Aright. Well said. Circle gets the square. Disclaimer for disclaimer, this is me talking shit about a game I played for about an hour, twice. It is absolutely no skin off my nose that everyone under the sun loves the fuck out of SotC so long as they don't require me to play it. - SO - Let's challenge one assumption right quick: And I don't mean to challenge it in the way you think - because oh yeah - I suck at this game. I suck at it haaaaaard. But you know what I also suck at? (Drop the needle, DJ) Holy fuck do I suck at that game. I have been sucking at that game since it was a one track demo on PS1. I have been sucking at that game since Yugoslavia was a COUNTRY. I have been sucking at that game since before Sickboy was Sickboy and since Angelina Jolie had a muthafuckin' pixie cut. And I'm not kidding around, either - I drive those sleds like they're Magic Erasers on a dirty stove. Like I'm scraping barnacles off a trawler. I leave paint around like I'm taggin' with my fenders. I. Suck. Hard. But here's the difference - I still play. I play and I play and I play because even when you suck as hard as I do, that game is a fuckin' rush. Even without the first fucking idea how to get around Sebenco Climb for par, I play it sober, I play it drunk, I play it sick, I play it healthy and I know how to maximize or minimize my suck on any given track in any given play mode for one simple reason: It's still fun. Swear to god - the first PS1 video game I ever played was Twisted Metal. Eh. The second PS1 video game I ever played was Wipeout. And I was hooked. No idea what the buttons did - you figure it out. No idea how to win - don't care. Fuckin' 13" dorm TV at a friend's house and I just couldn't care less. It was, for all intents and purposes, full justification for that guy dropping half his tuition disbursement on a video game console. So let's compare and contrast: I'm no longer a ramen-eater fresh out of the dorms. I have a leather sectional that would make minimum_wage shit his britches. I project 1080P at 4000 lumens on 92 inches diagonal into 5.1 of Infinity Kappa. And here we are - atmosphere. So what do we do? Well, we ride the horse, then we climb the cliff, then the music changes and a damage bar comes up and swoop ouch swoop I'm dead. Again. Swoop ouch swoop I'm dead. Again. Swoop ouch swoop I'm dead. See, if I could, like, focus on the dude's foot or whatever the fuck you're supposed to do, that'd be neat. Except you can't lock shit in SotC so that's out. And even though I'm playing this fucking game at 92 inches the mechanics of the game give me about a 20 degree field of view so I might as well be playing it through a periscope. Oh, yeah - and this game is about: Right. So in addition to running and jumping and getting squished, you're holding some goddamn button down the entire fucking game. Ctrl-Alt-fuck you. Certain things need to be autonomous. I can't see correctly, my haptic feedback is a buzz, I have no situational awareness what-so-fucking-ever and if you want me to stand a fighting chance of being even vaguely proficient at your game, I have to accept that my thumb is always going to be mashing the circle down because apparently, in SotC-land, fuckin' buttons will fly away if you don't keep them pinned. Fuck THAT. So right. Off the bat, we start off with the fact that I suck at something that is zero fun. This is why I don't play tennis: The journey from "terrible" to "embarrassing" passes through a sun-blasted hellscape of "there is absolutely nothing fun about this". So what's my motivation, exactly? Oh, right. A story and narrative that - if I may - I Straight up, mofo. So I got this girl. She's dead. I suppose she's my one true love or whatever but mostly, she's dead. I haven't seen, met, or conversed with her in a not-dead state. Right. So now I'm in this giant mausoleum or some shit and I brought Artax. (brief aside: I fucking hate horses. A motorcycle, you know where you stand. Motorcycles don't second guess you. Horses? I've been on a horse twice and both times they tried to kill