Shadow of the Colossus & Ico

[DANGERMAN]

I'm playing through Shadow of the Colossus while I'm between games, note I'm not playing through Ico because I don't think it's very good. The shadows snatching Ico away (or whatever she's called) gets actively gets in the way of your goal, which is the point of them, but it doesn't make things any more fun.

The HD'ed up graphics do look a lot better but they don't fix everything. You still clip through things, textures and landscape still loads in, but it's impressive how much detail was in the ps2 version that we just couldn't see. The chief thing the graphics have sorted out is the framerate which varied from an annoyance to a real problem, now it runs nice and solid.

Going back what I hadn't really anticipated was having issues with the controls, but some of it has now become slightly counter-intuitive. For example, pulling yourself up to a ledge needs you to press the jump button, not up, same with correcting your position, less seems to be more. What it means is sometimes climbing goes really smoothly, sometimes it's an absolute ball ache. I struggled so much on the first colossus that I assumed I'd forgot the controls, but then all of a sudden I could just climb freely.

I'm getting through it quicker than I expected, the game clock had me at less than 2 hours and I've beat 4 colossi, but I guess I've still got vague memories of how to beat them

[DANGERMAN]

I found parts of this frustrating, and possibly due to familiarity it's not as magical as it was first time around. I had to use guides to get me started on a couple of colossus, and tbh without them I might have decided it wasn't worth it.

But then as the credits started to roll and I was about to post in the Completed Games Thread I just realised that it's still fucking incredible. As it ended I felt, well something, which is a rarity when you complete a game. Still a brilliant, special game

[radiofloyd]

Playing Ico for the first time (on a PS2 on an sdtv). Wow, I can see how it became an instant classic. Beautiful game. I don't remember the game being compared to Zelda in reviews but it seems very Zelda-like to me (probably no coincidence that it also reminds me of Dark Souls).

Pumped up to play through this and SotC now.

[radiofloyd]

On 1/9/2013 at 0:17 AM, radiofloyd said:

Playing Ico for the first time (on a PS2 on an sdtv). Wow, I can see how it became an instant classic. Beautiful game. I don't remember the game being compared to Zelda in reviews but it seems very Zelda-like to me (probably no coincidence that it also reminds me of Dark Souls).

Pumped up to play through this and SotC now.

 

Three years later...  I want to make some headway in my PS2/Gamecube backlog before I got to Japan. So I booted this up. My file is in the graveyard area. I made about two hours of progress, playing through the graveyard area, the windmill area and a few more areas. Now I'm in the East Arena. This game is brilliant.

[radiofloyd]

Up to around 6 or 7 hours now and I've just reached the Water Tower save point (the area after the waterfall and the gondola). I love this game, it's freaking magnificent isn't it?

[radiofloyd]

Finished Ico. Proper old school ending where you couldn't save for about 2 hours and it ended with a shitty boss fight.

 

But overall, I loved it. It was so good. It puts 90% of other games to shame. I love how closely the ending matched up with the beginning of the game. And that scene after the credits was the icing on the cake. I can't imagine 12 year old me getting anything out of this game back in 2002, but playing it now, I loved it.

 

Gonna start Shadow of the Colossus tonight!

[radiofloyd]

Played 90 minutes of SotC so far and I've defeated the first three enemies. Your fingers would be a bit knackered after playing this game... Love it so far. Interesting to see which game I prefer at the end.