Andy wrote:

Well, that’s me played through the HD version on PS3. I may have called my TV (or PS3, or controller, or the game, or me, I’m not quite sure) a ‘fucking cunt’ a number of times during the last colossus. I’ll put together my revised thoughts tomorrow.

If you’ll forgive my self-indulgence, I’ll start with a very brief personal history.

I bought the original SotC for PS2 at launch, in February 2006, but I think it may have been 2007 or 2008 before I completed it. It was certainly before October 2008. Anyway, Ico was, at the time SotC came out, my favourite game of all time. (I had bought it at launch, too, although it didn’t come out of the machine until it was completed.) SotC was firmly amongst my favourites as soon as I played it, even without knowing the full story; the mechanics were largely unlike anything else I’d played, and I loved the different ways of defeating the colossi. Once I completed it, I frequently put it at the top of my all-time favourites list.

Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Classics HD was released on PS3 (here) on 28 September 2011. My calendar tells me that I was away on a residential course when it was released, which is why I didn’t play it straight away. My trophy list says I downed the first colossus at 3.15am on Friday 14 October 2011; I was due to start nightshift on the Friday night, so in the early hours the night before, while trying to stay up as late as possible, I obviously decided to revisit it.

Except, that was it for almost a year, apparently, until 3.10am on Friday 17 August 2012, when I was once again staying up late before a Friday nightshift, and defeated the second colossus. Then, at 8.07pm, before heading off to work, I toppled the third. I still considered it one of my favourites, but for some reason at that time it wasn’t taking hold, because apparently that’s the last time I played it, until yesterday.

I have been catching some of the remake hype but, as I’ve forbidden myself from spending any money on videogames this year, I had to pass. When I got home from town yesterday lunchtime - a trip to town where I fought hard not to go and buy a copy - I decided I needed to scratch that itch. And boy, did I. I sat down about quarter past two, and started to play. I took a couple of breaks as the evening went on but, at half past midnight, the final colossus crumbled. (It was then 1am before the game was finished.) What an absolutely incredible game it is. But not without faults. And, at the risk of upsetting anyone, I’m going to level a few of my criticisms at it here.

It’s been said before, but the controls. Oh, man, the controls. I don’t have an issue with button placement, using triangle to jump comes as instinctively as anything else once you’re playing for any length of time, and a separate button to grasp things makes sense for the gameplay. However, various things combine to make the sometimes necessary swift movement incredibly frustrating. Directing where wander will leap from a ledge feels like a lottery. You have to let go the direction stick to make him climb the ledge. The grasp button is also the slow, careful walk button, and also part of the combination to dive-roll, except you can’t dive-roll from a slow walk. Shimmying sling a ledge, climbing up, running, then dive-rolling requires the release and retriggering of controls in an awkward, clumsy manner. And, when trying to act quickly, as you sometimes have to, the game won’t register your release of a control, nullifying subsequent activation.

When combined with a dodgy camera and some poor gameplay design, it can make for a frustrating experience. As discussed last night, the two smaller colossi, eleven and fourteen, both spam you with attacks while you’re down, or as soon as you get up. A problem they also share, due to their size, is that (partly due to unreliable controls) it is near impossible to reposition yourself once you’re on their backs. So, if you don’t land in the one position facing the one direction that doesn’t cause them to endlessly buck, then you’re not going to get them down. You won’t even have time for one short stab, let alone the five or six full force plunges you need to defeat them.

Which brings me to a fault that spans all of the colossi; they are all capable of getting stuck in a permanent loop of trying to throw you off. Holding onto some fur while you get thrown about endlessly (in a manner that would surely break every bone in your body) is not fun, it is simply tedious. Yes, you can reposition, but if a colossus is stuck in an endless loop of its wildest thrashing, good luck with that. Combined with their unnecessarily long health bars (given the potential tedium, 1-3 full strength stabs really ought to be enough, never mind five, six, yawn, seven).

Don’t get me started on climbing onto Agro. If there is a hell, mine will surely be endlessly trying to climb onto Agro when there’s any degree of urgency.

And so to the final colossus, and what a disappointment it is. Not in scale, but in execution. So much potential, squandered.


Then we get to the ending, which takes half an hour. The main reason for this, as far as I can see, is that Ueda couldn’t decide which of a few potential endings he liked, so he just puts them all in, regardless of sense or pacing. And those endings just keep coming.

BUT

Despite all of that, this still manages to be one of the best games I have played. For all the frustration, it’s one hell of an experience. It creates an atmosphere in a way that other games can only dream of. The first time you see the first three colossi, they are awe-inspiring, terrifying, intimidating. As I said last night, the thirteenth colossus is, on its own, one of the greatest sequences in all videogames. The desolate scenery, the music, the design of the colossi, all lead to a smothering melancholy that informs the gradually crushing depression of the reality of the consequences of our actions.

It may be triggered by the incident en route, but when you start your final push towards the sixteenth colossus, the rain battering your face, the perfectly mournful music kicks in, I’ve rarely felt so alone, so doomed; driven to press on but equally compelled to just lie down and let it all end now.

I won’t be leaving it so many years before I play through again.

Huzzah, it's arrived. 

I've only been waiting 12 years to play this - I'm sure it can live up to my expectations.

Just to point out, in case it's not realised: on the whole, the camera is meant to be left alone and only nudged when really necessary. It was a trend at the time, which has mostly been given up as too difficult, to try and make intelligent cameras.

I like that, it looks epic.

3 big boys down (took me a while to find the last one). I like this.

More pics please.

AJ wrote:

I like that, it looks epic.

Me too.

Well. I was on the other side I think.

JonB wrote:

Yes, just done 5. Wow.

Where was it?

4 colossi down.  I'm enjoying it, just as I did on PS2, but the inbetween bits still leave me cold and I'm with Bob on the Agro controls.  When its at its best there's not much that compares, but overall I still can't quite love it.

Wait, that's how I'd expect horse controls to work and, as far as I can remember, how every single game with horses I've played controls. How would you expect it to work?

I can't think of any game where your character rides a horse that has what I'd describe as enjoyable gee-gee controls, so it could just be me.  Red Dead Redemption was okay iirc, but it was mostly quite flat terrain.  All the 3D Zelda games get it wrong for me.  I'm not too sure how I'd like them to control, just 'not like that'.

Ah, I see what you mean.

MGSV worked the same as SOTC, IIRC. I would have been confused had it not. Excluding Halo, every vehicle I can think of controls using left is left, like Agro. Maybe we just play different games.

I don't remember anything like that, I'll have to ride into some walls when I get home to check. Or get distracted by my new Switch. Probably the latter.

JonB wrote:

As for the in between bits, I think they're really something. It's a brave move to create something so big and empty just for the feels and atmosphere.

In the original, that aspect of it didn't really click for me as PS2-rendered landscapes somehow didn't feel like quite enough, but in the remake it works for me to the point that I resent the addition of the coins and wish the lizard and bird hunting wasn't there as it all feels like boring unnecessary grind.

Sorry, I think I was talking bollocks about the birds actually.

Just tried to start up my PS3 to have a go of the old remaster. Lengthy updates! How nostalgic.