Caltrops - Gamerasutra - So I'm the last person to play and beat Shadow of the Colossus (spoilers)

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Flavio 01/28/2006, 1:47am PST

A bunch of video game developers armed with one dozen lines of dialog and aging consumer level computer hardware managed to make a Faustian tragedy approximately one billion times better than Lucasfilm's recent hundred million dollar effort.

Great boss fights. No annoying random fights of beating shadows with a stick. No pushable crates to be found. Great ending. The Ico team proves once again that they're masters of intuitive, environment based platforming puzzles, minimalism, and animated body language.

My only complaints are the third and last colossi. Like Mischief Maker, I loved the "holy shit I'm taking on a fucking god perched atop mount olympus" setup of the last colossus, only to be let down once you actually reach him. That second hand jump is an absolute bitch, and having to stab his second hand goes against the rule established throughout the entire game: stabbing a colossus in anywhere but a glowing weakspot does jack shit but piss him off and try to shake you loose. Against the last boss the exact opposite is true (but only on the second hand for no reason). Glowing weakspots had been sword territory the whole game, now I'm supposed to shoot this one with the bow when it looks like there's a chance I can make the jump over to it?

Frowny for the third colossus. I figured the solution had something to do with forcing him to smack his sword into the stone cricle. After the fifth time he did and nothing happened, I gave up and wasted time trying to climb him. By complete accident he smacked the circle again, only this time with his overhand attack. Fuck if I know how or why he went with that one, but it worked.

In a game where the solutions are amazingly intuitive if you think about them for a minute, those two were the weakest link. I had trouble with the fourth one until the voice told me to head underground. That by the way, was the only time the voice proved helpful.

Ending: Now we know why asshole priests euthanize horned youths, but I still have no clue how it ties into Ico. Where the hell does the hero turning into a baby come from? Now they're in the garden of eden I guess. Throughout the whole game I was expecting the "twist" to be that the evil shadow god technically brings your girl back to life by possessing her with the shadows and turning her into the evil queen from Ico, which probably would have fit better. Maybe I should go back and finally finish Ico.

One subtle story touch I didn't catch at first, your character's appearance gradually shifts as you kill colossi and he becomes more and more possessed by the shadow tentacles each one releases. I didn't notice it until I beat it and started a new game. A healthy complextion and dirty blonde hair shift to a pale squalor and mop of black just starting to tinge with grey by the time you reach the last boss.

Great touches getting to play a colossus at the end and also control your futile run from the suction of baby doom.

Question: How do you access time attack mode? I start a new game and hit circle in front of the temple statues (even the dead ones) and nothing happens. Did I just fuck myself saving over my cleared game data with my second hard mode run through?

Regardless, I hope they don't stick that annoying sepia film grain effect from the reminisce mode into time attack. It totally dragged down the single biggest strength of the game, the fantastic visuals.