FORT90 forum

i just bought it today and im playing it for the first time. at 2 and a half hours in i already killed four of them. its a beautiful,beautiful game but most of the time it isnt that challenging. another thing i dont really like is that you return to the castle after each kill. i was kind of hoping for epic miles of horseback riding.(though there is plenty of that)


a question: i just killed the 4th one and when i returned to the main castle(church?) there were four black shadow guys standing over me. and i freeing trapped souls or something or are those guys pissed at me or something?

Shadow of the Colossus is still one of the best damn games ever to come out in the past five years, and easily one of the crown jewels of the PS2's legacy, right alongside Persona 4. It's also the only real reason why I want to get the PS3, I mean it's follow-up (along with MGS4).

All will be explained narrative-wise, and you can pretty guess where things are going around the 70% mark, yet it's still an awesome pay-off. Then there's a big shock near the end that will make you understand why I roll my eyes whenever they say they were moved by the death of that chick in Final Fantasy 7.

My fave Colossi are numbers 2, 3, and especially 5, but all of them are great (I can't remember the rest, because I always replay the game up till 5 and move on to other stuff).

And I personally like having to go back to the castle each time, mostly because you're generally going down a different path each time, for the most part.

Aerith made me cry(when I was in middle school.)

Have you played Ico? It doesn't have you taking down gigantic monster boss level things, but it has the same aesthetic, but it's a little more powerful.

i remember playing the demo for two minutes a circuit city years ago.


im on the eight one right now and its a pain in the ass

im at the tenth one right now. it some kind of sandsnake-thing.


i just cant beat this fucker, first time in this game ive given up,will try again tomorrow

Some of the ones that come later just kind of hope you remember how you beat some of the earlier ones. Only with new twists.

If you've gotten this far, the rest of the game isn't so bad.

i got my brother to play up to the fifth one,and he still hates it. went back to RE4

the tenth one is just too hard. i know i have to run around with the horse and wait untill his eyes show up and shoot them with the arrow then get on his back,but ive been only able to do that once everytime i slow down a bit so he can get close he just rams me off my horse.

I definitely remember that one and it being very hard. Did you google it to see if there's a trick to it?

i read at least three diffrent guides at gamefaqs and they all basically say do the same thing that ive been trying to do

Sounds like you just need to man up then.

fuckin' hipster

ok the tenth one is dead. finally.

That's what I thought.

yeah i just got him and the 11th too which i thought was going to take all night because if you miss landing on his back then its forever of getting knocked around the moment you stand

A lot of them at this stage are pretty much just building up to the last one. The only thing difficult about the last is... getting to him.

i fucking hate the last boss. i hate climbing his gay skirt. i hate the changing of hands. and i hate the shitty camera during said change of hands. fuck this guys seriously

Iunno, I didn't find him too difficult. But, a lot of people had problems with him in general.

Word. Last boss sucks.

took a break from the game today and let my brother play. he killed up to the eiight one and stopped.


i remember someone saying just watching the game is amazing but i found it dull.

man just beat it, it's a breeze.  stab that motherfucker in his stupid fucking hands.

this boss isnt difficult or anythng its just unplayable. everytime i get on his first hand and stab him the wrist just twists and turns,as does the camera, and any sense of direction that i have of up left right or down just gets fucking garbled and mixed around. and im lucky if i get to the second fucking hand.

then my grip goes out.


then i fall.



then its all the way back up the fucking skirt to do it all over again.

oke he's dead now. somehow i couldnt get him to bring his hand to his shoulder last time

final thoughts:this game was a bit melodramatic. the score is great but after halfway through the game with the big dramatic music that comes crashing in eveytime i fight a colossi i just rolled my eyes. apparently i was supposed tp feel bad for killing the colossi but i felt nothing. i didnt even feel bad for the horse when SPOILER: he falls off the cliff, because i had a feeling he would return.(and he did) maybe i would havee felt something more for the horse if he did cute things at times. or i could have been able to feed him carrots or something.

also: bloom lighting is shit. the game is too long (yes! long!) and the final boss was near unplayable at times. and i think i should have picked up MGS3 for five dollars cheaper.


otherwise it was a good game.

comments:

1) fuck you the horse rocks.  BUT i agree it's sort of a cop out that he comes back

2) didn't have many camera issues with the final boss, but these things happen

3) the whole idea that one is "supposed to feel bad" for killing the colossi, as far as i can remember, is an idea propagated in the first few pages of a Select Button thread way back when.  For the most part, the idea/argument becomes pretty invalid after the first few, especially considering that many of them begin attacking you on site.  maybe for some of the colossi that act more like animals and have no interest in you, sure, feel bad a little.

