I began my quest to find the 13th Colossus a bit differently this time around. I was treated to a
Unfortunately, that bit of randomness was the only thing different this time around. I had to follow the exact same path to #13 as I did to one of the previous Colossi. (The bearded giant guy I think?) Only this time the journey was shorter because instead of navigating some cool ruins, I just had to stand on some random platform for... no real reason, actually. The game just commanded it so.
And then I saw the Colossus. Japan, remember what I told you during the Colossus #10 fight? That still applies here. I don’t care how much it is clearly Moldorm from Zelda! SAND IS NOT A LIQUID!
At first I thought this Colossus was actually pretty cool. (Well, after I got over my urge to equip my Giant’s Mask, that is.) But that quickly changed. The first problem was a rather common problem one often runs into in puzzle games: The solution was incredibly obvious, but getting to that solution was a chore. If this was a puzzle game, I’d be chastising it for its poor puzzle construction and for forcing the player to work against the game’s mechanics in order to tell it what he or she already knows needs to happen. But this isn’t a puzzle game, so I’ll instead chastise it for behaving like a crappy puzzle game.
But I eventually fought the game long enough for it to take pity on me and actually let me do what I was trying to do. And then I entered a whole new world of hatred. See, this Colossus has three weak points, each one positioned behind a kind of sideways dorsal fin on its back. You’d think the challenge here would be to reach all three of them without letting the Colossus rock you off its back or getting swept off by the wind. But right about here is where the game once again screams “FUCK YOOOUUU” in the player’s face, kicks him or her in the shin, and runs away giggling. No, see, the challenge here is to shoot the three sacks on the Colossus’ belly, climb up its fins (without getting dipped into the sand and getting knocked off, mind you), jump onto its back, find a weak point, stab it twice, and then return to the beginning of the fight. After you deplete a weak point, you are forced off of the Colossus as it burrows back into the sand.
A smart player would quickly figure out that jumping onto its back as it emerges from the sand would be ideal, cutting out most all of the busywork and speeding up the fight, with the nice side effect of making the fight all around more epic and enjoyable. In this case, being a smart player sucks, because you can’t do that. Trying to do so gets you repelled by some kind of anti-intelligence deflector shield. But let’s say that this smart player tries to stab out two weak points before the Colossus burrows back into the sand. Well, you can’t do that either. If you try, the Colossus’ dorsal fin things lower and cover up the weak points, SPECIFICALLY TO DISALLOW YOU FROM SPEEDING UP THE FIGHT.
That means that you have to do the ENTIRE process of getting onto its back AT LEAST three times. And trust me, it’ll be more, because its fins are all sorts of messed up. You can clearly jump up the series of ridges to the body, but its also incredibly easy to end up grabbing the edge, where you can’t do anything but loop endlessly in your “oh no I’m faltering” animation. At one point I ended up hanging down from the bottom of the fin, with no idea how I even got there. Oh, and did I mention that you have to use the horse again? ‘Cause you do. And the Colossus just loves to fly around rocks and hills that make your horse freak out or just stop altogether.
I’m starting to notice a new trend emerging. These notes have stopped being about insightful observations about the underlying “plot” of the game and how it is developing, and is instead just a laundry list of things that piss me off. Did the game just stop being deep and thought-provoking, or is my annoyance just blinding me to things that I should be seeing? Is being blinded by fatigue and rage a part of the experience, to reflect Boy’s obvious, yet slow corruption? I didn’t even notice anything bad was happening to him until very recently, when it was too late to stop or do anything about it. I guess you could say that I was too focused on my goal to stop and worry about myself and my condition. Maybe I’m horribly disconnected from the game. Or maybe I’m more deeply woven into its lore than I truly realize...
Colossus 14
I would have thought that this Colossus was cool, if it had shown up half a game ago. Now, I just don’t know what to think.