me. The first time, by galloping under tree limbs designed to hit me in the face. The second time, by not knowing you can't turn around over free space while walking down a cliff trail. FUCK horses). So okay. Artax and I are going to go ride across flat fucking nothing. Good thing I can hold up my sword and it'll tell me where to go. Where am I going? A cliff. So much for Artax. And, by the way, "climbing" isn't so much about executing the right moves, it's about executing the right moves with one finger keeping a button from flying away because, you know, "holding." hey hey - what's that? A giant thing. And I appear to be armed with my singing sword and a bow and arrow. Against rocks. Oh, that's right - Bitch, I've seen exactly zero game mechanics. The camera controls are whack. In order to climb onto the giant thing I need to time it precisely, because if I'm 20 fucking feet away I can apparently still get stepped on, unless I'm in the magic polygon approach blessed by the developers. It isn't consistent, by the way, and the controls are laggy. And I think I might have an idea but - and then I'm dead. So what did we learn? Well, we learned that I'm riding a fucking horse across Greenland to pick a fight with a glacier without so much as an ice pick. But apparently I didn't try hard enough. See, this is where those walls'o'text and side quests and merchants and other bullshit comes in. You know why they call them "boss battles?" 'cuz they're the finals. They're the end of the level. They're the thing you've been building up to. They are the end-of-term exam to evaluate how well you've learned the lessons of the game. You know what you've learned in SotC by the time you get to the first colossus? 1) Jumping is a bitch 2) Horses are boring and stupid 3) Climbing also sucks. Oh here, have a weapon or two. Go take on that mountain over there. FUCK THAT. We can agree about a couple things: Yes, Crime and Punishment is a bullshit book. Yes, the cutscenes in Okami are teeth-grindingly bad. That's why you keep a bottle of bourbon handy and keep your rocks unmelted. good video games? They give you a chance to drink your beer without having to pause. Shadow of the Colossus? Doesn't even give you a chance to pick your nose. You're too busy "holding." This is probably a cardinal sin to admit, but I'm going to hell anyway so what the fuck: I play games for fun. I got this close to dying in the woods about ten years back. Twenty years back, I had some lame-ass mutherfucker drop the wrong rope when we were 100 feet up and 30 feet from the top and had to free-climb up before the sun set or we'd die. I've evaluated horses IRL and I'd rather ride an ostrich. And if I'm going to be faced with a puzzle, it's either going to be fun or it's going to be outsourced to the Internet. I have nothing to prove against a bunch of Japanese wankers I'll never meet. I want to chillax on my minimum_wage-enraging couch, drink my minimum_wage-enraging single malt, watch my boojie big screen and have fun. And if I've given your game half an hour and utterly failed to find the fun, well... ...gotta say it's the game's fault.It means you suck at the game.
...the concept of holding something.
weren’t trying hard enough to find it.
What you don’t seem to realize is that every boss in Shadow of the Colossus was a puzzle for you to solve.
SHUT UP KLEINBRO IT'S LITERALLY THE BEST GAME EVER. DEADMAU5 IS THE BEST MUSICIAN EVER. THE GODZILLA MOVIE COMING OUT THIS FRIDAY IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER. WAIT, NO, OCARINA OF TIME IS THE BEST GAME EVER. EVERYTHING NEIL GAIMAN HAS WRITTEN SUCKS. WAIT, WAIT, NO, METAL GEAR SOLID IS DEFINITELY THE BEST GAME EVER. This is the most fun I've had in a while. Half an hour to wait for a game to be fun? How in God's name did you even finish Okami, that shit didn't get fun till maybe the ten hour mark. And even then they pull a fuck you, you're only halfway done moment, cause you know how great those moments are (I actually adore Okami I just like giving it and subsequently you lots of shit).
