Title: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Platform: PS2
Genre: Third Person Action Adventure
Price Paid: $19.99 + one rental
Would Pay: $29.99
Complete: Yes

After finishing Shadowman 2, I needed to play a good action/adventure game. Prince of Persia 3 was on sale last week, so I picked up 2 and 3 so I could do a straight run through of the series (well, technically 4,5, and 6, not 1,2 and 3).

I rented this way back when it came out, and made it about 80% of the way through. I got stuck on one of the fights and just quit, with a day left on the rental. Up until then I was pleased with it, and picked it up when it finally dropped down to $19.99.

This game is definitely the heir to the original Prince of Persia. The feeling of agility is incredible, running up and across walls, over spike traps, rolling under a spinning blade and under the door just as it closes. There's close call after close call, with plenty of knuckle-biting moments.

The game isn't overly difficult, but due to all the apparent close calls, there's a real sense of accomplishment in getting through the traps. There's two things that drag the game down overall. The first is the combat. It gets incredibly frustrating to deal with the hordes of regenerating monsters, especially when you also have to protect Farah at the same time. I did better than the first time I played, but I think it was because I used more wall jumps this time through. The second issue is the length. This game is short, complete-able in about 10 hours, less if you're better at the combat. Tone down the combat and add a few levels to the tower, and this would have been the perfect game.

Preview: Prince of Persia 2
I'm about an hour in, and so far, I'm not pleased. More emphasis on combat, which is exactly what I didn't like about the first. Lots of possible combos, but it's also not as "safe" as the first game. I've already thrown myself off the edge of cliffs many, many times pulling off combos, and I don't recall that ever happening in the first game. As of right now, I'm not entirely sure I'll finish it.

Time for some computer security geeking. None of this is overly technical, so even if you're not an extreme geek, please, keep reading.

Having source code available and freely modifiable means it's insecure, right? That's a common misconception going around the net, but it's hard to convince the holders of that opinion that it's wrong. Finally some hard numbers

In 2004, each browser had a period of time where it had unpatched, publicly known vulnerabilities, or the time that it was definitely attackable, not just theoretically attackable:

IE (no sourcecode): 98% of the time
Opera (no sourcecode): 17% the time
Firefox (sourcecode freely available to anyone): 15% of the time

That really says something about the quality and speed of the IE development team. Now you can see why I recommend against IE, and against Windows if you can swing it.

And from the "WTF are they thinking department" at cnn:

The Treasury Department says that cyber crime has now outgrown illegal drug sales in annual proceeds, netting an estimated $105 billion in 2004, the report said.

At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security's 2005 research budget for cybersecurity programs was cut 7% to $16 million.

Title: Katamari Damacy
Platform: PS2
Genre: ???????
Price Paid: $19.99 (+ borrowed)
Would pay: $29.99
Finshed: Yes

Katamari is one of those game successes that makes little sense. It's not like anything else out there, had little advertising, and the graphics are far from state of the art. It still sold like hotcakes, and for a very good reason - it's fun.

The game itself defies description and classification. You have to wonder how many kilograms of LSD[1] were used in the production of this game. The whole goal of the game is to roll a ball, the Katamari, around to collect of things and make it bigger. It sounds strange, and it is, but the environments are even stranger, with wacked out combinations that make no sense. A pigeon driving a shoe like a bumper car? A teddy bear flying around in a basket? A bear on a rocket bike? No matter how strange, it boils down to "Am I big enough to take this thing into my Katamari?"

The soundtrack is rather catchy too, a combination of Japanese versions of American songs like "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing", and songs that sound like they're original, written for the game. The soundtrack is on jenbooks' list of CDs to get, it's that catchy.


[1] For those unaware, the dose of LSD is ~100-200 micrograms. If I'm not losing decimal places any where, that's 10,000,000 doses/kilogram

Submit your own plea to Cthulhu!

You liked to be tied up, but you probably like to
tie others up more. Nothing is more exciting
then seeing your pray stuck in your beautiful
web of ropes, chains and leather. If you like
this you may want to check out the anime Cool
Devices.


Whats your Sexual fetish?
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Update:
<grammar nazi>
piques
prey
</grammar nazi>

Title: Jak 3
Platform: PS2
Genre: Platformer (with weapons)
Price Paid: $19.99
Would pay: $34.95

An excellent entry in the Jak and Daxter saga, although I wouldn't call it a fitting end. It obviously wasn't an end, since Jak X Combat Racing was recently released, but they also left some holes open. You find out who Jak's father really is, and what his birth name is. The precursors also make an appearance in the flesh, and are rather unexpected. Their exact form has been hinted at since the first game, although not quite the way you might expect.

The difficulty of Jak 2 has been toned down quite a bit, at least in most areas. There are a few missions that hearken back to the pure platforming days of Jak and Daxter. Wheeled vehicles are new in the mix, and just don't feel as fun as the rest of the game. I skipped most of the racing side missions, and based on my experiences here, will probably not get Jak X.

The extreme difficulty of Jak 2 was toned down, but not really enough. Act III's overall difficulty was too frustrating, with many gun placement and rail shooting missions close together. Other missions in other acts took many tries, but they were rarely as frustrating as these. The others felt like you were making progress, many of these felt like cheap shots. In the first form of the final boss for instance, the hits from the boss took less than an eighth of your health. However, at random times, with no indication why, the same type of hit would kill you no matter how much health you had.

Snape - Potions


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Stewie


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