Hawksbill's post o' holiday gaming

Last semester was so grueling and stressful that I didn't sleep a full night from September through the middle of December. Just about every night I awoke between 3am and 4am worried about something or other, ranging from long papers I had due to getting a job after graduation. Thus, when the holidays hit and I had over two weeks off I was determined to be lazy, to have fun and not to worry about a damn thing. And, other than spending a ton of time together as a family, I was determined to feed that monkey on my back... the gaming monkey.

The guys came over last Saturday and we played board games from noon until after midnight. I got to play Goa, Power Grid (using the Italy map) and Caylus, which are three of my favorites. There were 7 of us, which meant we had to split into two groups so Paul, Jake, Steve and George played some Age of Empires III, which none of us had played before and I got to play a game of Basari with Larry and Ben, which I had not played before also. The highlight of the day, though, was when we ended by playing a huge 6 player game of Zopp, which has been sitting around in our gaming room, waiting to be played for several weeks. Zopp is probably the most expensive game I own, and I was pleased to see that it was a big hit. It's always nice to end a gaming day with a crazy dex game.

Along with board games, I was determined to feed my video game habit this holiday. I came very close to going out and indulging in a new Playstation 3, but instead I went through my library of PS2 stuff and hit a vein of great games I hadn't played before. This convinced me that I hadn't yet exhausted the PS2's potential and I made a list of highly regarded games to play before I move to the PS3.

I started off with God of War which I played through from start to finish in about 3 days a week and a half ago. This is a fine game with a pretty good story, in which you play a Greek hero seeking vengeance against the god Ares. It has great controls, fantastic graphics and a delightful amount of brutal violence.

I've owned this one for a bout a year, and played it a bit, but it never really grabbed me until a couple of weeks ago. There were a couple of really frustrating moments trying to escape from the underworld, but I guess escaping from the underworld should probably be very difficult. All in all, though, a great gaming experience.

Another game I've owned for over a year but never played is Shadow of the Colossus. In SotC you play a young lad who brings his trusty horse, a stolen magic sword and a dead girl to a mysterious temple in a lonely unpopulated land and prays for her resurrection. His prayers are answered by a booming voice that instructs him to take his magic sword and slay 16 different colossi and then the girl will be brought back to life.

Basically, it is a 3rd person action-adventure combat and puzzle solving game in which you must kill only boss-monsters. You have a horse, a bow and a sword and the monsters are sometimes hundreds of feet tall. The puzzles in the game are all about how to locate the colossi and then how to find their individual weaknesses which you exploit to kill them.

I finished Shadow of the Colossus in about 5 days and after watching the closing animation sequence I had to admit this this was likely one of the best games I've ever played. In fact, Simon had been sitting on my lap watching me play for almost all of that time and at the end of the game he actually cried a little in sympathy for the characters. The story was so sad and moving that I felt like I'd just finished a classic piece of literature. Even now, several days later I can't get it out of my head. It still haunts me.

In fact, many players have found SotC to be haunting and worthy of considerable thematic speculation. I found this plot/theory analysis over at gamefaqs.com which tries to put all the pieces together. One of the great things about this game is that the characters only speak an unintelligible Japanese/Latin combination. This means that the back story is never fully explained which allows for a lot of internal speculation while you're playing.

SotC was written by a game designer named Fumito Ueda who intended it to be a prequel to a previous PS2 game called Ico, which I had heard of before but hadn't payed much attention to. Wander, in SotC is supposed to be the ancestor of the main character of Ico, and is the first of a long line of cursed boys born each generation because of the horrors Wander committed in SotC. It turns out that Ico was something of a cult hit and new copies of it are selling for $80+, but I just ordered a used copy for a reasonable price and can't wait to play it.

For me, playing Shadow of the Colossus is the video game equivalent to reading Alan Moore's comic The Swamp Thing for the first time. You are engaging in medium you think you understand and can't really be surprised about, but the story stretches that medium in simple, poetic and unexpected directions that are simultaneously beautiful and sorrowful. It really reminds you that games can be works of art, although they seldom are. Damn, I can't wait to play Ico!

For anyone interested, I found several interviews with Fumito Ueda regarding his games. One is with the Guardian another is with CVG and a third is with Wired.

After playing God of War and Shadow of the Colossus from start to finish I was determined to finish one more game before I go back to school next Tuesday. In my research I stumbled across the Prince of Persia series which, like Ico, I'd seen before but never paid a lot of attention to. I'm currently about a third of the way through the first in the PS2 trilogy called The Sands of Time.

The graphics in The Sands of Time are a bit dated, as it came out back in 2003, but are still fairly pleasant. Like the others it is a 3rd person action-adventure game, but this one has more emphasis on puzzle solving than on combat, unlike God of War which is a bit more weighted towards ripping the heads off Gorgons. Actually, I picked up this game because I read a review of Ico in which they were compared as having similar game play styles. It is a good one, but not as moving as SotC so far.

I'm very pleased, though. Most games are marginal at best and the really good ones are few and far between. I feel like I've hit a gold mine of quality gaming fun to maximize my holiday goofing off.

Once school starts up again I won't be able to be this epically lazy. But, I've put together a list of other games I plan to play on the PS2 over the next several months before switching to the PS3.

These are: Ico, God of War II, and parts II and III of the Prince of Persia series (The Warrior Within and The Two Thrones). I'm also a bit tempted by The Devil May Cry trilogy, which I have part 1 of but haven't played yet and by Psychonaughts, which I started last year and played for a couple of hours but never finished. Also I want to finish Dark Cloud II, which Simon and I started a few weeks ago and Star Ocean, which are both rpg's that look well worth playing.

I was toying with going with the xbox 360 instead of the PS3, but I've pretty much decided now to stay with Sony's console. After all, God of War is exclusive to the Playstation line. Also, and probably more importantly though, Fumito Ueda who designed Shadow of the Colossus and Ico is currently working for Sony on a 3rd game. This next one is all hush hush right now, but I'm hoping it will be set in the same universe as the others and will be as haunting as SotC.

What a great holiday this has been. I can't express what a relief it is to spend all this time with Barb and the kids and playing games instead of worrying about papers, exams, internship stuff, my upcoming graduation and getting a job.

I'll get back to that stuff next Tuesday. Until then I have misshapen Arabian sand demons to slay!