I like to think I don't use caps lock that much, but I'm probably deluding myself. Obnoxious, over-the-top bombast aside, there is an interesting point here: You were perfectly willing to put up with being instantaneously clobbered several times over before figuring out a vague approach to survival in SotC, whereas Okami struck you as uninteresting until Hour 10. On the other hand, the obvious futility of SotC was an instant turn-off for me but the tedious side quests and incessant dialog were no barrier whatsoever. Something I hoped you would notice - you can't play Wipeout without having your thumb on the throttle 100% of the time. It's just not possible to be competitive unless you're literally flooring it always. Which means if you want to look backward, you have to do a weird reach-around with your index finger. If you want to fire a weapon, you have to do a weirder reach-around with your index finger. The actual ergonomics are much worse than SotC but I just don't give a shit. And I think it's the failure rate. Let's be honest - dying in Okami is a bitch. You really have to mean it. It's one of those games where spasmodic flailing will allow you to win most battles eventually, but proper execution will win them rapidly. Likewise with Wipeout - you can bounce off the guard rails in short bus mode and clumsily fire every weapon you grab and you might just place. Employ actual strategy, though, and things start to go a lot better. SotC? If you don't know what you're doing the minute you start doing it, you're dead and you start over. Attempts at experimentation are met with retrial. There's no real "puzzling it out" from a controller perspective - do it even vaguely wrong and it's over. Another game we tried recently - Last Story for Wii. It's got a fairly complicated battle system, but it builds on you. If you don't understand how it works you can still smash things and win half the time. Over the length of the game, however, it starts to reveal the complexity and strategy necessary to really pull it off. It was dope. Compare and contrast - the PS3 I inherited came loaded up with all sorts of games (most of them terrible). We were looking for something Last Story-like and discovered that we had a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics installed. You start playing that game and you discover an 80-page tutorial on how to work the battle system and what one, two- and three(!)-key combos do what. That's as far as we got. Again, I want to play, not learn your mechanics. I should probably fix the drive on that thing. It doesn't work. As such, we've been stuck with "that which is already on the machine" and "that which can be downloaded via PSN for free" (he's got a subscription and he left it hooked up). Which means the last game I played on there was Tomb Raider. Talk about a shitshow.
Can I recommend a game to you? "death" is a concept Valve devs talked a fair bit about in the Portal commentary. They point out that players enjoy a game when failure to solve a puzzle results in sliding back a few steps, rather than: I have a friend that likes to bring up a little fact about Amensia: The Dark Descent: The developers specifically designed the game to feel like you are about to be ripped apart by the monsters at any moment. However, actual mistakes by players are tolerated to a fairly wide degree. It's way more fun in the moment of the chase than when the beast finally catches you and sends you back to the loading screen / desktop. Dark Souls gets off on deliberately ignoring this aspect of user experience, training players to be careful and learn a strategy while being stabbed, crushed, and burnt left right and center. You aren't even allowed to pause the game when you want a drink of water. SotC felt like a middle ground between the two. Yeah, a colossus can crush you in one blow using a pillar a hundred times your size. But also as you dodge the swings, your character can tolerate the earthquakes as they stomp their feet. Once you hop on board, you can cling from the hairs on their back while they try to shake you off. You can even be tossed to the ground and live to tell the tale. It's not the most polished of mechanics, but you gotta admit there's an appeal to be the ant crawling on the backs of these giants. To navigate their rocky torsos in the constant face of death. To bring them to their knees with but a puny stinger. To watch the life slip from the eyes of these elemental gods.Obnoxious, over-the-top bombast aside, there is an interesting point here: You were perfectly willing to put up with being instantaneously clobbered several times over before figuring out a vague approach to survival in SotC, whereas Okami struck you as uninteresting until Hour 10.
SotC? If you don't know what you're doing the minute you start doing it, you're dead and you start over. Attempts at experimentation are met with retrial. There's no real "puzzling it out" from a controller perspective - do it even vaguely wrong and it's over.
Your points are thorough and I actually agree with the grander point - the best games don't require mechanics to be shoved down your throat, and can be played at a higher or lower level depening on what you want. You should check out extra credit, Klein. Series of videos that discuss these sorts of things much better than I could. Might be up your alley. Also you like iitalics much more.
Aha. You know, didn't SotC have health regen? My approach to the bosses I seem to recall -- especially the one in the Coliseum -- was to hang out behind cover, run into the open, try an idea, fail, retreat grievously injured, etc. Finally I would win.I have a leather sectional that would make minimum_wage shit his britches.
Come to think of it, I did notice that the second time. however, it was in conjunction with noticing that despite the regeneration, one bad move could kill you anyway... and that in order to regenerate, you have to run around in circles while being chased by a giant monster that you can't see without turning around and getting stepped on.
Even worse than dying was stupid stuff like that one colossus on a platform above a lake. Miss the jump to the platform, fall to the lake, swim swim swim, climb again, and repeat. So much frustration.