Pants NOT on Fire

My wife and I decided that we needed to provide her mother in law with an internet outlet of some sort. Wifey thought it would be easiest to just configure an old laptop and leave it out. I know better. Hell, any IT guy knows that you never offer to support family computers. It starts out as an innocent, kindly gesture. Then, much like the plot every Ben Stiller move, everything that can go wrong, does. Sure, you can laugh at it for a little while but then it becomes obnoxious and difficult to handle. Eventually you want no part of it, even going so far as to fake your own death to get out of having to see any more. Either way, you're damned if you do and slightly more damned if you don't.

A little background on my experience with portable computing. I used to own one of the first Palm Pilots. Loved it. I had no real use for it, but it was awesome none-the-less. Around 2000, I got a Windows PDA. It was amazing. That much power at my fingertips and I no longer saw a need or a reason for a laptop computer. Eventually I sprung for a fold out keyboard and, well, I was set. That is until it died. After that I eventually went through a few laptops and experimented with other Palm devices, but nothing could trump the PDA experience I had. Then when mobile phones got smart, I got one. Then I got an iPod Touch. Then I tried out the iPhone. Eventually I landed on the Samsung Epic 4G running Android. Now I'm also rocking an iPad 2 that was given to me by my job so I can support iOS.

So, yeah, I have a heck of a lot of experience (well over a decade) with portable devices, so I know my stuff. I know what I like, and I know what I don't like. I have a good handle on what trends were and how they moved throughout the years.

When I say that I prefer the Fire over the iPad 2, that should mean a good deal.

I've got no beef against Apple, either. They make damned fine products and charge a premium for them. They're not like Dell, Sony, and all who make three lines of laptops (consumer junk, regular junk, and business grade). Apple's business model prevents them from churning out crap. I love them for that. I'm not going to go into a myriad of things I like about Apple beyond that.

But why, why do I prefer the Kindle Fire over the iPad2? I've got lots of reasons! First off is the size. For something that is supposed to be ultra portable, iPad2 is huge and unwieldy. The Fire is just right.

User input is simply easier on the Fire.

I touch type, so I'm incredibly slowed down by having to look at the screen. Even with the iPad in portait mode and typing with my thumbs, it's not so easy (yeah, iOS 5 can split the keybaord, but then that's three focal points, so still not any better). The Fire is roughly the size of a Nintendo DS. It just feels right in your hands no matter how you hold it, so typing in either landscape or portrait is that much easier. Granted, on-screen keyboards are not a suitable substitute for a keyboard, but we're keeping these portable, and the keyboards available for either are usually identical due to Bluetooth tech.

Fire's interface is just as intuitive as iOS.

If not more so. Kindle really did a good job of capturing the idea of a bookshelf. Everything you can do is part of the interface. So your books, movies, music, webpages, apps, etc all land on the shelf. Just flick your way through to what you want to do. If you want to save things with a specific spot so they don't get lost in the shuffle, you can just put them on the bottom shelf and they won't go anywhere. You can keep throwing things on the bottom shelf because there's always another bottom shelf waiting for you. It keeps getting taller. :)

There is also a menu on the top that lists the main categories you'll want to access. Tap on "Web" and Silk comes to life. Tap on "Video" and it'll bring you to its internal library with an option to hop on your Amazon account to see what's available. All the tabs will show you your local stuff, and give you the option to check out anything in the cloud or available for purchase.

Since the device only has one physical button (power/sleep/wake), you'll have to keep an eye out for the home key, which almost universally presents itself in the lower left of the screen. When you're in a movie or book, tap the screen and the interface will show you the standard controls, along with a back and a home key. When playing full screen games, a few pixels will be butted against the bottom of the bezel with an arrow that, when touched, will bring up the home key. So you'll never be confused as to where it went.

There are a few hiccups, though. For one, screen animations can get noticeably choppy when moving particularly fast (I haven't noticed the problem in the browser or while watching movies). The other is that when flipping through recent entries you'll probably have trouble landing on what you intended. It takes some getting used to, but this is something Amazon should really tighten up, seeing as it's essentially the first thing you do with the Fire.

Amazon calls it a media portal, but really, it's a tablet.

With its fully powered web browser, the Fire has access to Google Docs. Nuff said? Well, maybe. Google Docs requires a wifi connection to be useful, and since the Fire doesn't have a cellular option available, Google Docs is somewhat limited. The Appstore, however, has quite a few options for full Office Suites if that's more your game. (Not sure why ThinkFree isn't included, it's on almost every other Android device).

