So I realise that the title of this thread will cause some readers to have instant hernias so let me elaborate a little and try to find out if I am the only one who found this game a let down.
So I've been trying to get hold of this for a year and a half now having loved every second of ICO. Due to the universal praise that gets heaped upon SOTC I presumed I was in for possibly the greatest gaming experience of my life.
Instead I spent the best part of the last two days swearing and resisting the urge to throw my ps2 controller though the TV screen.
First off... the controls. This game is all about battling giant monsters but the most part I spent my time battling a downright broken control scheme. The main character had a habit of doing exactly what i didn't want him to do. A few examples:
I lost count of the amount of times he took four or five jumps to get on the damn horse (especially annoying in the middle of a battle). In fact the collision detection was dodgy in many areas of the game, a mortal sin for a platforming based game.
Often on a ledge as I held up and jump he seemed to just meagerly kick the wall instead of jumping upwards. This was inexplicable and made no sense as it just randomly happened sometimes.
There were so many times that due to awful camera angles he would jump off in entirely the wrong direction, which really began to drive me insane after climbing all the way up the damn collosi for the 15th time. The most head meltingly annoying example of this was the moment where you have jump from a colossi's hand to the other hand...
The frustration levels reached in some of the harder boss fights was some of the worst I have ever experienced in a modern platforming based game(the geiser boss and final boss were particularly effective at sending my blood vessels to bursting point...)
The horse was just a nightmare. There was one moment when I spent five or six minutes trying to find my way out of a tiny wooded area where he would whine and refuse to move anywhere that was over 3 feet tall. Not fun.
The vague hints at your destinations also started to grate by the end. I realise part of the experience of the game is wandering the landscapes and taking it all in but that should be the players choice, not something put in as a cheap trick to elongate the gameplay.
As for the story, it seemed a real let down after the wonderfully moving story in ICO. The whole sense of co dependency and growing friendship/love between ICO and yorda was haunting and beautiful to watch and the ending was genuinely moving. IN Shadow you get a stubborn horse who gets in the way during battles and is a ***** to ride around.
It's not all bad of course, the collossi were fantastic and the atmosphere and feel of the game world were great. Finding out (finally) how to take them down was really rewarding and thier death animatons were really sad and tragic.
Sorry if this is a bit long but after spending the last two days trudging through this game I needed to rant.
Does anyone else feel that SOTC was a bit of a let down?
So I've been trying to get hold of this for a year and a half now having loved every second of ICO. Due to the universal praise that gets heaped upon SOTC I presumed I was in for possibly the greatest gaming experience of my life.
Instead I spent the best part of the last two days swearing and resisting the urge to throw my ps2 controller though the TV screen.
First off... the controls. This game is all about battling giant monsters but the most part I spent my time battling a downright broken control scheme. The main character had a habit of doing exactly what i didn't want him to do. A few examples:
I lost count of the amount of times he took four or five jumps to get on the damn horse (especially annoying in the middle of a battle). In fact the collision detection was dodgy in many areas of the game, a mortal sin for a platforming based game.
Often on a ledge as I held up and jump he seemed to just meagerly kick the wall instead of jumping upwards. This was inexplicable and made no sense as it just randomly happened sometimes.
There were so many times that due to awful camera angles he would jump off in entirely the wrong direction, which really began to drive me insane after climbing all the way up the damn collosi for the 15th time. The most head meltingly annoying example of this was the moment where you have jump from a colossi's hand to the other hand...
The frustration levels reached in some of the harder boss fights was some of the worst I have ever experienced in a modern platforming based game(the geiser boss and final boss were particularly effective at sending my blood vessels to bursting point...)
The horse was just a nightmare. There was one moment when I spent five or six minutes trying to find my way out of a tiny wooded area where he would whine and refuse to move anywhere that was over 3 feet tall. Not fun.
The vague hints at your destinations also started to grate by the end. I realise part of the experience of the game is wandering the landscapes and taking it all in but that should be the players choice, not something put in as a cheap trick to elongate the gameplay.
As for the story, it seemed a real let down after the wonderfully moving story in ICO. The whole sense of co dependency and growing friendship/love between ICO and yorda was haunting and beautiful to watch and the ending was genuinely moving. IN Shadow you get a stubborn horse who gets in the way during battles and is a ***** to ride around.
It's not all bad of course, the collossi were fantastic and the atmosphere and feel of the game world were great. Finding out (finally) how to take them down was really rewarding and thier death animatons were really sad and tragic.
Sorry if this is a bit long but after spending the last two days trudging through this game I needed to rant.
Does anyone else feel that SOTC was a bit of a let down?
