Man Versus Shadow of the Colossus, Part 3
How I Killed 16 Colossi in 16 Days (Well, 17 Days. OK, 18 Days)
1/28/2009 7:03 PM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 3
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
Read Parts One, Two, Four and Five of Man Versus Shadow of the Colossus
.
Colossus Seven (Thursday, 12/18)
My girlfriend and I have mutually decided to forego Christmas gifts this year in the name of saving money for the apartment we want to buy. But I wake up this morning, worried that she got me a gift anyway. I consult fellow Game Truster
Evan Narcisse on this matter. "Of course she got you something," he says.
"So when you make a deal not to get anything for each another, that doesn't actually mean that you don't get anything for each other?" I ask.
He gives me a quick eye-roll. "You're so naive sometimes, Jones," he says.
Those headlights in the distance? They're actually spikes on Colossus No. 7 [aka The Hairy Eel] that you're about to fight.
I take a break from hunting around on Amazon for gifts for her and decide to track down today's Colossus. As Agro and I gallop across the land, I'm impressed by the square-footage of the game; it's rivaled only by the square footage of the Grand Theft Auto games. The landscape of the game constantly sprawls in new, unforeseen directions, all of it without a load screen. (I can hear the
chit-whiirrr-chiiiiit-chit of the game disc constantly streaming data during gameplay.)
I arrive at yet another murky lake. This Colossus is a hair-covered (hooray for hair) giant eel that has three electrically charged spires on his back. This is the first Colossus that doesn't have an articulated face/head, so maybe I won't feel so crappy after I kill this one.
He's aquatic, diving and surfacing, then diving again. I notice that the hairy patch on his back sometimes breaks the surface. I swim close to it. I grab hold when he surfaces. Then he drags me down to the deep in the game's version of a Nantucket Sleigh Ride. I hang onto the hair as he swims, and notice that I'm running out of breath (the pink circle on the lower right-hand side, aka the grip meter, does double duty as the breath-holding meter; the smaller it gets, the closer I am to drowning). The eel-Colossus surfaces. And when he does, not only can I catch my breath, but I can also move. I scramble closer to the first of the three spires. I stab a weak point just behind it, putting it out of commission.
He dives. Surfaces. I scramble. I take care of the second and third spires. I spot the blue tattoo on his big, flat head. I drive my blade into it. Black geysers. Death. As I suspected, I don't feel so bad about this one. This is the least emotion I've felt since starting the game. Maybe I'm finally turning into a cold-blooded Colossus killer after all.