The built in email client is pretty good, too. It's just as simple to use and understand as any other client.

Another Dilemma

I decided that I could give Skyrim a chance at full price last week. I don't know what possessed me to do that seeing as I played Morrowind for about two hours and Oblivion for maybe four hours before I got bored and turned them off (including character creation). Neither of which I played when they were released, but a few months later when I could get a copy from a friend who had moved on. So they weren't exactly old either. My two biggest turnoffs about these games are the their customization were so overly elaborate that I just couldn't make any decisions and there is little to no direction. The worlds are somehow too open.

Interestingly one of those reasons I couldn't get into the Elder Scrolls series is the same reason I adore a good strategy game. Overly elaborate customization is my thing! However without some direction, it's not so much overwhelming as it is.. unusable. If I recall correctly, Oblivion had 21 skills and Morrowind 24. The leveling system was a bit mystifying in that whatever you did made that skill stronger, while an experience bar determined when you could get stronger. Leveling was, for me, a nightmare of deliberate action and immediately robbed the game of its ability to hold my attention. Rather than talking to the townspeople, I would have to strategically plan how I was going to break into their houses and pick their pockets to gain more stealth, lockpicking and pocket picking. The consequence of not doing this was that when I leveled, I'd get crap for stats. I felt I had no choice but to ignore the point of the game in order to be able to survive in its environments. The spiral of engagement and excitement was rapidly descending into the depths rather than soaring into an engaging environment.

So, as I said, I took the full price plunge. I think the reason I believed I could trust the new game was that some reviewers used the words "simplified leveling". Normally you'll hear me say I hate it when a game is simplified, however, that's what I needed to break into the Elder Scrolls series. And I'm genuinely enjoying Skyrim. I don't get the feeling that if I don't jump 1000's of times I'm not going to get that one strength point I need to give me the edge in the next random encounter.

Oh, wait, this isn't a review of Skyrim, not yet. I haven't put enough time into the game to understand it well enough to review it. This is a post about a dilemma.

I have very poor timing that I mostly blame on the video games companies. Everyone knows fall and early winter is when all the great games are released. And anyone with any sense would pick the one game they want to play and then just get the rest as they go. Normally that's what I would do, but for some reason this year I decided to that I needed to get Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword as well as Skyrim on release day. All of these games are out in November and, well, I've got almost no time now that I have an infant in the house.

AC:Rev shows up today. TODAY! It's on the truck waiting for some dude in brown to throw it on my doorstep. So, do I put down Skyrim and pick up where AC:Brotherhood left off? Or do I keep playing through Skyrim and let Ezio, Altair, and Desmond rot for a few weeks or months, with the possibility that Commander Shepard is going to have to save the galaxy before those damned Reapers can destroy the world of the Elder Scrolls?

I've already decided to wrap up Zelda and make it a Christmas present. It's the only game my wife will play, so that's the best way to delay that one... And I'm thinking I have to stick with Skyrim or I may not be able to get back into it with all its quests that are impossible to keep in order...

Oh well, at least I won't be bored.

Assassin's Creed: Bros before Hos

I finally got my hands on a copy of the "new" Assassin's Creed, about a month before the new one comes out. I also recently got a 46" TV so I'm finally playing the series in gorgeous 1080p.

I have nothing but praise for this series and Brotherhood is no exception. The story starts off almost exactly like Metroid. How so? Well, in the Metroid series Samus is almost always robbed of her entire arsenal at the beginning of the game to basically give you something to do. In Brotherhood you're still Ezio (say it with me now, et-see-oh). And Ezio comes back from a battle where for some very, very, very dumb reason he didn't kill the guy that ends up burning his home town to the ground. Probably the only boneheaded move Ezio will ever make, or if it isn't, it's the biggest boneheaded move he will ever have made. In the events of this ordeal Ezio is shot and falls from a great height. He wakes up without his armor or weapons, and has to start over.

I suppose I should mention that your present day Assassin sleeper cell is now based in a new location. A familiar location. But that part of the story is too much fun to spoil even a bit. I will say that Desmond is now able to free roam the area where your group is sequestered for brief stints whenever you want.

After being mostly recovered, Ezio decides to strike back at the guy that destroyed his home town and tromps off to Rome, which is completely under the influence of the Borgia (main antagonists of AC2). Everything from 2 is here. You can walk around and pick pocket money all day and then just tear down fliers as you go along so people don't get too pissed.

