Price of Persia: The Two Thrones

Prince of Persia: T2T is the third title of the series developed by Ubisoft. The first one was epic with a good prince. The second one had a bad-ass prince fighting for his destiny with the Dahaka (some kind of a time guardian) and the Empress of Time. The third one has a twist: the prince transforms sometimes in his dark self in his quest to reconquer Babylon and avenge Kaileena (the Emperess of Time became mortal, and was killed by the evil vizier).

The basic game mechanics are still present in this title: cool acrobatic movements, good or very good environmental puzzles, very tight controls (you have to press Jump at a precise time, or you have to put the dagger into a hole at the exact moment...), cool fights with the guardians...

New things in this title include:

• some kind of hole in wall, you can stick your dagger in and then swing to another point
• new traps with spikes that come in and out from the walls
• a more stealth approach "speed kill": you can kill in a cinematic way an enemy when you sneak behind him, or drop into his back
• the evil self prince: a more deadly/aggressive combat, new weapon (like a edged chain)

The gameplay is solid but the camera is plain stupid. The first PoP had a pretty good camera. This camera is so restricting and so itchy that will violently jump into it's preferred place and you cannot do too much about that.
The game is also pretty hard because if you have a difficult part and you cannot decide what to do in a specific room or you miss the precise moment to press a certain key you'll repeat a part of the game over and over again, and that's very frustrating, believe me.
The graphics are good, the animations have some discontinuities but is not that disturbing, the level design is very good, the textures are pretty good but a little repetitive.

A good platform game: should not be missed, so I'll give it a 9-9.5.

Gamespot Prince of Persia The Two Thrones review.

The fan is dead!

About 2 years ago, I've bought this video board GeCube 9600XTG (a good Radeon 9600XT). It had a fancy cooling system, it looked cool, it didn't had hardware monitoring features (like an ATI 9600XT board would - and this board respects the specs created by ATI). It certainly wasn't cheap and it fought many battles against demanding games... but it's weakest point: the stupid fan!

As I've told you, it has a fancy cooling system: big aluminum radiator, custom made fan... so I cannot do too much about changing or repairing the fan. If you do not have a fan... a 500MHz core and a 600MHz memory chips will probably get a nasty burn. So you cannot use the video board. So you cannot start your computer which includes: 160GB of information, a DVD-RW unit, a TV Tuner... Nice.

For a stupid fan...

For about 1 week and counting....

Update:
Got it up and running thanks to Xi, my buddy who got it oiled. Thanks buddy!

Star Wars: Battlefront II

Star Wars: Battlefront was a good game. It was original, it was some kind of fun, it had that feeling of you being one little gear of an infernal war machine...
The good:
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is an enhanced version of the previous title. It has better graphics, sharper AI (for the opponent's, because your partners are just running as dummies on the field...), nice little galaxy domination game as a shell for the battles (you move your ships like in a chess game, only you'll do it on a special web and you'll get your missions from making your turns on the enemy's territory), it has more units that you can play (you can play as a Jedi now if you're good enough), you got to play space missions (cool!).
The bad & the ugly:
My complains have to do mainly with the AI of your companions. The enemy is doing some impressive moves, can protect itself shooting behind of some obstacles, jumps as a commando trooper, but their strength comes from their numbers. Your friends are nothing but "Look! I'm running over here, I'm running over there, I'm dead!" The radio is always giving you some nice little hints like: "We can't afford losing soldiers like that!", or "We can't afford losing any more check points!" (or whatever they call them). It's nothing personal but when the enemy's best soldiers kill as many as 15, 14, 13, 10..., you killed 47 of theirs but your guys only manage to score like 6, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2,... you realize that something is just plain wrong. You'll try secure those damn points, you try to secure your buddy's back and they make their stupid run-'till-shot dance. I'll say what you'll do: you'll curse few times and then you'll hit "Quit".

It's a damn shame, because all-in-all it's a good game, and we know it. I'll give it a 8.5 because all those nice features. But this game is intended only for those serious players or dedicated fans.

Gamespot SW: Battlefront II review.