crime and Punishment. Then I’d put it back, because who reads Crime and Punishment? What pointless drivel.
That’s right. I thought Crime and Punishment was bad. FUCK YOU I’m Kleinbro I do whatever the fuck I want, you don’t know me.
Shadow of the Colossus doesn’t bore you with a ridiculous amount of text. Like Dark Souls, it throws you into its world, and tells you to go find the story. Because a videogame is an interactive, three-dimensional space, and you shouldn’t just do things you do in books, or in movies.
(Sidenote, Okami, that other game you love so much, had cutscenes that made me want to tear my hair out. And you couldn’t even skip those.)
If you think the story and narrative and world were all cut out, that means you weren’t trying hard enough to find it. This is made abundantly clear when you don’t realize that the fact that you’re slaying monsters that don’t mean you any harm is the entire point.
PAUSE AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKER.
What you don’t seem to realize is that every boss in Shadow of the Colossus was a puzzle for you to solve. Just a large puzzle, that was trying to kill you. You don’t solve them through tedious key-presses, because Shadow of the Colossus has one of the most simplistic control systems in videogames.
Hold a button to climb.
Hold a button to stab.
Press a button to jump.
Sometimes you shoot a bow and arrow, same button you use to stab.
Sometimes you jump from one point to the next.
They were just puzzles you couldn’t solve without using a really old forum for help, Klein.
It means you suck at the game.
Your problem with the control system is non-existent. You claim that it’s because the gameplay isn’t inherent in the game mechanics. Well then you can’t like Ico either, BUDDY, and here’s why.
Every game created by Fumito Ueda depends on one
singular
thing.
The concept of holding something.
In Ico, it’s holding a girl’s hand. In The Last Guardian, if it ever comes out, it’s about holding onto your pet. In Shadow of the Colossus, it’s holding onto giant monsters. Sometimes ledges. Sometimes ledges on giant monsters.
The entire game is built around the concept of “holding on." The only game that comes close to marrying gameplay into every aspect of its design is probably Okami and its brush mechanic.
So, you hold things, you stab things, and you have to kill these giant monsters. Each one is its own challenge to figure out and conquer (without help, you namby pamby pansy). It’s not a fighting game with a bunch of crazy button presses. It’s figuring out the environment, figuring out the colossi’s behavior, and figuring out what you can do with those two things, with the limited toolset you have.
That’s what makes killing a colossus so exciting and rewarding.
That also seems to be why you don’t like the game.
…Yeah I’ll admit the camera could be reeeeal bullshitty, though.