The nice thing is that citizens of Rome know they're under oppression. The not nice thing is that they don't ever shout "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

Ezio must destroy the influence of the Borgia from Rome one district at a time (the city is still mostly free for your roaming pleasure). You do so by killing the captain of a tower and burning the tower down. After a certain story event they become "Assassin Towers". After burning them down the influence in the area is suddenly removed and you can start renovations on buildings in the district. Yup, you're Rome's sugar daddy. Nothing opens until you pay for it. You want to visit the blacksmith? Better pay up, cause he ain't open until you fix up his shop. And no, you're not getting a discount. The same goes for the tailors, art shops and most of the doctors (some of them have stands that just open up once you remove the Borgia influence).

Right now, I'm going to stop talking about story and gameplay to tell you something about the graphics. They are breathtaking. Rome is breathtaking. Ubisoft did a wonderful job creating things like the Parthenon and the Colosseum. As always the city is always completely rendered. So when you hit a viewpoint on one of the seven hills and see the Colosseum from a mile away, it's simply magical. And the level of detail just keeps getting better. There are even more kinds of people walking around than in AC2. More speeches being given. More conversations to overhear. More unique people. It's nothing short of immersion. You can get lost just being in Rome....

Back to the game part.

You're free to do what you want and progress the story at your leisure just like in AC2. Eventually you'll hit walls where there is nothing left to do until you get to the next sequence (chapter). Soon you're on your way to renovating the different factions (thieves, courtesans, and mercenaries). You're told that the more quests you do for them, the better off the end game but I'm not sure how it works in the long run.

You're again looking for flags. Those damned flags... But now you can buy maps that show the locations of flags(GLEE!!). And any flag you see is marked on your map for later (JOY!!). There are other collectibles, too, but I'm assuming there are no maps for those. This time there is another "Truth" to find and since Rome is so bloody huge and it's monuments are even bloody huger, well, have fun not using a FAQ.

Again, Rome is huge, and at this point in the game I'm stuck there but I know there are other cities to visit yet. So getting around isn't exactly fast. Thankfully there is a fast travel system. Tunnels run under the city all over the place. Very few of them are initially available, and in order to use them you'll have to renovate the entrances. After that you can get around pretty quick. Before that you're on foot or on a horse. Horses can run around in cities, which is a nice touch.

In all your travels be sure to be "collecting" goods. When you open chests they will give you money and often some kind of item. These can be sold directly or saved for "shop missions". You trade in a lot of stuff and the shopkeeper unlocks something extra pointy, etc for your purchase that is beyond what you can normally afford. You can also get items from tackling thieves and messengers that occasionally pop up.

By far the newest function of Brotherhood is that you're now running the entire Assassin's guild, which was devastated at the beginning of the game. Around the fourth sequence you'll start recruiting. The recruiting missions are super easy and involve saving citizens from the guards. Once the citizen is saved you can talk to them and they join up and become instant assassin's. You can have one for every liberated district.

What can you do now that you run the guild? Well, you can start off by sending your newbies on missions around Europe and Asia. These are completely passive and just happen while you play the game. The assassin's assigned to contracts are gone for 8-20 minutes and then are just back for use again. They gain levels and you assign them new armor and weapons (very simplistic). Then send them back out for newer, harder missions. They even bring stuff back, like money and goods. Occasionally they'll bring back a new weapon for the black smithies to sell to you at a non-discounted rate!

Well, that's not too great. It sounds like a minigame. Lame.

Oh, not so quick! Not only can you have these guys going on missions, but you can also use them in your day to day doings in the city! That's right. Somehow any assassin that isn't out on assignment is following you around the city waiting for the signal. You target some guards, make the hand gesture and, from out of nowhere they strike! Giving you instant kills and access to areas that you didn't think you'd be able to enter without causing a ruckus. That's right, you have nothing to do with the fight. So if the mission requires you to be anonymous the whole time, you can send your underlings to their doom as you watch and sip coffee. Or, you can call them in if you're in a tough fight, they'll even stick around to help you kill any stragglers (they always fight until you become anonymous).

There is a meter showing whether or not you have assassin's at your beck and call. Once you use them the meter depletes and slowly regenerates while these assassin's assuredly are going back to the base of operations for a quick nap.

