Economy of Effort

A couple of nights ago, I finally completed Shadow of the Colossus. As a big fan of Ico, I was both thrilled and somewhat disappointed with this title.

The game is beautiful, and the gameplay is inventive and original. Some of the sequences in the game are extremely memorable, and the whole game was rarely boring. It’s a game that any “real” gamer needs to play, in my opinion. Yet, despite all of that, I think the final product must remain squarely in “B” territory.

My biggest complaint, bar none, is with the game control. In particular, riding the horse was an unnecessary pain in the ass. For starters, the horse sometimes just felt like slowing down for the hell of it. I never knew if I was supposed to hold “X” or just keep pounding it until I cracked the horse’s ribs. Especially in tight areas, I had to beat the horse into glue before he’d finally start moving right. Worse, during colossus battle sequences, he would always seem to find something to run into, instead of intelligently maneuvering around an obstacle and continuing on our way. If that wasn’t enough, when trying to shoot the lizards at the save shrines, he would come running into my way – because heaven forbid I was a few steps away from the damn thing.

The controls off the horse, however, were often annoying too. Some moves – like jumping from one ledge to another – failed to take camera orientation into consideration, so while you think you’re supposed to hold the stick in the direction you want to jump (based on the orientation of what you see on the screen), you really have to hold the stick straight down, no matter what. Of course, if you get it wrong, your character falls to his death. Wonderful. There were a lot of little annoying things like that. There were too many issues that kept me from getting swept up in the grandeur of the game.

I never had that problem with Ico. Sure, Ico wasn’t perfect in those regards either, but there wasn’t anything that kept me from just buying into the game world.

In the end, I see this game as being like a movie that’s extremely innovative and a testament to the craft, but isn’t necessarily the most enjoyable thing to watch. Shadow of the Colossus is plenty fun, but temper expectations somewhat before jumping in.

Some of you that read this site are already well aware of the Gamers With Jobs website. For those that aren’t, it’s the place to go for a live, vibrant community of intelligent gamers. Thanks to very strict (by Internet standards) behavior control, the only people that remain on the site are those that can exhibit a basic level of intellect and good behavior. It’s the kind of place that shouldn’t be rare on the Internet, but is.

What has this to do with me? Well, the GWJ crew recently created an additional website. This one is a “news blog” – intelligent gaming news with a little blog activity from the writers thrown in. This site is called the Gamers With Jobs Press Pass, and a couple of weeks ago, I joined the crew of writers. It’s a great source for interesting gaming news, without a bunch of rumor mongering or idle speculation. I’m excited to be a part of it, and the activity in recent days has made me start to believe that it will eventually grow quite an audience with its level of discourse and character.

If you’re a gamer, give the site a look. Bookmark it or throw the RSS feed to your aggregator. And if you’re interested in gaming forums without the idiocy, visit the main GWJ site.

Apologies if this post sounds an awful lot like an advertisement.