This was mostly a puzzle fight, like the bull. The Colossus was also rather small, like the bull. But unlike the bull, this fight had one glaring flaw: it made no sense at all. The entire fight is just enticing the Colossus to knock over some pillars, with the ultimate goal of dropping a ceiling on it to break off its armor. But there’s no indication that this is whats happening for quite a while. You see a broken pillar at the start, and a standing pillar a bit ahead. Gameplay wise, it is instantly apparent what you must do. But realistically, this doesn’t work at all. What guarantee do you have that the pillars will even fall the way you want them to? Every single one just happens to fall EXACTLY where you need it to to reach the next set of platforms. Realistically, if just one of them fell differently, Boy would be completely fucked.
If I still cared, I may have said that it was possible that the Colossus was intentionally knocking them in the proper directions. I may have used this idea to strengthen my theory that the Colossi want you to kill them. But even so, the Colossus would have to be extremely lucky to make them fall in just the right way.
Anyway, I broke its delicious candy coating and chomped away at the tasty chocolate within. Rather easily, actually. The Colossus made almost no effort to remove me from its back. At least the bull tried to buck me off. This thing just kinda weakly flailed. Boy didn’t even stagger as he stabbed away.
Colossus 15
I wish the rest of the game was more like this fight. It took ingenuity, pattern recognition, and some courage to bring down this Colossus, and it was actually a rather neat fight. Falling meant climbing again, but the system used here made the climbing bits faster and easier on repeat attempts, as opposed to the frustration of having to do the exact same thing over and over and over again in full. The sword’s ability to find weak points was actually useful here for the first time in a WHILE, and for the first time since near the beginning of the game, I felt accomplished for killing this beast. I’d say that this fills me with hope for the rest of the game, but there’s only one Colossus left, so...
Oh, I didn’t talk about the journey this time, did I? Turns out that big awesome castle I found a while back was for this guy, not the final Colossus. It lead into a big open area that looked like it was, at one point, a city. But all that was left was the walls and small house foundations embedded into the ground. As soon as I saw those, I knew exactly what to expect.
Huh. Look at me, discussing the scenery. I haven’t done that seriously in a while, either. I guess after lots of fights in lakes and deserts and random ruins, actually seeing some meaningful environments leaves a bigger impression on you.
So this leg of the journey was a fair bit better than what I’ve been dealing with for a while. Can the final battle keep up this small bit of momentum? Only one way to find out...
Colossus 16
No, not really.
The search for the final Colossus was rather straight forward. The only really notable thing was something full of both spoilers and the stench of pointlessness, only there to punch the player in the face. (Oh, and then immediately undo it in the ending cutscene.)
But then I found the Colossus. It took a bit of climbing, but there it was, in the distance, perched atop a tall tower. From there it pelted me with fireballs, forcing me to do some rather fun dodging and running through tunnels, diving between points of cover. Sadly for me, this was the only fun part about this fight.
I eventually made it to the hem of the Colossus’ skirt. I guess the Colossus designers wanted to end with a bang and make something actually colossal. After climbing it a bit, it came time to work my way up to its head. And how does that happen? By making the player use the worst mechanics in the game! Yes, in order to scale the beast, you have to use all of your least favorite tricks: Jumping from a hanging position, fighting the camera, and just some good old fashioned “oh how I hope it lets me walk here instead of making me slide off like its a slope” platforming. And as a bonus, you also get to slowly figure out some stupid shit, like how stabbing the hand you’re clinging to will make the Colossus stop and hold still for you, instead of the much more expected reaction of it trying to shake you off like every other Colossus in the game does.
And then you make it up to its head and get to spend most of your time up there yelling at Boy to stop flopping around like a Magikarp and just fuckin’ stab the thing already. Get lanced by black smoke, fade to black, roll ending sequence. Yippee.
Ending Sequence
Yeah, you should probably skip this part if you’ve been enjoying the fact that I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers so far. Spoiler-free discussion will resume in the next segment.
