Shadow of the Colossus (PS4)

Giving this a 🌟7 Star🌟 Rating. If it wasn’t so hard I’d give it a better Rating. But beautiful game, liked it

It's an ok game - especially given it's a remaster of a remaster. Back in the PS2 days, I can imagine this was amazing. In the current gen however, I just realised that nostalgia can hide a lot of faults. It's widely acclaimed as being a classic game - but for me, it's a soulless, empty, poorly programmed, and ill-conceived tech demonstrator that somehow won a lot of fans and has lingered well past its due-by date. The gameplay is ridiculous, the controls frustratingly bad - and the camera seems bi-polar. It would be passable as an experience (like someone who likes long walks in a desert) if it wasn't for the hype on this game. For all the people that think this is deep - take a chill pill and play the game. I didn't have any experience with the previous versions, so I came in fresh. It is a right-royal-steaming-mess of a game. Controls/camera/lack of protagonist interaction... it's meant to show that we are the horrors in the world, but instead it showed me that I shouldn't get sucked into the sunk-cost-bias of trying to finish a well reviewed game when the mechanics are fundamentally rotten. This is an easy game made only lengthy due to horse-riding across nothing (ooooh it's meant to be - to make you think of the emptiness of your decisions) and the broken controls (yes, life is random and horses, like in-game cameras, should have their own dreams and goals). There are some good moments in this, but ultimately I felt like someone contemplating if water-boarding might not have been a better use of my time. The receiving (unlike the developers and re-coders who were definitely on the giving side of the spectrum).