Wherein I like to use the word wherein

I should continue to set up my shiny new Facebook account, but frankly I hate where everything is and how it works so instead I'm going to do a blog post ie this one you are reading right now.

And hello I suppose to any newcomers via Facebook. Welcome to a world where quality is an afterthought at best.

This morning I finally got around to finishing Shadow of the Colossus. For those who don't pay attention to the pretentious video game culture, SotC is a PS2 game that apparently is one of God's children and doesn't get enough praise.

Ok I'll admit that looks awesome

The player character Wanda/Wander travels to a bleak land to raise a girl from the dead. To do so he is set the task of slaying the sixteen colossi. That's about all the plot for the majority of the game.
The gameplay is fairly simple as well. You trek through a vast, almost lifeless land till you find the colossus you're after. Combat consists of you climbing on the bastards to get to their weak points and commence stabbing. If the name didn't clue you in on it, the colossus for the most point are BIG:


After you work out the trick to scaling and killing a colossus you are are sent back to the central temple where you are given your next target. And that's pretty much the entire game. The only other thing to do in the big wide world is to hunt for lizards and fruit which get really small increases to your maximum grip and health gauges respectively, but that's only there for obsessive completionists and people who want to survive on hard mode.

Minimalism is pretty much the theme of SotC. The visuals of muted, the music is absent when you are exploring the world, and the dialogue is present only briefly. Not that any of this is a bad thing. The stark simplicity gives the game a unique feel and identity.

This is why SotC is so fondly reminisced about by many critics and gamers. What I don't like is how everyone forgets the game's flaws in light of this style.

Really there is only one relevant flaw, one that makes in anything else (awkward camera and horse handling, and the occasional physics glitches) fade in comparison. When you are climbing along the colossi, they will thrash around in an attempt to throw you off. Fair enough, I'd try my hardest to get a spider that was on back off. While they are doing this, Wanda can only hold on tight and wait for the colossus to stop. This prevents you from climbing further or charging up a stab.
Where I lose my patience is that there is sometimes little if any time between thrashes. All you can do is hang on and watch your grip bar slowly decrease, which naturally causes you to fall when it reaches zero. Several of the fights were dragged out purely because I wasn't getting an opening to attack. And this soured the SotC experience for me.

I can't get excited about an epic fight to the death because I know the last five minutes will be me hanging onto a giant's head and screaming in frustration. I can't feel saddened about the dead colossi in the end credits either.

I'm not saying that the entire game is ruined, but between the flaws and the internet's over-hyping, I just can't appreciate Shadow of the Colossus as much as everyone else.