I picked up the $30 for 1 year of Playstation Plus on Amazon and redeemed my code yesterday. PS+ lets you download and play some popular games for free as long as you have an active subscription. I downloaded Shadow of the Colossus yesterday because I heard the title around the internets a lot and wanted to play a game I knew nothing about beforehand.
Minimalism is a word a lot of people have used, and I’d agree, to the point that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. You meet the first Colossus pretty early on, and with the little instruction provided, I figured out you have to climb his left heel to get onto his body, then climb up his body.
Problem is, the controls and camera are so damn unreliable, the Colossus keeps shaking me off. I finally managed to get to his back and started stabbing the hell out of him with my sword. I was drawing blood but his life meter wasn’t going down at all. After a two or three stabs, he shakes me off and I fall to the ground. I got so frustrated, I turned the thing off.
Is there some sort of instruction I’m missing? The controls aren’t tight and the button assignments aren’t very intuitive. Is it supposed to be this difficult and frustrating?
I am in the same boat with the assassin’s creed games. I’m just not used to that style of game yet and not sure what I’m “supposed” to be doing. It seems like it is setup for me to be stealthy, but I always end up just hacking and slashing, which I’m sure is not right. I guess I need to watch some walkthrough videos to get the idea and then try again.
I did the sword-raising thing and it pinpointed the Colossus’ weak points as its heel and torso. I’ve been hacking away at both parts but causing no damage.
The point is to use your tools and environment to make quick and quiet kills without being detected. However, the game never really punishes you harshly for actually getting detected, so the whole stealthy part is moot. Stealth or guns blazing, it’s really your call how you want to complete the missions.
It’s been a long time since I played. I vaguely remember encountering this problem and vaguely remember it turned out there was just some trick I wasn’t aware of, but I’m not sure what it was.
Maybe it was something like, you have to set up each hit, holding down some “preparation” button for several seconds before letting go to land the blow?
The weak point isn’t just the entire torso - you’re just whacking away at a random part and doing nothing. You have to find the sigil - which will glow and be really obvious when you use your sword. Then you stab the sigil, and THAT’S what causes the life meter to go down.
I enjoyed, although did not finish, the game, but I can say it’s not for everyone.
Doesn’t necessarily help; There’s a meter that goes down and when it runs out you are flung off.
Me? Honestly? I disliked this game a great deal. I see what they were trying to accomplish, and IMHO they made a game that was much, much longer and more annoying than it needed to be for the goal they were trying to achieve.
It doesn’t help that it’s an internet art game darling, which just makes me want to stab people.
But yes, the general rule is that you have to find a special glowing sigil, which the sword-beam will direct you generally but not very usefully towards. Then you have to hold the stab button to set up a good, hard stab (which, IIRC, cannot be done while ‘holding on’ so you have to choose your moments, and maybe not ‘charge’ your stab as long if you know he’s about to ‘shake’) and then let go to stab the glyph. Which may MOVE after you stab it, but may leave a weird almost-glyph behind to confuse you.
There are two versions of the game that are very different.
One of them is very, very forgiving about staying on a colossus. The challenge comes from figuring out what to do, not fighting the controls. This is one of the best games ever made.
The other is very, very unforgiving about staying on a colossus. You have to fight the controls every step of the way. I think I’ve read that it was intended to be this hard, but nevertheless I wouldn’t recommend it.
The US PS2 version is the nice version. The PS3 version is the mean version. I believe the EU PS2 is also the mean version, or it might be a third variant.
I had the same problem with it.
I really wanted to like this game but the lousy controls and camera angles ruined it for me. After about 4 hours of frustration I abandoned it.
I don’t know if this is your problem, but it gave me trouble when I first started playing: Most of the collossuses have a small weak spot that, if you stab it, will stun the colossus briefly, which allows you to get to the main weak spot and stab the hell out of it without getting thrown off. If you don’t stab that first weak spot (which can happen if you took an unconventional route up the colossus) it can be just about impossible to hang on.
It looks like the consensus is the NTSC PS2 version had some glitches that made it easier to conserve stamina. This was fixed in the PAL PS2 version, making it harder at some points. Then the PS3 version is much harder than the PAL PS2 version, making it annoying to play and constantly having you fall.
I suppose if you wanted it to be harder, you might prefer the PS3 version. But I think the NTSC PS2 version is by far the best (and one of my favorite games ever) because I thought the best part of the game was figuring out what to do, not flailing around, constantly falling, and fighting the controls. Maybe it was a glitch that made it easy, but whatever it was it worked. And it’s not like it was too easy, as some people already found the controls annoying back then.
When climbing on the colossi and you fall, you can hold R1 to catch yourself. So climb, hold and stab until you run out of grip power, then find a fairly level place to stand to regain stamina, and if you fall, hit R1 to catch yourself. Rinse and repeat. The game is pretty forgiving when it comes to catching yourself… you don’t have to be right next to a grippable surface; just close to one.
I’m enjoying this game a lot more now that I figured out how to work with the controls instead of against them.