Shadow of the Colossus, OK Go: Oh No

It's almost the weekend and it's almost halloween and I still don't have a costume. I'll figure something out, but it'll probably be lame. Oh well. At least we're going to play football this upcoming Sunday! That's what I call making your dream a reality.

I need to cut my nails and I need someone to cut my hair.

I beat Shadow of the Colossus last night. As I played through it, I was slightly disappointed for two reasons. The first was that the reviews I had read and my experience with Ico had my hopes so high that nothing could have satisfied them. The second reason is that Shadow was not as good a game as Ico. That said, Shadow still has a lot going for it.

The game divides into sixteen sections that follow this pattern: follow your glowing sword toward the colossus, riding around on your horse. Reach colossus area. Solve jumping/climbing puzzle to reach colossus. Solve how-to-get-onto colossus puzzle. Stab colossus over and over again. Repeat. When laid out, it's not a terribly interesting format, but in practice it's a gripping experience. The puzzle of how to slay each colossus is enhanced by the fact that no two are the same and that the puzzles themselves move about and try to throw you off. The art and direction and cinematography is beautiful. The environment is well rendered, your horse is a joy to ride, and each colossus looks - well - colossal. Everything looks beautiful.

The gameplay is easy to grasp but gets frustrating. If you don't know what you're supposed to do next, a cryptic hint appears out of nowhere. They are often helpful, but at some point (my guess is multiple points) in this game, you will be angry with the game because you simply don't know what you need to do, or - even worse - you do know, but the actual execution of those steps is tedious. The game ran only about 11-12 hours for me the first time through. This is a lot shorter than it took me to finish Ico, but it felt longer. Each colossus battle feels like a battle, which I think is the best aspect of the game. Every time you slay a colossus, it's a feeling of accomplishment because the travel and battle time ran about half an hour for each colossus (until the last couple, which took much longer).

The story holds together as much as Ico's - maybe even more so - and is worth making your way through the game. The final cutscene is half an hour. Clearly, the developers keep wanting to make movies and end up making games. Shadow isn't a game for everyone. It's not a hack and slash game. It's not a beat-em-up. It's hard to even call it an action-adventure. It's really a puzzle game because the action part of it isn't the point. It's hard to die, and the point of the battles aren't to just hit the colossus enough times while dodging it's attacks. There is a very specific way of bringing down each one.

Who would like this game? Those that liked Ico will certainly appreciate it, because the look and experience will be familiar. Shadow seems to be for the more patient gamer - the one who doesn't mind riding for five to ten minutes to reach a colossus. It's meant for someone who can deal with spending half an hour on one large battle with one large foe. I found Shadow to be, overall, a very cool game that frustrated me as often as it elated me. In the end, though, the frustrations didn't matter, because the game was good enough to make me forgive it for its lesser parts.

Unlike Shadow, which I've owned for about a little over a week, I've had OK Go's new album, Oh No, for a while now. It's sitting in my car's CD changer. I think if I had talked about it immediately, I would have said more negative things about it. It's not as catchy as their first album, and the lyrics aren't as addictive, making it harder to sing along. I expect a lot from the self-proclaimed saviors of rock and roll and OK Go aims to be, and the first listen-through of Oh No didn't deliver it.

A few months later, the album sounds better. With time to sink in, it's climbed my charts. Opening track Invincible sounds a little like Get Over It, with the rock turned up a bit. Oh Lately It's So Quiet, which I didn't find appealing ta first is now one of my favorite tracks. I could still do without the last three tracks on Oh No, but there are probably tracks in the middle of their first album that I don't even remember.

Oh No is better than the previous album in some regards and worse in others. It's better foot-tapping, head-bopping, dance music. It has a more insistent beat, a bit more edge musically, and a slightly more mainstream quality to it. That's also what makes the album worse - it loses a bit of the OK Go touch that seemed to make their debut album so unique. Their lyrics seem a bit weaker, a bit more repeated, a bit more background. The songs start sounding a lot more similar.

I'm glad I picked up Oh No. I listen to it in my car pretty often. Which album do I like better? If forced to choose, I'd probably pick their debut album. Oh No's got some good tracks on it, but it seemed - as a whole - to lack the OK Go sparkle that was spread liberally on the last album.

To be fair, my entire opinion might change if I see them perform some Oh No songs live. I've heard that their live show rocks and rolls all over town.

Off to lunch now. A man's got to eat.