Shadow of the Colossus - Official Site
Pick a country. Besure to try English (UK), US, and Japan. All three are different and almost as beautiful as the game.  ¶ 2:58 AM

  The heat finally let up around here. It's still going to be hot and humid, just not the bitch-dog heat that we and most of the nation has been suffering with. There really wasn't much you could do with the heat but sit around waiting for it to go away. The last time we had a heat wave here in Alabama was back in the early 80's. I remember those days because my mom had the bright idea to take us to the zoo then. There's nothing that makes you feel too hot to move then seeing elephants too hot to stand up.

I'm more than halfway through the first draft of "Meanwhile" the screenplay that I'm writing. The whole story has finally formed in my head so I know where everybody is going in it. There's just a lot of little details to discover along the way. I'm enjoying the process of creating it because it is a challenge to think visually, to write stuff for a camera to capture. Just for the record, I have not used one voice over yet.

I finished Tomb Raider: Legend for the PS2 the other day. I enjoyed it. The graphics were as good as the gameplay. It felt adventurous and was filled with action. Though, there is some bad to it. It's too short in more than one way. The over all game length is short. You feel that you are just getting started and then it's over. Some of that feeling is because the game is enjoyable, and I wanted more. Another way the game is short is that each level doesn't seem to have the depth and length associated with other Tomb Raider levels. Tomb Raider: Legend would have been a perfect game if a few of the levels had been as least as long as any of the levels in Tomb Raider 1 or 2. I am looking forward to more Tomb Raider games, that series has always been one of my favorite game series. I just hope that the next Tomb Raider has some epic levels and a bit longer.

Currently, I'm playing Shadow of the Colossus. Also currently, as I write this, I'm listening to soundtrack for the game. The soundtrack is called Roar of the Earth. One of the really strong parts of Shadow of the Colossus is its soundtrack.

When I first heard about Shadow of the Colossus, I wanted the game. I've watched it slip out and slowly pick up speed as a sleeper hit to popular hit to a controversial hit -- people either love it or think everybody who loves it is stupid.

Shadow of the Colossus sounds like a simple game. There are (at least) sixteen huge colossi that roam a vast world. You play a guy who brings his dead love to a temple. To bring her back to life, you have to find the colossi and kill them. That's it. When you find a colossus, you have to figure out a way to get on them and then find their weak spot. Boy, it really sounds simple. People have complained about this being all there is to the game.

The graphics. Shadow of the Colossus looks different than most games. The previous game Ico is the only thing that comes close (Ico is sort of the prequel with Shadow of the Colossus containing some references to Ico -- the project name for Shadow of the Colossus was Nico). I have never played Ico so the graphics of Shadow were kind of a shock to me. It's lush and light blooms over everything. When things get exited in the game, the frame rate does slow down. To deal with this, things blur. That's another complaint some have about the game. If I hadn't read online that things blur because the frame rate goes down, I would have thought it was a stylistic effect in the game. The blurring, by the way, looks amazing and adds to the beauty of the game.

Game play. I was nervous about playing the game for the first time fearing that I wouldn't get that wonderful feeling that those who love the game got when they first played it. I road my horse into the temple and cut scene here and cut scene there I'm back on my horse and riding across an enormous field. I ride for a while and then have to climb a cliff to get to the first colossus. It was huge, but even if you don't know anything about the game I'm talking about, you probably had the notion that the colossi were going to be huge. Well, the first one was bigger than I thought, and it took me some time to figure out how to get on him. And when I did, the game sped up and started doing things I didn't think the PS2 was capable of doing. This huge creature covered in hair started to shake and tilt trying to get me off while stomping around mountains. It took a while to kill the first one. I've killed two more since then. Each one make the first one seem smaller and way too easy. I have to travel more and more land to get to the colossi. The land in itself is a work of art. This is the first game I've ever played with three dimensional waves of water at a shoreline. The waves, several feet high, knocked me over and acted like water at a beach.

God of War stunned me with being such a good game. I've been playing video games all my life. Legend of Zelda stunned me. The first Tomb Raider stunned me. Xenosaga stunned me. Final Fantasy VII stunned me. Morrowind stunned me. There's probably a dozen more, but I've played hundreds of games. And so far, I'm stunned with Shadow of the Colossus. I just hope that the developers of Shadow of the Colossus are still around and making video games when the PS3 comes out. I'd love to see next gen games from them. Somebody should tell Sony about these developers and get them working on games for the PS3.  ¶ 2:49 AM

  New Scientist Features - 13 things that do not make sense

This is interesting. I think my favorite is number eight, and I wish more people were working on number thirteen. Getting number thirteen to work would solve so many problems in this world and could help the global warming situation.  ¶ 12:57 AM

  Bad Language / How to concentrate on writing

This is interesting. My favorite is number nine, and I wish I could do number ten more often. Since I've moved primarily to writing on a computer, number ten is hard to do without a laptop.  ¶ 12:53 AM

  I was finally able to see The Hills Have Eyes remake. I watched the unrated version. This isn't a movie that was edited down to PG-13 for the theaters so that the movie companies can make the most money and then released as a PG-13 movie and an unrated version. The Hills theatrical version was a hard R to begin with. About two minute were put back in for the unrated version. That's not really a lot of time, but when you look an effects shot that's full of gore for one second and then for ten seconds, it does make a difference. I'm sure it wasn't just gore that was trimmed down for the theater either.

