Shadow of the Colossus

[The Drunken Samurai]

if i can find a dirt cheap copy

[isfet]

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.

[FortNinety]

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.

[isfet]

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.

[The Drunken Samurai]

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".

[dmauro]

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.

[FortNinety]

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.

[The Drunken Samurai]

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.

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.

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