Now, I made a smart choice: Instead of using Microsoft Word or other, similar inadequate applications to write the manuscript, I use Scrivener. It saves its data in what seems like a static file at first glance:

However, upon closer inspection it's really a folder with a lot of TXT, RTF and XML files, which is perfect:

Why is it perfect? Because it plays well with git, that's why. I have a nice little private repository on GitHub, and because I'm essentially tracking individual textual files I get nice diffs:

Sure, RTF can get a little problematic to read in a diff, but it's better than the binary formats. And yes, Word's file format maybe zipped XML, but you can't just version individual XML files within the docx archive.

With GitHub, my novel is backed up and accessible from almost any computer I want, and if I don't have a computer with Scrivener nearby I can just log in to GitHub and read/copy parts of the Novel. I haven't tried Inline Editing and I don't think it's gonna work since Scrivener stores a checksum of each file, but there is definitely some idea for growth.

I don't think I played any Single-Player DLC, possibly with the exception of Gears of War 2: Road to Ruin and the Dragon Age DLC when I bought the Platinum Edition.

The reason is quite simple: DLC is too small. When I play a game, I want to really dive in and be immersed, live through the story, see my characters succeed and fail. After I'm done with the campaign, I'll detach myself from the game again and move on. Picking up the game later means I have to get my mind back into it, remember all the events, characters and little nuances that immersed me the first time around.

Most DLC is over before I'm really back in the mood. A lot of DLC is poorly integrated into the story line and feels tacked on.

Please, don't charge me $8 for an hour of game play.

I want $30 expansions that have a full, fleshed out story line, like Dragon Age: Awakening. Or a $50 sequel. But please, no more Bring down the Sky or Operation: Anchorage.

(Of course, this only applies to Single-Player/Story content. Feel free to sell as many mods, skins and weapon textures for $8 as you want, people buy them)

Now, Amazon finally has an option to remove the ads. Log in to your Amazon Account and select "Manage your Kindle", then "Manage your Devices".

There should be a column for "Special Offers" in which you can remove the ads (the column will only be there when you have a Kindle with ads).

Obviously, Amazon will charge the difference ($30 for the basic Kindle 4) and within a minute or two your Kindle will happily proclaim that Special Offers have been removed (provided it's connected to WiFi).

I have no idea if it works for the Kindle 3 as well.

I also heard that the display was improved a lot from Kindle 2 to Kindle 3 and from what I've heard the Kindle 4 uses the same screen as the 3. I don't have a Kindle 3 to compare against, but it's definitely an improvement over the 2.

Hardware wise, it feels that it's the same in terms of CPU: Downloading stuff from the archive still results in annoying screen refreshes and micro-hanging. Opening the on-screen keyboard results in a noticeable delay. Flipping pages or just rapidly moving through the Keyboard shows the high latency of the screen. No change, but if the Kindle Touch has the same hardware, it just fuels my belief that a touchscreen e-Ink isn't a great experience.

It is still possible to take notes and highlight text passages. The On Screen Keyboard is not stellar, but it's okay. I used the Keyboard on my Kindle 2 exactly 1 time so far, to buy a book from the Amazon store. I usually buy books from my Mac, and I never feel the urge to take notes. Realized how much I like 3G actually. Open Amazon on any web browser and use the "Send to my Kindle" option on checkout. Would definitely pay the extra price, if 3G were offered.

There is no Headphone jack anymore, and no Text-To-Speech anymore. It wasn't great anyway, so I don't care. But if you're vision impaired and actually used that feature, you might want to know. Capacity reduction (2 instead of 4 GB) doesn't matter, bought books are tiny, PDFs suck just as much as they did on the old Kindle, and no audio features means no music. Novels are usually around 1-2 MB, some tech books can reach 5-10 MB, and the (free) Oxford english Dictionary is 25 MB. My 31 books take up 155 MB, with about 80 MB for the mentioned Oxford Dictionary and two other, similar Dictionaries. Battery runtime was apparently reduced, but we're still talking about a month according to Amazon (down from 2 months), a claim that is not only verified true, but also just means that it went from "So long you don't have to worry" to "Still long enough that you won't have to worry".

Does not come with a USB Power Brick, only with a USB Cable. Judging from the coating and looks, I assume it's the same horrible Cable Amazon ships with all Kindles. Expect the cable to literally fall into pieces and disintegrate in a year or so. Threrefore, don't buy these crap Kindle-branded cables as replacement when yours disintegrates (that's a "when", not an "if") but get a plain standard Micro-B USB Cable, ironically sold by Amazon under their own brand as well.

