Shadow of the Colossus is Frustrating, But Amazing

Shadow of the Colossus was a bit of a love-hate experience for me personally, but overall, I quite loved playing through it. Mostly some amazing boss fights, with innovative and great mechanics, and breathtaking setpieces. In terms of complaints though, some of the mechanics frustrated me to no end. Besides the inherent gameplay jank that comes with the game’s age (I can excuse this), I disliked how little the game hardly conveyed information to you on the things you need to do.

I feel a bit ashamed to admit I needed to look up guides to a few of the bosses, but seriously, some of these mechanics I never would have guessed unless I was directly told of them. It made progression sometimes very frustrating. I’m not really talking about navigation and exploration either, those were some of my favorite parts of the game. Most of my complaints lie in the bosses. Besides those complaints, as I don’t really feel like getting super specific, when the bosses mechanically clicked, coming out on top at the end of a fight really did feel incredible. It felt triumphant in a way I haven’t gotten from a game in a hot minute.

On another note though, it’s really cool to think about how influential this game went on to be in the years following its release. Much of said influence went into several of my favorite games ever. Breath of the Wild of course, but besides the obvious, climbing the colossi and following set-out mechanics to come out on top, I was even reminded of my time playing things like Destiny, fighting raid bosses through epic setpieces I still think about almost three years since quitting the game. The comparison may be a bit out there, but it’s still a connection I think holds at least some merit.

To put my feelings about this game in more general terms, this is one of those touchstone-type games that people have and will continue to look back on as the start of so many exciting things in the medium. Now that I’ve played the game, I look at my catalog of everything I played and wonder how many of them wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for what this game did. Very happy I found a copy and got around to playing it. And that ending was spectacular.

I also posted this review on my Backloggd account. If you want to see the games I’ve played, am currently playing, or plan to play at some point in time, along with some smaller-scale ramblings and thoughts on things, feel free to follow me there. Thanks for reading 🙂

My Regretful Reunion with Sonic Rush

Sonic Rush was a childhood favorite of mine, one that I hadn’t played since I was maybe 10 years old. In all honesty, it maybe should’ve stayed that way. For years, I had been hailing this as easily being the best Sonic game, with such a focus on pure speed, an engaging enough story, and the soundtrack people still bring up pretty regularly for how hard it bangs, it was the full package of what I thought a Sonic game should be.

With that, during my most recent winter break, I had finally gotten DS emulation running on my 3DS, and Sonic Rush was the first game I wanted to play, as I never did end up finishing it during my childhood (and I couldn’t really think of any other DS games I wanted to play).

It was a smooth start, but as I played, some of the cracks (or holes, if you will) started to show, and I started to grow more and more frustrated with many of the design choices made throughout. Certain parts of this game had me feeling like I was playing some NES platformer due to how unfair things were. I felt like the AVGN as I was quite literally yelling out, “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??” in response to dying for the 10th time in a row to a bottomless pit that I had no chance of predicting or reacting to. It just really pissed me off. The dissonance of having “rush” in your game’s title, then actively discouraging speeding through levels by placing so many instakills everywhere, I’m just left to wonder, why are the developers punishing you for following their own design philosophy?

And to follow that up, the frustrating thing is there are a handful of sections within the levels that have you running at Mach speeds for extended periods, combing endlessly through enemies with that super satisfying combo sound ringing in your ears, only to grind to a halt because they introduced a new stage-specific gimmick mechanic that kills you if you don’t get it right instantly. Every time they’d pull this, it practically made me want to quit the game right then and there. It’s again just a case of “What were they thinking?”

This isn’t even mentioning the boss fights. Others have talked about it before and I don’t really care enough to say what’s already been said, so I won’t. The exception is that final boss fight though. I seriously dropped the game for two months because of this shit man. I was honestly just tired of seeing Sonic Rush on my “currently playing” list so I decided to come back and downgrade the difficulty just so I could check it off the list. Didn’t regret it in the slightest. I had no interest in trying to beat it legit, and it was either downgrade the difficulty or I drop the game entirely lmao. The true final boss wasn’t any better, either. So glad I didn’t have to deal with that thing on its normal difficulty. I’d honestly rather do ANYTHING else with my time.

All in all, I did come away from a childhood favorite with a bit of a sour taste, but I am in a way happy I came back and experienced it again with a more informed lens. I’m still glad the game exists and it still holds a special place in my heart for how much I loved it back then, but by god, I’m never playing it again.

I also posted this review on my Backloggd account. If you want to see the games I’ve played, am currently playing, or plan to play at some point in time, along with some smaller-scale ramblings and thoughts on things, feel free to follow me there. Thanks for reading 🙂