(no subject)

[prog]

I let myself be talked into buying Shadow of the Colossus a couple of days ago, and I think this may have been a mistake. It was very expensive and I am not convinced that I am enjoying myself. It's damn hard -- only experienced gamers are going to get past the very first stage -- and very time-consuming. After an hour of play this morning I've got the current guy I'm fighting down to maybe two-thirds of his hit points.

The big timesink is that making one slip-up with the controls can result in losing several real-time minutes of progress. This fills me with hate. Seriously, I'm sometimes standing in front of my screen, loudly cursing out every character on it, because I mischorded the buttons in such a way that my guy fell off the damn colossus's back once again, forcing me to start the whole climb over from the beginning. I curse out the colossus, I curse out my guy, I curse out my guy's horse. It's pretty bad. I fear for the health of my one last working controller.

You know what would have been a vast improvement on the game? Removing the grip meter (which gives you a time limit for how long your guy can hang precariously, in a game that's all about hanging precariously). Seriously. Ico didn't need no grip meter, and the protagonist here is a youth in his prime, not a little boy... was it the horns? I don't know.

Comments

[mangosteen]

The big timesink is that making one slip-up with the controls can result in losing several real-time minutes of progress.

Isn't that a flagrant violation of one of the cardinal rules of game design?

I always thought of it as "Rayman Syndrome", myself.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Modern game design, yes. Making me solve the same challenge twice makes me spit acid. However, I found that the setback wasn't nearly as bad a I thought, once I figure out what I was actually supposed to do; see next post.

Cautiously enjoying this game. It's got an awful lot of oh-my-gord cool in it.