Prince of Persia Follow Up

I finished up Prince of Persia a week or two ago. It was pretty fun but may not be for everyone. First off, I recommend using a controller. In all honesty I didn't even bother using the keyboard and mouse but a controller is just so much more comfortable for this style of game.

The entire premise of the game is that you are running and jumping around trying to get from point A to point B to rid the land of an evil god and his minions that are trying to taint it. This game has some really fun environment puzzles but they really don't require much besides a really loose sense of timing and about a 30 second attention span.

This game is not hard by any stretch of the imagination. You literally cannot die. The support character, Elika, will always swoop in to save your sorry butt if you screw up. You may be asking, "What's the point then?" I'm going to say there are two points to this game, the story and running and jumping through some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen in any game.

Now the story isn't anything in particular but the dialog is fun and it keeps the game engaging. I won't spoil the end for you but you may be pissed off by it.

The other thing is the graphics. THIS GAME IS GORGEOUS!! Seriously, check out this trailer. In all honesty, I think the graphics really helped make this game. I would be running, jumping and climbing than suddenly get really high up and look out over the scenery and think to myself, "This is why I play games." It's a really epic feeling. The game was a lot of fun but I still think Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was better. The environment puzzles just felt more epic but this was definitely worth playing. Sadly, it ends pretty soon.

Prince of Persia is short. I think maybe 10-15 hours depending on skill level and whether or not you are a completionist. Once you get all four power upgrades, there really isn't much point in collecting all the other stuff except to unlock additional skins. I did it just to get my money's worth.

Speaking of money's worth, you'll probably just want to rent this unless you are getting it on the PC. It's DRM free so if you are thinking about playing it, pick it up. The PC version is reasonably priced at about $40-$50 depending on where you look. You might find it for less but I think those lower prices were holiday only.

If you have played the game, let me know what you think in the comments.

Modern Library Systems

I love to read. I usually read about 3 or 4 books a month and would probably do more if I had more free time, but I have a lot of hobbies. The problem is, books can get expensive and I don't always want to keep all of them. Sure I can go to Half Priced Books and sell them but you get such a paltry amount for selling back. It's really not worth it. In this rough economy, saving money is really important and entertainment can get expensive.

Over the last few years I've come to love my local library. Not just the location near my house but the entire system. King County and Snohomish County have great library systems. I log in and I can look up a book, place a hold request, and within a few days it is sitting on a shelf at the branch of my choosing with a my name on it. You aren't limited to what's in your local branch either, they pull from the entire county and ship between branches.

This is great for those books that you will only read once or a great way of finding a new favorite. It's curbed by bookstore buying a lot. My wife loves it too. You can get other items besides books. There are audiobooks, which she loves because she can listen and do other things at the same time so she doesn't have to spend as much time actually reading. She can enjoy the audiobook while knitting or at work. You can get other items besides books. I'm a bit of a comic book fan and I have found that the library has a pretty good selection of modern graphic novels and trade paperbacks.

Hit up Google or your favorite search engine to see if your local library has these sorts of capabilities. It's a great way to save some money and still feeling like you are enjoying yourself.

Google Docs gets better offline capabilities

I haven't had a chance to download this yet but it seems that Google has added offline capabilities to Google Docs. Sadly, you have to download Google Desktop to run it. I think I'll give it a try and write up my impressions. So far I've been getting by on just OpenOffice.org for basic tasks. Or if I'm in a hurry, I will use Google Docs online. It's worth a try though.

Source - Ars Technica

Prince of Persia PC DRM free

Looks like Ubisoft made the newest Prince of Persia game DRM free. It's about time someone other than Stardock realize that DRM doesn't do any good. The thing is, we need to support this. If you were thinking about buying this the game is supposed to be pretty good so pick it up.

If you were thinking about pirating it, DON'T! This is the perfect opportunity to make a change so go out and spend the money and spread the word.

If you are interested I found the game for $30 over at Toy R Us and GoGamer.com Sadly they are both currently sold out.

Just in case you are asking, I am not making any money on this. I have an ad free site that I don't update very often that doesn't make any money. I am just a lover of PC games looking to make a change and not to my bank account (well not in this manner at least).

Tooth Regeneration? Really???

I found this interesting article over at Wired. Apparently scientists are working on a way to help repair minor damage to teeth. Check out this excerpt.

"Marshall's newest work, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Structural Biology, focuses on regrowing dentin in damaged teeth with the help of a calcium-containing solution of ions (electrically charged particles)."