Did I mention these guys are sneaky SOBs, too. Like, really sneaky. You could be trudging through the catacombs and find a room surrounded by guards. Call in your lackeys and, literally from out of nowhere they'll spring in, kill things, and leave. Even though the only entrance and exit was the way you came. You'd think being the leader YOU could sneak like that... hmm....

Then there was the "arrow storm". If you have lots of assassin's and a full assassin meter you can use the arrow storm. What's that? A giant group of guards numbering in the teens is in your way? Well the arrow storm will take care of that. Make the signal and arrows and bolts from out of nowhere cut down ever single soldier in the area, making it a clear path for you. JOY AGAIN! Seriously, this can help you out of any number of binds.

There is a lot more to this game that I cannot even start to cover without making this review far too many pages (war machines, Ezio's past, etc). Overall this game is as close to a 10 as I would be able to find. Everything about it is awesome. :)

Cathy? Kat? wha?

Catherine

I had been reading a lot of buzz about this one for months. I'm not saying I was interested in the game at all, but that there wasn't much else to read about games since everything on the market is just more of the same. Sequels everywhere you look, really.

So Catherine. Catherine... The media made it look like some sort of social experience where you played a guy torn between two women with real consequences for your actions. I figured maybe the good vs. bad plot device may evolve if it were the focus of gameplay. I figured wrong. Just from the demo I could tell that the game was basically Dragon's Lair with mini games. Well, mini game, that is. You sit around and watch cut scenes for about an hour, then you get thrown into the dream world and you have a 2.5 dimensional block climbing game. Think of Qbert but only going up. The mechanics are a bit weird but basically you can pull/push blocks to suit your needs and pillows serve as your extra lives. Did I mention you're running about in your boxers? No, well you are.

After the second incredibly boring minigame session and what seemed like days of anticlimactic cut scenes I had to turn off the demo. Nothing happened. And I mean NOTHING. I got so far as to send a text message to the guys girlfriend and the tone of it set off a good/bad meter and I gave up. I couldn't handle watching any more cut scenes. They weren't even interesting.

As I've stated before, I don't tend to give games ratings, but for this one I'm going to give it one solid commercial toilet. The only thing it can really do is stink until it sucks away every bit of productivity...

Prince of repetition

Today's review is for the 2008 iteration for Prince of Persia. If you haven't played the game series, you should. My first encounter with Prince of Persia was in 6th grade when a kid I knew gave me a copy of the Mac version on a floppy disk. Little bastard though he was being clever when he hid it inside of a myriad of directories figuring that I'd never find it. Clearly he didn't know about "search". At the time the game was an amazing 2d platformer. It would have been 10x's as amazing if I had the manual so I could pass the checkpoints that said "what is the second letter of the fifth paragraph of the 18th page?".

My wife picked up this game just before I went on a six month no game buying fast late last year. It wasn't a game I had intended to play, but I love my wife with everything I have and when I got it as a Christmas present I had determined to play through the game even if it was utter crap.

Let's set one thing straight. I hate meaningless repetition. I hate saying the same thing twice. I hate doing the same thing twice. There are remarkably few things in the world that are enjoyable to do exactly the same more than once.

For instance. I loath meetings. Meetings are the world's larges time syncs where nothing happens. For other instance. I hate 90% of church music. I love the church as a body of people, but I can't stand most of their music. I say 90% of the songs because that's how many songs have one chorus and maybe two verses to them, repeated five to fifty times to pretend to be a "song". It's not.
Well, the old, young Prince has been in polygons since Sands of Time. But now he's cell-shaded. At first I was very put off (as I always am by cell shading), but I got over it and realized it was really a great style. You start the game looking for your donkey but instead find a princess named Elika who is running like hell from some bad guys. She needs your help and convinces you that you have to help her. And you're stuck with her for the rest of the game. Which isn't all that bad.

Visually the game is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever laid my eyes on. The environments are grimy, lush, living, dead, friendly, and dangerous at the same time. At times you can see for miles, and it's wonderful. But then it hits you. What the heck kind of place is this?! You see, there are bottomless pits everywhere. EVERYWHERE. So many that there are stints of wall running, ceiling crawling, and vine climbing that can seem like they take hours. Entire hallways are devoid of anywhere proper to put your feet. There are towers that are so high there is no possible way by even our current standards anyone could build these with the materials these guys used, and no stairs.

