Confession

[rynling]

I have been keeping this to myself for a long time, but...

I've never actually enjoyed playing Shadow of the Colossus.

The camera is a disaster, and the controls are finicky and counter-intuitive.

I also don't like Ico as much as I think I'm supposed to. The camera is a disaster, and the controls are finicky and counter-intuitive. Also, I always end up wanting to murder Yorda, whose AI feels deliberately stupid.

I will play The Last Guardian, but the reviews I've been reading all make the same complaints: the camera is a disaster, the controls are finicky and counter-intuitive, and the AI for the flying chihuahua feels deliberately stupid.

Comments

[selenicdistance]

...Disgusting. (lol j/k)

I've never played Ico. As far as I'm aware, it's one giant escort mission, which makes me want to never, ever play it. So I haven't, thus far.

I played SotC on the PS2 maybe three, four years ago. I remember being frustrated at times, primarily by weird control and camera issues, as you say. For the majority of the game, though, the game's strengths (the general atmosphere, the beauty of the game's environments, and the really fucking fantastic boss fights) pulled me through.

That said, I remember the final colossus being straight up the most unbelievably infuriating bullshit I have ever put myself through, in all my years of gaming. I wanted to crush the DVD to itty bitty bits with my bare hands and then burn them. I stayed up almost all night playing it. And it wasn't because it was challenging, but because after a game's worth of tolerating little instances where the controls didn't quite seem to perform according to my inputs, I was not even remotely prepared to be bombarded with a hailstorm of those "little instances" over the course of what should have taken maybe half an hour, but ended up taking most of my night's sleep.

Would I play it again, like if it has a PS4 port like the PS3 one I skipped? Maybe. Probably not.

I'm looking to pick up a PS4 in January, but I doubt I'll spring for The Last Guardian.

[rynling]

I never made it all the way through Shadow of the Colossus, to be honest. It wasn't fun to play, and the point of the game seemed to be that killing the colossi was not a good idea. I was like, "Okay fine, if the developers don't want me to finish this game, then I'll just play FFX again while I wait for FFXII to come out." And that's exactly what I did, lol.

I kept meaning to go back to it, but the PS4 release is streaming only. Like, if you pay for the game, you literally cannot download it onto your machine. I got about half an hour into the terrible glitches and frame rate slowdowns and screen freezes of the streaming service before returning the game for a refund.

Please don't let this dissuade you from investing in a PS4, though! Words can't do justice to how beautiful its games are, and how beautifully it handles HD media streaming services like Netflix, and how many beautiful yet inexpensive little indie games there are for the platform. They keyword for the PS4 is most definitely "beautiful."

The Last Guardian is also beautiful, but... I mean... Would it be a spoiler to say that the camera and controls are awful?