oh ive got nothing against the horse. i just didnt feel bad about his fall as maybe i shoud have.

the realistic movement of the horse actually took me out of it more than in. because looking at him its obvious they did motion capture,and i just cant help but laugh at the though of a bunch of guys trying to get an uncooperative horse into black latex and attach those ping pong ball things all over his body. go ahead, just imagine a horse biting the ping pongs off his back and not laugh. like that one movie (i forget which one) where the guy keep putting a saddle on the horse and the horse keeps pulling it off because he's doing it wrong.


what im trying to say is that it does take a little imagination to fully immerse yourself into this world but unfortunately for me it just goes into another direction i guess.

shanghai noon.


i think it was shanghai noon

Count me in ass a person who also loved the horse and was taken aback when he bit it near the end, even though looking back, it was such a cheap story device.

And SoTC is still one of my favorite games ever, but mostly because I've mostly forgotten about that lame last boss battle. Which sounds awesome on paper, but yeah, the actual method of doing away with the thing really sucks. But again, Colossi #2, #3, and #5 more than make up for it.


Well, now that those words have finally been uttered (thanks Joe), I can finally ask, and also change the subject: given their penchant for "lonely games", are the people there jacking off to Flower, Sun, and Rain? Since that's about as lonely a game as I've played. But it's actually good... again, heads and tails above Killer 7.

You should move on to Ico now.

if i can find a dirt cheap copy

that probably won't be too hard.

and re: Matt.  uhh, honestly, i think i saw like 2 people mention Flower, Sun and Rain.  there wasn't too much widespread discussion about it for whatever reason (blame the economy?).

mainly i think it was ignored because the general consensus is that the game is "ok" and could probably be skipped.

i don't even own it myself yet.  i downloaded the ROM but i'm at a part in the beginning that requires the manual, so i dunno.  haven't bothered looking it up yet.

The manual you speak of is the guidbook that you get in game from the hotel manager. Believe it or not, it contains the answers for ALL of the puzzles, as silly as it sounds.

Meanwhile, it was actually printed verbatim in Japan, which I'm desperate to get my hands on, which I guess shows how much of a fan of the game I've become.

oh.  hah!  i figured it was like a classic copy-protection plan.  figures with Suda.

anway, i'll start playing it again soon.  haven't really gotten into the core gameplay, but it seems interesting enough.

ok ive been thinking about it for the past few days and i realize now what the problem with the game is: there's no sense of humor.


and here i am getting back to the horse again, its a goddamn horse of course! an animal. and animals can be funny as hell. and the horse never did anything funny. i mean you go to a party or some other social function, you meet some new people, you bond over some jokes. hell even in some war movies therre's always a scene where the soldiers have some downtime and maybe something funny happens,or they tell a funny story. and here i am with this horse for eight hours or so and nothing happens. he doesnt do anything, he doesnt tell a joke, i never really get to know the guy.


and this effects the whole of the game, there are no moments to break the tension, so you just get all this sweeping, swelling music all over the place for eight hours and upmost seriousness thats overwhelming,dulling,eye-roll inducing etc. maybe this works for if youre some comic book dork or japanophile something but im not that guy.


so yeah,this game could have used some humor. though comedy right now in history really sucks anyway but thats another argument that just boils down to "pot ruins everything".

Yeah, I don't think the people writing these scripts are that good that they're able to carefully break the tension with a little bit of humor. You don't usually see games with such sensibility. Then again, I also think they are really trying to just beat you over the head with this emotional aesthetic, and it's short enough that I think it sort of works.

Personally, I think most attempts by games at being funny fall flat on their faces, so the lack of humor in SoTC is totally fine.

Then again, and I hate go there, but I think it's mostly a cultural thing: if a Japanese game tries to be funny, provided that game is skewed to an older audience, the jokes are a bit more subdued and subtle. Whereas games aimed at kids will naturally have jokes aimed at their level.

Meanwhile, American games that try to be funny also try to be edgy, and it just doesn't work. Rockstar stuff immediately comes to mind, naturally. Complained about it on my site already, and I'll do it again here; played Bully recently and was put off by the fact that it was so mean-spirited. I guess the Housers really hate fat girls or something.

well im not saying there should be over the top humor or anything im just saying there should have been more stuff the horse could have been doing to make him more amusing,being that he is the only other thing that i truly interact with most of the time. otherrwise...he's just a horse.


sort of, yeah. but i still thought it was maybe 2 hours too long