I have been sick since last Thursday night. I’ve had a nice cough going for a week so far. Today, it eased up a bit during the day, but anytime I start talking, it flares up again. So I’ve been rather silent for the past few days, as you might imagine.

I have continued to play Knights of the Old Republic II on the Xbox. I would really appreciate it if the game would stop freezing and making me lose progress.

I also picked up a copy of Frequency, and a copy of Amplitude - two rhythm-based music games that are quite a blast to play. I think of them less as competitive games and more as enjoyable experiences. Your button-presses activate a certain track in the song (a drum track, a synth track, etc), and you essentially mix it together on the fly. Very creative.

Battlestar Galactica was picked up for a second season. Good news for fans of intelligent sci-fi.

Sony and Zipper Interactive have finally, finally announced SOCOM III, due out in Q3 of this year. The new game will feature player-usable vehicles, as well as swimming (for water-based landing zones a la the movie “The Rock”, I’m sure). Also coming over the news wire is a follow-up story indicating SOCOM III will feature maps up to 6 times larger than previous games, thanks to “a specialized streaming environmental technology”. After months of speculation, it’s finally nice to get an official SOCOM announcement, and some sweet looking new features to boot. One news article calls the game “the PlayStation 2’s online swan song”. It will most likely be the last great online PS2 game. I hope they cook something up for the release of the PS3, even if it is something akin to “SOCOM 3.5”.

Halo 2 will keep me busy until then. Would be nice to see some new Halo 2 maps soon.