Gameplay is about as stupid simple as it gets. When it came to getting around in Sands of Time you had to push buttons corresponding with your desired actions, in this version your buttons are basically: jump, continue free running, stop free running, get directions, and talk to Elika. So doing stuff is stupid simple and the only reason you screw up is because you weren't paying attention. There are times when you need to plan ahead and get your timing right, but they're rarely a big deal. And even if you fall, Elika has the power to infinitely pull you from out of the pits (yes, pull, not reverse time). Yup, you can't die. At all. Ever. Even if you want to. This is where that repetition comes into play. Each area has its own unique flaws and so you end up climbing over the same wall, jumping to the same pillar, crawling on the same ceiling, crawling up another wall, in the same way until you get to your goal. Very repetitive.

Combat is a funny beast in this game. You've got three types of attacks and they can all be chained together to do various amounts of damage. Now the buttons are dodge/agility, sword, claw, and Elika. Yup. And combined with the directions you press on the stick, well, it doesn't really matter. Basically each enemy will eventually have different forms that will make you have to change which strike starts your combo. So you might have to grab them with the claw before you pound them into oblivion. After the first few battles, the fights become mundane at best, and become progressively more difficult as the enemies uniformly power up.

There are remarkably few enemies in this game. There are four bosses that you have to fight five times each. Another dude you cross swords with a few times (I did enjoy my fights with him, he's a bad ass), and the main bad guy. Beyond this, there are fights at predetermined areas with exactly the same enemy. Here's how you will know the difference. If you're fighting a normal enemy and pin them against a wall or edge of a platform, you kill them instantly. Bosses, however, when pinned, will stop your combo dead, and either fall off the platform and jump back on, or if pinned at a wall they'll do a move that locks your weapons for a moment.

But wait. I said you couldn't die! That's right, no matter what you do you'll live through it! If you're pinned and the enemy just gets the advantage a little Elika will then turn back time a hair and you'll be on your feet. The enemy will get a portion of its life back, and the fight continues. Forever. So while the fights can be infuriatingly difficult, you cannot lose them. Which I find even more painful.

What I'm saying here is that Ubisoft figured the game would last longer with more difficult fights, and since you can't die, they can make them even harder! So you might give up whilst battling a boss for half an hour and shut off the system.

Right after your first boss fight you'll start collecting light seeds, which are used to unlock one of the four "powers" in the game. And by four powers I mean two powers. Let me explain. Two of the powers offer unique modes of transportation gameplay and have the ability to get you to places you would otherwise be incapable of accessing. While running around you see glowing circles all over the place and wonder "How the hell do I get over there?". Well, it's by accessing one in a complex maze of these powers. They're all on the walls, and you run up the walls, hit the seal(s) and start on your magical journey.

The first that I chose happened to be a mode where you could run on a predetermined surface (wall, ceiling, whatever) and you moved left or right to avoid obstacles. The second I chose was the flight. When you used that one Elika would grab your hand and you'd have to 'guide' her on a rails system with analogue stick. Flying over, under, and around walls. 90% of the time these flight paths were like taking a taxi in a foreign country. You knew damn well that you were only going two miles but the driver figures he'd drive 20 to get you there for the extra money. Well, you step on these circles and activate them (with the continue free running button), and while you know you're only going up 30-40 feet, it takes about 2 miles of flying around the same damned terrain to get there!

The other two "powers" are identical to each other. They are flying from the seal to some other spot. No interaction required save for when it drops you off early and you have to Elika-jump to the next spot.

I know that's a lot to take in, but this game is pretty crazy. So let me try to fill in some gaps. Elika is some sort of princess/priestess with some very, very, very odd powers. She drives me crazy. She has the ability to teleport pretty much anywhere, yet when you're climbing around on vines she has to ride on your back. When you fall into a pit, she will teleport down there, and pull you out. When you're in the middle of a jump, you can hit the Elika button and she'll appear in the middle of the air and give pull you into another full-length jump. So half the time she's teleporting and the other half of the time she's doing all the same physical labor you do. Heck, even when she's knocked out and you're fighting she wakes up just in time to see your head about to get severed, screams "NO" and turns back time.

Even with all that repetition, I still enjoyed parts Prince of Persia. Maybe it was just the amazing environments that they created. The city in the sky is pretty darn amazing. And I loved running around there. There was one boss fight that I found particularly fun (it wasn't the end boss). I doubt that I'll ever play through the game again, and I'm certianly not interested in going through all of that to get the achievement for being saved by Elika fewer than x times or collecting all the light seeds. Overall I feel like Ubisoft captured the idea of Prince of Persia, but didn't do enough with it. In fact, I think they did less with it than they have before.

