A game made entirely of breathtaking boss battles is not unwelcome, to be sure. That's unorthodox. What's more, the "bosses" and your interactions with them are almost certainly exhilarating, when Shadow's camera is accurately displaying game events. As the game continues, you become more and more familiar with the somewhat strange control scheme set before you. It isn't that they're commands you're unfamiliar with - for example, you don't press the triangle button to drink a glass of milk or something. They just never feel quite natural. It's exaggerated by a sometimes wayward camera and a willful steed. I understand why things are the way they are, size disparities are pretty much what the game is about and the fact needs to be emphasized at all times. If platforming this awkward and weird were in any other game, I wouldn't tolerate it.
In the same way that Blitz: The League is an an acerbic appraisal of the NFL, Shadow of the Colossus feels like an indictment of gaming as usual in many ways. There are elements of the story that are ambiguous from the outset, not because the story is being told poorly but because the situation you find yourself in and the powers you come into contact with are not drawn with absolute clarity. So while you go through the ordinary motions that we associate with videogames - discern objective, eradicate opposition, return for reward - you're engaged in a series of acts whose moral virtue is by no means assured. The supposed hero is assaulting majestic, sometimes docile, sometimes curious, sometimes sleeping creatures. They're almost all portrayed in a sympathetic light at some point, and it's hard not to feel disgusted at times for iterating Hollow Game Mechanic X by rote without any sense of the moral spectrum the acts inhabit.
The game needs to be seen by every conscious organism on planet Earth. And if that means that you must play it in order to do so, that is your cross to bear. I'm being facetious. Well, I'm being a little facetious. Thus far, the frustration has not been outweighed by the allure.
(CW)TB out.
Apparently many of you took it upon yourselves to send some extremely well thought out complaints to the Florida Bar. I have a feeling that might explain Jack's most recent attack on us. I want to stress that I don’t think anymore mails need to be sent to the FBA. I feel like by now they understand what the situation is.
He can send these silly letters from hell to breakfast but all they amount to his a bunch of legal dry humping. He’s not actually going to accomplish anything with these faxes and they really don’t have the intended effect on us. That is to say we are not scared. This will become another funny story for us to tell at conventions just like American Greetings, eFront or Kiwi Publishing. Again I’ll tell you guys not to worry about us. We have absolutely top notch legal representation. Should Jack actually decide to come after us we’re quite prepared. Until then he’s more than welcome to send ridiculous faxes to any uninterested third party he wants.
-Gabe out
-Gabe out
When Jack says mean things about people who play games and want to defend the passtime, he does it in one of two ways: playing the victim, he will sometimes suggest that he is not, in fact, a "pixelated pinata." I wasn't aware that idea had gained any traction. Nothing about the man strikes me as particularly festive.
The second way is to suggest that people who play games are seized by a kind of madness, driven to become "pixelantes," which I assume is like vigilante. As much as I don't want to give him credit for anything, it's kind of a fun neologism.
Anyhow, StraightLoop.com made what I think is a cool design based on it, and they're donating the proceeds generated by it directly to Child's Play. Pretty cool.
(CW)TB