Before I go any further, I need to say that I don't remember much about the original The Hills Have Eyes made by Wes Craven in 1977. It was something I saw at a young age and thought it was a messed up movie. There are some differences between the two movies, but the plot stays the same; a family gets stuck in the desert and crazy, violent people who live in the desert come mess with them and do bad things.

Alexandre Aja directed the remake. I love Aja's High Tension (aka Haute Tension). High Tension is a must see for horror fans. Though, it's a love it or hate it kind of movie. And I can't help but compare the two movies, High Tension and The Hills remake. Both are very violent. Both are chase movies of a sort. The Hills looks better but that might be because of a higher budget or location. The Hills is a slower movie with great character development where you care about the characters. There's less development in High Tension, but that doesn't really affect the movie in a bad way.

The violence in The Hills isn't the most extreme I've seen in movies, but comes close. It's no Ichi the Killer where the violence and gore is way over the top so far it becomes a comedy. But with the character development and the movie taking its time, when the violence does come to the family in The Hills, it seems extreme and almost unbearable to watch. If you've seen the movie, I just want to mention milk, baby, and mother.

One of the differences between The Hills and High Tension is that within the first ten or so minutes of High Tension, the extreme violence has started and keeps happening over and over every five to ten minutes until the movie is over. Plus, High Tension is a faster paced movie.

I really enjoyed The Hills remake. I already loved High Tension. The Hills isn't as intense as High Tension, but with its character development, it's probably the better of the two. Also, watching The Hills, I couldn't help but to think this more like I wanted from The Devil's Rejects, which I love now, but when I first saw it, wanted a more extreme horror film, not a 70's Noir Film.

I can't wait for Alexandre Aja's next movie, Into The Mirror. This guy is a breath of fresh air in the horror movie world.

In other news in the horror world, check out the HD trailer of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. The HD versions are only available between 10 pm and 4 am and makes good use of the song Amazing Grace. I'm really looking forward to this movie. It has R. Lee Ermey in it. And he's the tops. I'm also looking forward to The Wicker Man remake. There's a HD trailer for it here. Yes, I'm looking forward to a horror movie with Nicolas Cage in it. Maybe that's wrong. Yeah, it probably is.  ¶ 11:17 PM

  Last night, I was finally able to watch The Longest Day. Before, when I wanted to watch this movie, I would find it on at five in the morning (it's a three hour movie) or at least half over. So how did I manage to watch it? I bought the DVD, the two disc version, that just came out.

As for the film, which was made in 1962, it was wonderful. I was surprised at how well the action looked. For a movie that's technically rated G (probably should be a PG movie this day and age), it's pretty violent with lots of people getting killed. It isn't bloody or anything like that. Though the invasions scenes do remind me of Saving Private Ryan with its chaos and confusion. I went into The Longest Day thinking I would love the film but be bothered by its age. I was wrong. The film's age doesn't touch it a bit. It's an amazing film. I so enjoyed that fact that there really isn't one single character. It's an ensemble cast as well as an ensemble story just like the real D-Day. The last war movie I saw that took a similar approach was The Thin Red Line, which is one of my all time favorite films. The Thin Red Line is one of those films I just don't understand why it isn't as talked about as much as The Godfather.

I also picked up a copy of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. I lucked up on this one. I have a demo of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I never got too deep in it for some reason, but what I played, I enjoyed. There is a problem with Snake Eater, though; the camera angle. The camera angle is fixed above the character in Snake Eater. After picking up Subsistence, I went back to the demo of Snake Eater and played it more. The camera angle would have really bothered me. I've put too much time in the early Resident Evil games (and clones) to deal with that kind of camera angle anymore. So, like I said, I got lucky with Subsistence. I thought it was the latest Metal Gear Solid game. It's Snake Eater with really cool extras, online gameplay (a rare thing on the PS2), and Snake Eater with a different camera angle, a "low-angle third-person" view that turns Snake Eater into a completely different game; a much better game.

When I was a kid, I had a Nintendo. Some kids had a dog. I had a Nintendo. I remember buying Metal Gear Solid for the NES and being so excited. I played for ten minutes and died. I kept dying over and over and over. I'd run down the screen and two guards would see me and shoot me. I became so frustrated that I put the game up and didn't play it for a month. I'm serious; a month. Then I played it again and somehow figured out how to sneak past the two guards. Then I sneaked past more guards. Eventually I found a weapon and continued to sneak, and when that failed, I "neutralized" the guards. Metal Gear Solid became one of my favorites on the NES. I'm hoping that Metal Gear Solid 3 becomes one of my favorites on the PS2. I know it won't recapture that magic of the NES, nothing ever does, but there's nothing wrong with it being a good experience in gaming.

Did I mention that I love video games? Other PS2 games you should own include Silent Hill 4 and Resident Evil 4 for the horror, disturbing, and spookiness, Brothers in Arms: The Road to Hill 30 for the best WWII game ever, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for one of the more fun games with cool story and gameplay that reminded me of the good ole' Tomb Raider days, Final Fantasy X for a cinematic RPG, and God of War for overall great gaming on any console ever. Go buy God of War now.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read a book. No, seriously. I'm going to read a book because I'm what they call "well rounded".  ¶ 12:23 AM