Buy Adam

Wow.

You play Kratos, hired gun of the ancient Greek gods, trying to get the horrid dreams of your tortured past to go away. By doing in Ares. Okay. The plot doesn’t really make much sense to me yet, but that’s really not the point.

While it’s very similar to Prince of Persia in many ways, the game mechanics are subtly different. I’ve only been playing for a few hours, and already I’m addicted. The action is fast. Blazingly fast, but still easy to control. The weapons are beautiful and natural. I suppose I should not be surprised to find that it’s fun to fight with whirling flaming blades on chains. The fight system is reasonably complex. There are a LOT of combos and powerups, and several types of enemies (including bosses) have their own kinds of finishing moves, which breaks up the button mashing monotony a LOT. There are several different views as well, which blend seamlessly - sometimes you’re up close, sometimes in a wide landscape, and wall climbing and ropes have different move sets.

It lacks the sense of desperation that defined Prince of Persia - it’s more about sheer carnage and revenge.

It is the most violent game I have ever played, and it seems right at home. It is common to grab enemies and just rip them in half. Unlike most games, there’s also nudity, which does seem appropriate - topless slave girls, medusas, and probably more.

Really, it’s just a ton of fun.

Buy God of War from DVD Empire.

God of War is being released today, so this seems like it might be my last chance to link to this and honestly say “This is the best platform action puzzle game I’ve played in a long time”.

Building on the liquid gold game mechanics of the first Prince of Persia game (The Sands of Time), this game is faster, harder, smoother, bigger, better, and bloodier.

It’s all good.

They did one thing exactly right that I’ve never seen done to this extreme in any other game. Because of the nature of the game, you’ll find yourself exploring huge spaces with a lot of backtracking over the same area (but it’s new each time - you’ll see). I frequently found myself completely lost when trying to consciously figure out where to go, yet I almost always just had a “sense” of where I was supposed to go that lay right beneath the surface - which turned out to be the right way. The environments are lushly designed, and they use subtle visual cues to nudge you in the right direction. “This seems like the right way to go” - and it is.

Buy Prince of Persia: Warrior Within from DVD Empire.

The Kensington Expert Mouse is BY FAR the best alternate pointer I’ve used for general tasks. I’ve owned some variation of it since it was first released in (I think) 1986, when I got one to use with my Apple IIgs. Back then, it was just a block with cue ball in it and two rectangular buttons. The design has, over a few iterations, evolved to become more vaguely breast-like, so it fits comfortably in the hand. I think I’ve gone through about twelve of them over the years, mostly replaced because of the release of a better design (only one model - the Expert Mouse Pro - has broken, and they were very good about just replacing them when that happened). It’s very precise (great for games), and if you suffer from any sort of wrist soreness, as I do on occasion, it may help you. (As always, if you have symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome or other repetetive stress injury, see a doctor.)

I wasn’t so convinced about the latest addition - the scroll ring around the ball - but after using it for a day or so, I quickly became accustomed to it, and I now find regular scroll wheels a little unnatural and strange. The other buttons are arranged nicely. I use the tip of my forefinger and middle finger together to move the ball. I use my ring finger to move the wheel with my thumb as a guide and picking up the slack when I reach the end of the range of a
particular motion. So basically, your fingers lie over the whole surface of the mouse. I use my thumb and pinky on the left and right buttons, and extend my index and ring fingers for the top two buttons.

I found that the included wrist rest wasn’t quite high enough, and I added another gel pad on top of it. That’s personal opinion though.

The driver software for Windows is very very very customizable, but if you use an alternate OS, it will still work fine - it’s standard MS mouse compatible. I have one on my linux desktop, and it’s great.

There are better pointing devices for different purposes (like a tablet for drawing), but this is my favorite general one.

Buy the Kensington Expert Mouse from Amazon.