Children of Colossus review

3 minutes of reading / By /

Children of Colossus is a VR exclusive game that tasks you with taking down five lumbering giants with nothing but your sword in one hand and a wand in the other. The story goes that we must slay our former guardians in order to save the massive amounts of resources they eat. It is all told in the intro in a couple of paragraphs of text which will disappear quickly so hopefully you are a fast reader. Each colossus has their own mission with a small blurb about why we have to kill them. There is very little plot overall, do not go into this expecting a gripping narrative

Children of Colossus Fight

You start off in the hub-world that will quickly show you how to use your weapons before you go off to hunt your first foe. The sword is only used when there is an opening while the wand will be your primary method of attacking. It does not have an unlimited charge however, after a couple of shots it will be drained if you are not careful. To refill your magic, you must shoot at potions that randomly fall from the sky. If you are completely drained, you can do nothing but awkwardly watch them fall until your magic slightly recharges at an extremely slow pace. Potions fall in completely random areas and down in a straight line. They will also go right through the floor, making it easy to miss them. It is no exaggeration when I say that I spent more time twisting my neck to look for the bloody things than focusing on the fight at hand.

Children of Colossus Third Level

Each of the five missions plays out differently though only in a single one will your sword be your go to weapon. All the giants feature obvious weak spots where you must shoot them with your wand before they finish winding up their attack. They are easy shots to pull off; your main struggle would be the lack of magic to do so and waiting on potions to drop. Meanwhile, you will be dashing across your play area to avoid their stomps, projectiles or bites. In one fight you must crouch which was a nice touch though gave no indication of that even being possible in the game. It is likely that you will die when first encountering a giant due to the obtuse rules that results in trial and error instead of skill or finesse. Like a monster suddenly needing multiple shots to each area to stop its undodgeable attack while the last foe only required one shot per spot.

Children of Colossus Weak Spot

In the last mission they introduce a teleport feature where you can switch between two locations but since the button to do so is the trigger which is also used for shooting, you may find yourself teleporting directly into an attack while trying to shoot those accursed potions. All these fights can be finished in about 20 minutes and then the only thing left to do is fight them in a hard mode in where they are tougher, and you die in a single hit. There are also two side missions for each like destroying a certain amount of boulder projectiles or not being hit in the entire fight to add a bit of replay value. The music is decent as is the huge scale of everything around you. It had potential, but the magic mechanic simply ruined the entire experience. By no means is Children of Colossus unplayable or even a terrible game but it was oddly boring due to being more focused on finding randomly spawning potions instead of battling it out.

Rating:

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