Colossus, ICO's lightsabre, Creek and Oliver

Games played:
Shadow of the Colossus
Managed to nab the very last copy from a local game shop on Friday… Phew. Really should have preordered!

My initial impressions were actually a little disappointing when compared next to ICO. The environments are very bare and lack the solid yet slightly ethereal quality of ICO.

The game really does come to life as soon as you meet the first Colossus and it is then that you realise that the reason that the landscape is so barren is that the Colossus are the real areas that need exploring and not the landscape. So far I have taken down 4 out of the total of 16 Colossi and each battle has been quite spectacular.

Although the game really is fantastic, I don’t see it eclipsing ICO as the best game on the PS2. So far, it just seems to lack the emotional connection that you get in ICO with the main characters and also the beautiful and yet simple gameplay.

Also on a side note, although Colossus features progressive scan for the PS2 (a first for a PAL PS2 game), this is by no means as impressive as the Gamecube progressive scan. If anything, it seems to lose resolution with no improvement to motion, which can be right.

ICO
I still haven’t quite finished playing this, but I’m loving every minute of it again.

I find it somewhat amusing that I have managed to get stuck on almost exactly the same puzzles that I struggles with the first time I played the game. You’d think that I’d remember how to get passed them when it took me so long the first time round, but no!

Also interestingly, I knew that there was a secret weapon in the game, a mace, which I had not found the first time I played it. So I actively look this time round, however I didn’t find a mace, instead I’ve found what can only be described as a lightsabre! That’s right, a lightsabre. I knew that there were a few differences the second time you play the game, but I never knew about this!

Films watched:
Wolf Creek
* Warning – spoilers *
I was really looking forward to this, after reading so many good reviews and for the most part I quite enjoyed the film, until the end that is.

This film suffers from exactly the same problem as A Perfect Storm, as in that is supposedly “based on true events”, all the cast are secluded from the rest of the world and by the end of the film everyone dies! Therefore, how on earth can it be “based on true events” if there’s nobody living to tell the story!

Okay this may not be exactly true for Wolf Creek, as there was one survivor, but he was separated from the two girls in the film and was not present when the bulk of the events took place, therefore, most of the main events of the film are totally fictitious.

4/10

Oliver
I watched this with Roz last night, mainly because I’ve been in a musical mood of late and also because it been aeons since I last watched this.

What I find remarkable on viewing this again, is how spectacular the choreography is in the film, especially in long shots with literally hundreds of cat members.

It also reminded me a lot of an old junior school production that I, like many others, desperately wanted to be cast in (as the artful dodger), but failed to get. Instead my best friend got cast. I remember that I was so damn annoyed about this for some time (stupid really – but for several reasons), but what was even more annoying was that my friend was a thousand times more suited to the role than I was and did a frankly spectacular job.

7/10