I’m not sure if it’s because I am playing the PS3 version but I have been really irritated with the controls of Shadow of the Colossus. I kept running into situations where I was doing things like jumping over Agro instead of getting on them and the Wander’s arms twitching and moving me slightly to the left when I try to jump to a higher ledge. The controls don’t seem as smooth or as snappy as they should be considering it’s the core element of the game. I feel like there are games that came out around the same time (Shadow of the Colossus came out in 2005/2006) that had better climbing/jumping mechanics.
I also had issues with the bull-type colossi that knock you down. By the time the Wander decided to get up and the animation finished the colossus was already about to attack again. Supposedly you can wiggle the left stick and button mash to speed this up but I really didn’t notice a big enough difference. Rolling out of the way rarely seemed to help.
I don’t know how much of this is me needing to “get good” but it really prevented me from enjoying the game. I feel like I’d probably recommend watching a boss battle compilation than actually playing the game.
Mostly venting here but what did you think of Shadow of the Colossus? Do the PS2 or PS4 versions feel better than the PS3 version?
I had the same experience with the game. It has a really cool world and story but as I finished the game, because I guess I wanted to be able to say I’ve finished one of the classics, I felt mostly just annoyed. There were moments where the game felt truly magical but the controls were constantly stopping me from getting immersed. It’s one of those unfortunate instances where everything else is great but it fails for me in the most important aspect of a game which is the gameplay.
Haven’t played the PS3 or PS4 version but I still have and play the original PS2 version on my PS2 and the controls are pretty much in line with most modern 3rd person adventure games. The game is just hard, though. It’s had that Dark Souls difficulty long before Dark Souls was a thing. Stick wiggles help; but only by a small window of time.
I don’t think it’s a difficulty thing. There’s a difference between losing, or in this case falling, and knowing you made a mistake or you weren’t fast enough. This felt like the game wasn’t responding correctly or consistently to my inputs.
I used the example of getting on Agro in my post. That’s not a difficulty thing. That’s me feeling when I go up to my horse I should be able to get on it easily and smoothly. Not position myself at a specific angle within a close distance. Think about how fluid and snappy it feels getting on a horse is in Red Dead Redemption for example.
At least in Dark Souls you can frequently recover and don’t end up stun-locked and have to wait until you die. Three bull-type colossus I mentioned you can rarely roll out of the way in time.
It’s wild to me that so many people have trouble with that game. It controls exactly like ICO. Maybe I was just used to it when SoC came out?
Maybe it’s because they played Shadow of the Colossus and not ICO?
I feel like the former has a bigger following than the latter. I imagine a lot of people going back and playing Shadow of the Colossus are either doing it because they are going back and playing cult classics or because it was remastered for the PS4. ICO wasn’t remastered outside of the PS3 version.
After my experience I probably won’t play ICO.