Note: I will not spoil the ending but I will say that it is possibly my favorite ending of any game ever. Definitely top 5. The ending made me glad that I played through the game. It didn't make up for how often I got bored with it, but I sure as heck felt some satisfaction.

Bulletstorm: The Demo

Bulletstorm is yet another FPS that seems to have taken elements from Duke Nukem 3D (the mighty boot), Metroid Prime: Corruption (the grapple beam), and Mad World (odd future world combat for entertainment). If you've played any clever FPS in the last 10-15 years, you've played part of Bulletstorm.

The demo starts out by trying to get you in the mood squad-based combat in a post apocalyptic future, however your goal of survival is secondary to entertaining an audience. You're a post-modern gladiator. I understand that I'm playing a demo so I have to cut the game a little slack and sit through some videos and dialogue showing me how to play the game; I patiently wait for it to finish. After a few minutes I skip it, because it is incredibly boring. Most games since the SNES give you an interactive tutorial, but not Bulletstorm. It's sort of like sitting next to your older brother, watching him play, waiting for your turn, knowing that it won't ever come, and if you ask too much you'll get a wedgie. He constantly turns to you and says, "So to do a lasso-boot-shoot combo you..." then he does it and starts showing you how to do something else, but never surrenders control. I wasn't interested in that sort of waiting, so I sucker punched the computer and skipped the video and got right to the action. I don't know if I missed some sort of storyline or not, because I was just asked to equip some weapons. There wasn't any choice, select everything and get killin!

I wasn't sure why it was trying to sceam how awesome it was until I realized it wasn't awesome at all. If it had a story, the demo failed to deliver. It reminded me of every toy commercial directed at children, if they didn't scream at you, you wouldn't know how much you wanted, no needed the Beach version of the Ninja Turtles, or for the ladies out there, NASCAR Barbie. The game did not appeal to me at all, and I love games filled with senseless violence (Mad World!!!).

Okay, the actual game. You start off as a member of a three person squad, running through a bunch of wreckage. Your purpose? Score points by shooting things that are in the red reticule in new and interesting ways. However these ways were completely limited to the use of your grapple beam -er- leash, gun, and boot. The leash is literally the grapple beam from Metroid Prime Corruption and it flies out and pulls enemies to you so you can either shoot them or kick them back where they were. It's pretty useful for pulling enemies across pits and kicking them back down the pits.

There were a few guns available in the demo. An SMG, grenade launcher and a bola-grenade launcher. The latter would shoot a double grenade that would wrap around an enemy and detonate on your next trigger pull. Naturally instead of progressing the story I continually attempted to use the leash to grab a guy, kick him away, and hit him with the grenade lasso so he'd blow up his buddies, but all the enemies were too weak and would die or their buddies would move too fast for the blast radius.

Like I said before, every aspect of Bulletstorm was taken from a previous FPS and thrown into the game. When you lasso or kick enemies you get a bit of bullet time to fill them with surplus ammunition. The B button (Xbox version, obviously) is solely dedicated to the Mighty Boot -er- kick button. Which replaces pistol whipping and the like, but I'm cool with that, if not entertained. Even the environment seems like it was borrowed because I honestly thought I was playing Enslaved: Odyssey to the West's demo.

It's pretty common for me to be bored with a game long before the demo is over and Bulletstorm is one of the games that has given me that feeling... The single player experience was a snooze fest and lost its charm within seconds, and new charm or interest was nowhere to be found. By the time I finished the demo I was contemplating whether or not it would be okay from the bargain bin, but I don't think I'd ever want to play through it.

I thought multiplayer would be fun but then I realized that bullet time doesn't translate well to multiplayer AT ALL, so one of its key mechanics is useless. Now, it's just the demo but I'm totally sold on completely ignoring this game. It doesn't hold up in single player and its multplayer is crippled from the get-go. Do yourself a favor and if your really want to play this game, go alternate levels of Mad World and Turok Wars on the N64. Yeah, I just went there.

