I played most of portal 2 in one sitting with friends and its one of the few games I tell people to please binge and share with others even non-game players. The environments alone are worth admission.
Its partly personal; I have a lot of dreams about cavernous abandoned structures and this just meshed right on there.
Those are the best. I’m not sure if its a good thing that those are the best dreams I have these days, but they are.
The fact that I was not expecting comedy at all was what really made the first one so damn great.
It so perfectly walks that line between comedy and thriller. GLaDOS constantly bouncing back and forth between being funny, menacing, empathetic, and pathetic is such a delicate balancing act. The fact that they were able to sum it all up in a single song at the end?? Like.
I dunno. Portal is top 10 for me, all time.
For some reason this entire day every time I click on this thread I first read your posts as saying Postal instead of Portal.
I’m 100% far more enamored with Ico and still find it completely approachable today, whereas SotC really just feels like the first example of what would become a bunch of tedious design cliches that only seemed good because they were fresh in 2005, but once everything had a ‘cinematic’ style it revealed that sotc had nothing else going on, with just atrocious input lag making the action puzzles of the colossi feel tedious rather than thrilling.
At least Ico was just a regular puzzle adventure game so input lag in order to show off animation isn’t an experiential abyss.
This thread got me to dig out my PS2 and play the game a bit. I got through the first 5 colossi in about an hour and a half lol. It’s been years since i last played, it was nice to slowly remember how to take them each down.
Even though i get that you’re on a misguided mission, and you’re supposed to feel conflicted about killing these majestic creatures, ive only ever felt bad about the animal ones since there’s a sense that they’re just protecting themselves and their territory. Like, the birb you have to antagonize before he’ll even come after you. But then the 3rd colossus is just a big dude. who tries to hit you with his sword. I don’t feel bad about fighting him!
i watched some footage of the PS4 version to compare it. Got to say, i don’t like how the game looks as much without that washed-out fuzzy glow over everything. and maybe i’m weird but i kind of like the chuggy frame rate in the original version? or perhaps am just more used to it. it never bothered me
When I played the PS2 original, in my headcanon it was choppy because the camera used to film everything was built in the world it took place in. I was picturing a heavy rattly super 8 camera made out of stone
ooh i like that
What?! Are you trying to make me vomit? please explain yourself
everything i’ve heard and seen recently points toward it being really, really slow (especially in battles) in a way that’s hard to digest nowadays. idk; mostly stuff i read here from people in the past few years.
i enjoyed it at the time i played it! and i wanna keep it that way!
i don’t mean pedantic or confrontational at all, but as someone who didn’t keep up with games much at all until fairly recently i’m always curious about what people mean by “hard to digest nowadays.” is it just that contemporary games tend to be faster and that you’ve gotten used to that? or that you were young enough that your standards hadn’t developed to where they are now? it’s interesting the way games can become obsolete or unplayable for people who found them beautiful at their time of release (as opposed to games that become “classics,” etc).
For me a big part of it is that I don’t have “kid patience” any more now that I’m older and have less time, more obligations, and far more options for how I spend my leisure time, including a much wider range of games I could be playing.
Emulators have fast forward buttons and save states and that’s great.
To not steal BP for seperate ideas Shenmue 3 is going to drive me crazy but I guess I waited 18 years to Ask about bridges and open dozens of exquisite cabinets.
I’ve beaten it in the last few years and in my opinion it still jives with modern sensibilities. I’m not suggesting you play it again but maybe chill with it some at some point in the future just to look at the excellent Toriyama world design. I won’t annoy everyone by linking the boss battle theme but we all know it’s one of a kind.
Ico’s message of helping someone even if you can’t help yourself is better than I will renounce everything to deny my grief.
Shadow is a negation of its character’s quest, though. The ending was readable from the first colossus and you have no choice but to move forward into tragedy.
Yeah SotC is undeniably a condemnation of that mindset. Continuing to play the game is a destructive act to the main character and the only way for him to “win” is for the player not to play anymore (eat your heart out spec ops)
i do generally like ICO’s theme better and prefer its sweetness to SotC’s tragic man pain though. i mean it’s artfully done tragic man pain but still
And then TLG is “we love cats even though they’ll eat our faces if we die”
do u ever think about that real movie from like 2006 where adam sandler plays sotc to cope with his grief about 9/11