Entertainment

Star Trek XI announced

Oliver Brown
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Ironically I found this out while reading an article on a wrestling site.

Apparently the new movie will be directed and produced by J.J. Abrams, a guy famous for Lost, Alias and Mission Impossible: III and is scheduled for a 2008 release. In a risky move the story will apparently focus on Kirk and Spock’s first meeting at the academy during the early days of the Federation. How they do that with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as old as they are is a beyond me, unless they use new actors which is an immensely bad idea.

Oh and they’re apparently not involving Rick Berman in the project at all…

Info on StarTrek.com.

Star Trek, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, science fiction, sci-fi, TV

StepMania

Oliver Brown
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Think of this as an introductory post into something I may mention more in the future. This way I can just send people here instead of explaining everything from scratch every time :P

Ever heard of Dance Dance Revolution (Dancing Stage in Europe)? Well it’s a funky arcade game you control by “dancing”. Arrows scroll up the screen and when they reach the top you press the corresponding button.

The really cool thing is a an open source PC version of it called StepMania. Generally StepMania has more features and allows you to add as many songs as you want (assuming you can get the media files and step charts). In fact there are arcade machines around that are actually a computer running StepMania inside a DDR cabinet (which is a little overwhelming to play because of the sheer number of songs available.

Fahrenheit Indigo Prophecy

Oliver Brown
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I just bought one of the games I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (actually I bought both but I’m only talking about one right now): Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy in America). You should probably read the other post first.

To summarise, the game is well cool. You don’t need fast reflexes or a large amount of skill as such but you do need to be able to think fast. A lot of the time you have a time limit to do something which is three times longer than you actually need - but it includes the time needed to work out what to actually do. Failing to do something isn’t always as bad as you think since the story seems quite flexible: there are times when you realise just what an impact your past actions have on the story.

The story itself has a lot of depth. While trying to solve the murder (alternately controlling the murderer and two detectives) you also have to deal with relationships of the main characters which adds more to the game than you’d think. In fact there are a lot of mundane task to you have to complete that are surprisingly fun.

Graphically the game isn’t that impressive, at least intrinsically. But the clever use of split screen during important events adds a certain style and grandeur to it. The sound for the most part is simple but many moments have an eerie sound track reminiscent of Silent Hill just to heighten tension.

This game will probably appeal most to point-and-click adventure lovers and anyone who loves story over action. But I strongly suggest everyone have a look at it (if you’re in the UK get it from Game; you have 10 days to take it back if you don’t like it :P).

Putting dating in context

Oliver Brown
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It’s that day again, April 1st, and boy the internet make it more fun. And of course Google are at again. Personally I don’t think they’ll ever beat Pigeon-Rank but they have to try.

The first thing I have to point out about Google is be very careful around April 1st. They have launched a number of genuine services on April 1st (including Gmail) that turned out to be real. None the less I’m fairly sure Google Romance is less than sincere…

And another thing, GameFAQs have decided it’s bad to cheat.

Galactic Horde goes Gold

Oliver Brown
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Version 1.0 Gold of Galactic Horde went live today. Top new feature would be the Universal War. I think it’s top because I helped write it :)

Although I think Universal War is a bit of a strange name - makes it sound like a war that is compatible with everyone or something…