So those random horse-riding guys show up and freak out a bit. Then Boy has his first delayed temple entrance for no reason other than to make it more suspenseful. Lead Horse Guy calls you a jackass and it turns out that God was actually just some asshole demon that was broken into 16 pieces. (Get it? GET IT?!) The jerk doesn’t even revive Girl like he promised. What an ass! Then Boy turns into Assgod and you get to slap some soldiers around for a bit until they seal you away.
I actually thought this part was pretty cool. The twist may not have been all that surprising, but being put in the Colossi’s point of view for this small segment was a bit haunting. What does this imply? Were the 16 Colossi just some guys like you once upon a time, trying to revive their lost loved ones? Or is something bigger at work here?
Anyway, Boy/Assgod gets sealed away, and the Random Horse Guys all leave and destroy the bridge behind them, thus sealing off the land forever. (Until some other guys show up and, I dunno, build a new bridge, or maybe a ladder or something.) But oh no, here come more twists! Turns out Girl is alive again after all! And so is Horse! Even Boy made it out ok! He’s a horned baby now for some reason, but he’s still alive and healthy! Then our new happy family walks up to the top of the temple and hangs out with some deer and birds. Hooray pointless happy ending fodder! You have successfully destroyed any credibility and impact the ending could have had!
Final Thoughts
It's been a couple days since I finished the game, and I have allowed all my ill feelings filter out of my system, leaving me in as much of a neutral state of mind as I can be. So what do I think of Shadow of the Colossus?
It's a very nice piece of art. It sets itself up like any other game, but then immediately challenges the player and makes him or her actually sit and think about what he or she is doing. Killing a Colossus feels innately wrong, and yet it is your only goal, and the entire reason Boy is there. To stop means to stop playing the game altogether. It looks very nice, even if it does have some MASSIVE framerate issues, and the environment does a good job of reflecting the idea of the game. A lot of fun can be had in speculating why the Colossi behave the way they do and in figuring out what is actually happening behind the scenes. The story is minimalist, and allows the player to fill in the many, many gaps on his or her own, leading to a very personalized story, unique to every player. Is Girl Boy's sister? His lover? A childhood friend? Is Boy even male? I noticed that Boy's voice and appearance are both highly androgynous, so some players may even view him as a female, which adds a whole new layer of complexity to what the story could become.
But as a game...
The controls are horrendous. I get that Boy was supposed to move and react to things realistically, but that never ever translates well to a game. If I push the jump button, I want my character to jump, damnit. I don't want him to falter around and fall over, and I don't want him to stumble around drunkenly when I'm trying to make him stab something. It does nothing but add frustration into the game. And that horse... uuuugh. Again, I appreciate the effort in making it behave realistically, but no actual horse could ever be that stupid. Not only that, but it felt sluggish. Sluggish is the last word anyone would ever use to describe a horse. Some of the Colossus fights were great, but a lot of them were just so blatantly designed to be video game abstractions. You are taught early on to just do what feels natural to take down the Colossi, but then the game begins actively stopping you from doing so, forcing you to play by its own rules and to follow its own script. Navigating the fields is nice at first, but gets old fast once you start following the same trail to several different Colossi. I can't even count how many times I had to cross that one land bridge!
So what we have here is a game that is great to experience, but awful to actually play. The story and mood are subtle, but moving, but it's hard to enjoy it under the thick layer of grime and broken gameplay mechanics. I wish I had just watched a Let's Play of this game. I'm sure I would have enjoyed this a whole lot more if I got to just watch everything happen, instead of yelling angrily as the game does the opposite of what my controller told it to do. Notice how each part of this journal has bigger and bigger gaps in the post date? That's mostly because I repeatedly just wanted to quit playing, and couldn't bring myself to do that next fight. The only thing that kept me going was this very journal itself.
So I guess I should thank you all, loyal readers. The game drove me a bit crazy, but I'm still glad I finished it, and I'm glad I did this journal. This was a very interesting experience, and I would love to do it again. So keep an eye over here in the future, if you enjoyed reading this! It's highly likely that I will do another journal sometime soon...
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