God Malus sucks. Stomped all the other Colossus in a 5-10 minute range but Malus took me 40 minutes. He just would not stop moving his hands.
Finished now and I don't know man I feel like Wander's face and lacking body animations kinda take away from the experience. They definitely took away some of the emotional resonance of the ending.
I played the PS3 version right before this remake and I gotta say, the lacking of certain in-game animations and some deliberate changes (Wander's new combat stance) really changed my impression of his character in this remake. The lost facial animations and better footing made me feel like I was playing as a trained warrior, his new stance with the sword upright ready for combat compared to his exhausted stance, sword held awkwardly, untrained, but still determined. Wander was characterised so much through his in-game animations, his desperation, exhaustion, determination, and lack of training so beautifully expressed, he felt so alive.
I guess these otherwise nitpicky changes aren't really that important to the mass, but to me I never felt Wander's struggle quite as powerfully in this remake as I did the original. All these tiny changes and omissions made me feel like I was playing as a corpse in comparison, the static in-game facial animations resembling a custom created character in an RPG. Once I learnt how to pet Agro in this remake (different controls man) I went right into photomode and my heart dropped a little bit before I busted out laughing. That damn face...
I think this is an incredible remake and have loved the amazing effort Bluepoint has put into redesigning the forbidden lands. The world can look absolutely mind blowing, and I damn love the filters you can use to add variety and totally change the mood. The photo mode is incredible as well. Oh, and don't even get me started on the 60fps mode supported by the Pro, Shadow of the Colossus has never played better!
I'd definitely love more classics to get the remake treatment to this quality, I of course still think the originals should be ported over too but that's a different topic. I'm a huge fan of Team Ico's output, and I of course love Shadow of the Colossus, and I of course love this incredible remake. But this is why it hurts knowing that Wander's character suffered in this incredible translation. Obviously this doesn't effect the majority, but ever since the original controversial thread had posters pointing out the downgrade I knew this was something that would distract me, and sadly it did. Wander didn't feel like the same little dude that I've been playing as for the last 12 years, he felt like a different character, and a much less expressive one at that.
Sorry for the horrible pic, don't wanna ruin everyone else's enjoyment, just bums me out knowing I can't enjoy this thing as much as most due to my OCD brain not letting go of this one flaw. Here's a nicer pic to go out on.
