Colossal

Ico and SHadow of the Colossus, in HD, on my TV. It would be in 3D if I has a 3D TV, but I don't.

I've gotten several HD collections now. I started with Metal Gear Solid which has MGS 2, 3 and Portable Ops. It's ok, not wonderful, but I just wanted to way to play MGS 3 again and again. Next I tried the Silent Hill HD collection consisting of Silent Hill 2 and 3. I was VERY underwhelmed by that. I think Silent Hills just were never that great of games to begin with. Ico and Shadow is the best collection that I've played so far. Ico does not really hold up that well. There is still a lot I admire about the game, but it's just not really all that fun to play anymore.



Ico is a really atmospheric game where you control a little boy who is left to die in a HUGE ancient castle. Along the way he meets a strange girl who is being chased by shadow creatures and is also a prisoner in the castle. You attempt to escape from the castle by navigating a bunch of puzzles while dragging your new friend around by the arm. What makes this game a classic is it's very non-traditional approach. There is no HUD to the game, so no menus, no life bar, no super-power meter, nothing. Its just you and the environment on-screen. There's very little music in the game also. Much of the time all you have for audiological company is the echoing of the boy's footsteps and gusting wind on the exterior areas of the castle. All in all Ico is a very interesting place to visit, but after all these years it's become sort of a 1 trick pony. It's is definitely worth checking out if you have never played the game before.

Onto the main event, Shadow of the Colossus. This game holds up completely. Since I got my PS3 this is probably the game I've spent the greatest amount of time with. A game that I already finished multiple times back on PS2.


The whole game consists of little more than 16 boss fights. Between the boss fights you need to go out and explore a large and very well designed world. Ico and Shadow both succeed in giving their respective worlds a very real, almost tactile, feel. In Shadow the design of the world is second only to the design of the Colossi. Most of the colossi are these towering monsters that you need to climb up and stab in certain "weak points". Each colossus is like a complete level or environment on its own and each one has different behavior and tricks you need to do to take it down so that fight also has an element of puzzle-solving to it.

Unlike Ico, Shaodw of the Colossus makes use of music a lot more. Not only is the music all very good, the soundtrack also changes dynamically as you fight the colossus. Meaning that as you're fighting a boss the music will switch tracks, usually smoothly enough to not draw unpleasant attention to itself, so that when you piss off the colossus by stabbing it in the face it will start to thrash its enormous body around. While you're holding on for dear life a really exciting and epic song will start to play.

Shadow of the Colossus, and Ico in it's own way, were both benchmarks in game development. You don't see a whole lot of games like these, but I think they both left their respective marks on game development and there will always be diamonds in the rough striving to be more like these games. At least I hope so.

Got a PS3...finally

I treated myself to an end-of-the-semester...treat. It was a PS3 and so far it HAS been a treat indeed. I haven't tried the Blu-Ray player yet, but that is really the second least interesting feature on the PS3. I usually like to talk about the good first, then poke holes in it, but I'm gonna complain first and then say what I like to see if makes it seem more up-beat.

So the least interesting feature of the PS3 is "PlayStation Home". This thing is a mess and I'm not sure how to really even describe it. I guess it's a lot like Second Life. I could do a whole post about how little I like Second Life, but I don't want to alienate any potential readers out there. PlayStation Home is a large 3D environment that you can walk around in using a personalized avatar. And if you've got a personalized avatar, you've gotta have somewhere there you can buy "cool" or "silly" clothes and costume pieces. So there is a virtual mall you can go shop in. Since I couldn't be bothered to even set foot in a virtual 3D mall I have no idea what sort of currency you use to buy whatever it is they sell there. However, I can imagine it uses whatever sort of "PlayStation Bucks" or points the PlayStation Store uses to sell DLC and downloadable games. Home also has an interesting little area that serves as a chat room of sorts. You just go to a big fenced in area with a bunch of weirdos in strange costumes and start chatting with the most sophomoric people you can find gracing the internet. There are also some free games you can play with some of the charming specimens you were just chatting with. I don't know if they always have the same games available or if there is a rotating catalog, but I got the sense they were all equally ill-conceived and under developed. I do know, however, that they've all got some purchasable little trinkets and doo-dads if you can cough up more of the all powerful Playstation Bucks. To be honest, that is as far as I explored before losing all interest entirely.

My only other real complaint is the sad sad representation PS2 has in the Playstation Store. PSOne has a respectable amount of old titles available, but there could always be more. But the PS2 has maybe 20 games. There are SO many good PS2 games I could hope for. Clearly there must be a problem with the PS2 emulation, but whatever it is I hope they fix it, because PS2 has a HUGE library of really awesome games. Or at least games that seemed awesome at the time and are hopefully still awesome.

Its nice to use the dual shock controller again. I've been almost exclusively playing XBox 360 and PC games for in excess of 5 years. Wireless controllers and Wi-Fi enabled are nice. I didn't have to lift a finger to network to my PC so I can stream from the computer. I like the Amazon Prime tie in because we dropped netflix and are using Amazon Prime now. I don't care for the interface. I find it un-intuitive, but I guess that's just personal preference.

I see now that I say the positive first because I revel in talking about what's wrong with things in great detail.

So, despite the fact that I have a half page dossier on whats wrong with it and 5 lines mostly about what I like about it, I'm enjoying my PS3 very much.

The games I got to start with are Little Big Planet, ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD collection, and Metal Gear Solid 4. I won't go into more detail now, I'll try to post about them later.