Kindle 3: Updated

I finally had to charge my Kindle 3 last weekend. I'd owned it for just over three weeks at the time. Three weeks on one charge is unprecedented. And I don't even like that word. I can't list off many things that can last on a charge that long. Watches, kitchen timers, pacemakers... hmm

Something I mentioned about the Kindle 3 was the paid wireless transfer program. At the time I didn't have a clue how it worked but after a few weeks I've got the scope. Here it goes. Only 3G users need worry about paying any charges, and only when they're using 3G. You get charged by the megabyte and rates vary upon where you are located around the world. Books usually have a flat rate on data transfer charges, and documents (explained later) are charged by the amount of data.

Amazon has every Kindle user set up with a kindle email box. You can email documents to the box with the word "convert" in the subject and Amazon will (for free) convert your document into a Kindle specific PDF document. If you don't include the word "convert", they'll just forward it as best they can straight to your Kindle the next time it syncs.

The document formats Amazon accepts are "Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI" (from Amazon's Kindle Document Services page). The advantages are many. Regular PDFs display perfectly fine on the Kindle, but they don't render in a way that allows you to change the text size. So if you have Amazon convert it for you, voila! A PDF with 7 text sizes and zooming. Nice. Beyond that, the other files aren't supported so while it'd be nice to be able to "just open" a Word document like on a tablet, the ability is still there.

One example of how I've used the PDF conversion is I have a lot of tech manuals in PDF format. I've sent them to Amazon to convert and now I have them on the Kindle in a searchable, resizable format. The conversion was done in under ten minutes, on a file that was about 14MB. Not too shabby (and free).

I've found a great website called Instapaper that has a "Read Later" bookmark that allows me to run a tiny script on any page I'd like to, well, read later. Which is great for me since I read a LOT of content in the course of a day, but I don't always want to read it now. In fact, I get annoyed if I miss an article or have to pass something that I would like to read but don't have the time at the computer. I click "read later" and then later that week or whenever I sync, I can look over the articles I would have missed otherwise. Some may say I should use one of the many RSS forwarders, but that's not for me. Too many stories, I don't want to sift through them on my Kindle. I use Google's Reader aggregation and sift from there.

You 3G customers may be reading all this and saying "Well, that's all well and good but how much does it cost us.". Well, if you don't need it right away, just sync over wi-fi and it's completely free. You can find the 3G fees here. Amazon will only allow documents from approved email address to access your Kindle account. So don't worry about getting random spam. If you don't specifically add an email address, it cannot access your Kindle.

As a last line of defense, you can send your documents to one of TWO different Kindle addresses set up just for you by Amazon. One is @kindle.com and the other is @free.kindle.com. The first one will ship out your document over 3G or wireless. Whichever one it can fastest. The second will only ship out your document over wifi, thus, costing you nothing.

You can access all of these from your Kindle management page (linked to your Amazon account). One other great feature is the ability to limit the cost per transaction so that you don't accidentally overcharge yourself.

There you have it. Relatively easy document conversion, easy cost control and insane battery life. Now that' I've made a fair assessment, I can honestly say that the Kindle 3 is the clear winner over the better e-reader. At least for now.

K.O.L.M. Great little game!

K.O.L.M. (hereafter KOLM) is a great little flash based game that everyone should really play through once. It's described by the creators as being kinda like Metroid. Well, it is. It's kind of like the original Metroid. If you gave it very sad, haunting music in the background and an atmosphere of tension. So, Metroid with the secret room music EVERYWHERE and a disheartening dialogue to 'help' you along the way.

KOLM is a robot that is just trying to please his mum. He's been taken apart and needs to put himself back together again. Necessary upgrades are usually in plain view, while hidden metal plates that you don't need to collect, but they are mysterious, so hunt them down.

There is an interchange between KOLM and mommy that is somewhat akin to the interactions of the player and SHODAN in System Shock 2. This plot isn't as thick, nor is it thin, and I can't talk about it any more without revealing anything. You'll just have to play.

The game controls very well for being keyboard based. The arrow keys move you back and forth and allow for all that fun 2D action. True to the Metroid form, you have to go find all your power ups. The only other buttons you have to worry about are jumping and firing. For the most part you'll know where to go and what to do. If you see an enemy or trap, learn how it wants to kill you, and then kill it. You're on a one-hit-kills lifespan but infinite lives. Unlike Metroid, you'll start at the beginning of the room where you died, and anything you've done will remain. IE, boss battles are difficult, but you can spam yourself into the battle and eventually win.

When the game is finished you'll receive your score, which is modified by a few factors such as time to completion and deaths. I had to play through a few times in order to get a descent score, and you probably will, too.

KOLM gets me in the mood to play Super Metroid again, and that's always a good thing.