It looks like it's still a few years away but I am sure we can all hit Costco and stock up on toothbrushes and dental floss until it's done.

Is there such a thing as too much info in Google Earth?

Anyone who knows me pretty well knows that I am a Google fanboy. All you have to do is read this blog and look at how many posts I do on their apps and you'll figure it our real fast. One of apps I use the most is Google Maps (and to a lesser extent Google Earth). It's on my Blackberry, I use it on my desktop. Whenever I need to know where something is it's the first and almost always the only place I need to go. That's why I found this article over at Time so intriguing.

The city of Nanaimo, Canada has decided to share almost all of their public information with Google so it's available at just a few clicks. Here's a little excerpt from the article:

"The city's planning department has, over the past five years, steadily fed Google a wealth of information about its buildings, property lines, utilities and streets. The result is earth.nanaimo.ca, a clearing house of city data viewed through the robust and freely available Google Earth 3D mapping program. The site sorts and maps every business, from restaurants to car dealers, while a click of the mouse brings up the lot size for every property in the city, including the building permit number and zoning history. Homeowners can use the facility to find out specific information about their garbage collection schedule, while the city's 150-year-old downtown core is rendered in 3D and dotted with 360-degree panoramas."

One thing I am still looking into is whether or not this information is available in Google Maps or if you have to view it in Google Earth. I like Google Earth, it's a great way to find out information but for quick and dirty answers I prefer Google Maps. I'll update if I find out anything new.

Batman IMAX

I was reading an article in my local newspaper about Hollywood offering up more movies in 3-D and that inspired me to go check out the IMAX website. Interestingly enough, it looks like they are filming the new Batman movie in IMAX. Check out the video of the filming in IMAX. Does anyone know if filming in IMAX means filming in 3-D? I know when I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I was a little disappointed by the pseudo-3D that they were using since the movie wasn't filmed in 3-D.

EDIT: I took out the video because it kept auto-loading and I'm to lazy to figure out how to fix it. I'll post a link later.

Super Mario Galaxy demo!!

I was bored on my lunch break and it was a little too cold to be walking around outside so I decided to go to the local Game Crazy to check out used Nintendo DS games because I am thinking about picking up a DS tomorrow. Just as I am about to leave I look at their Wii (I know, dirty huh? Sometimes I just can't help myself) and I see a Super Mario Galaxy box and just above my head is a TV which I realized that I had been glancing occasionally at the actual game. Apparently I am a little slow on picking things up. I then demanded that they hand over the wiimote so I could play!! After the funny looks subsided they handed over the wiimote and I proceeded to waste the rest of my lunch break on the game.

Let me tell you this game is FUN!!! I think the shifting from one side of a planetoid or other heavenly body makes the control a little awkward at first but I got used to it pretty quickly. The game also seems to be pretty forgiving on when you get to close to an enemy but not enough to make it seem easy. The fact that this is a Wii game amazes me as it looks great too. I think it will take some time getting used to but if I can play Portal without having my brain hemorrhage I think I'll survive this too. Wander down to your local game store and see what you can find!

Integrating Google Talk into a web page.

You may remember me ranting a while back about Google Reader and why I love it. In that article I mentioned some improvements I would like to see added to Google Reader. One of those requested improvements was integrated Google Talk.

Well, earlier today, I was perusing Google's feature set of Google talk and ran across this. Apparently, it only takes one line of code for me to add Google talk to a web site. One line, seems pretty easy to me. HEY!!! GOOGLE!!! Get off your lazy bums and stick that line of code in please!! Don't want too? Fine, pay me to do it! It'll cost ya $10,000. I am pretty sure you can spare the change. Too steep? Fine, $5000. No? How about lunch? DEAL!!

What do you guys think? Should I add Google Talk into the page? Does it even make sense to do so? So far I have been leaning towards no but if I get enough feed back on it I'll put the code in.

Team Fortress 2 Interview

I spotted this article over at Kotaku. It goes over the choice of art direction for Team Fortress 2. Or as I call it, my latest obsession (or time waster, but those are usually the same thing).

The funny thing is, I was having a hard time stating exactly why I liked this game so much. Obviously I would say that it was fun but I usually don't play a lot of online multiplayer games. Why is that you ask? Well, I usually suck, that's why. This article goes over a lot of the subtleties that make TF2 a really fun game to play. You'd be surprised how much of a difference it makes.