Physical Prev/Next buttons on both sides like on the Kindle 3. They work well and have a nice touch, but I prefer the bigger ones on the Kindle 2. No more holes for book cover hinges - I liked those, but now the official Kindle covers seem to have a hard plastic shell, which is nice. $60 for a lighted cover to cover a $80 device does not look so nice, so I've passed on that. I love how the light is mounted though, much better than the Kindle 3 lighted cover which looked a bit makeshift.

Ads are annoying. I thought it wouldn't bother me much, but I spend a lot of time on the Home Screen and I have 4 pages of books already. I'm only losing one row (9 vs. 10 Books per page) but it just somehow feels I'm losing a lot of space. If Amazon would offer an option to pay the $30 difference to remove ads, I'd seriously consider it. Ads themselves are not annoying and only show up on the home screen and screen saver, not during reading. So if you are cost concious, buying the ad-supported Kindle isn't a bad thing. (Edit: You can upgrade the firmware to an ad-free one directly through Amazon)

If you don't own a Kindle but like to read books and don't mind that you can't resell individual books, the Kindle 4 is a more than decent reader and a better reading experience than any Tablet will offer, including the upcoming Kindle Fire.

For size comparison, Kindle 4 lying on Kindle 2. Screen size is about the same.

Today, Amazon announced three new Kindles, including an Android Tablet, the Kindle Fire.

Let me first say something about another new Kindle, the Kindle Touch: I don’t like it. At all. It seems like the worst of all worlds. It has a multi-touch screen, but no apps or anything, it’s the standard Kindle OS. On the other hand, it does not seem to have physical back/forward buttons. These are a killer feature for me on the eInk because I like to hold the Kindle, rest my thumb on/near the Next Button and just press it. That works so well on the Kindle 2 and 3 and I don’t see the point for not having it. The only real point I see is that selecting a bunch of text is easier (maybe for snippets?), but I think I’d rather go with the Keyboard Kindle 3. Both are equally priced anyway, at $189 for the 3G and $139 for the WiFi Model. I think this is like the iPod Nano: A gimmick

The other new Model is the low-end Kindle priced at $109, a full $30 less than the previous entry-level WiFi Kindle. I think it’s a fantastic product: It’s small and lightweight. It does not have a keyboard, but I don’t take notes anyway on my Kindle, it’s purely a reader that requires three buttons: Select book, Next Page, Prev Page. I think this one will be a massive success, if you can live without 3G.

The existing Kindle Keyboard and Kindle DX are just like they were before: The DX is still overpriced after the last Kindle 3 price cut ages ago, but great if your eyes aren’t that good anymore. The Kindle Keyboard is still a solid device to take notes or make annotations.

Now, the big new announcement is the Kindle Fire, a $200 Android Tablet featuring a Dual Core CPU, multi-touch 7” screen, full color display. It’s essentially a BlackBerry Playbook which doesn’t mean a bad thing – the hardware on that was solid, only the OS sucked. But really, the hardware is for us geeks, the end user is more interested in what this device offers, and this can be summarized with “Books, Netflix, Angry Birds, a Web Browser”.

As I said before, I love my iPad. I use it in the morning to browse the web or when lying on the couch to draw some stuff. However, the iPad is big and heavy, so I don’t usually carry it with me. The Kindle Fire addresses both problems: It’s smaller (7” vs. 10”) and lighter (413 vs. 680 grams).

Amazon is quick to say it’s not an iPad Killer, and they might be right. It’s far more likely that it will kill everything else, because why buy a $400+ Android Tablet that’s not as good as the iPad anyway? The $200 price tag is a killer for pretty much every other 7” Android Tablet, and possibly for a lot of 10” ones as well. I don’t think it will affect the iPad too much, because it not only has a strong established customer base, but also stand out features like 3G, more capacity and a 10” display.

I think it’s a safe bet to assume the price is heavily subsidized – $200 simply sounds to good to be true. Part of the money comes from Kindle books – no 30% commission fee to Apple like they would have on the iPad (if they wouldn’t have created Cloud Reader), and Amazon was once a book seller anyway. Another source of potential income is more interesting: Their Silk Web Browser.

The description reads interesting: Instead of making a ton of HTTP Requests (for JS, CSS, Images), your request will be handled through Amazon (acting as a proxy server), and they send one big chunk of data. Also, they can improve the reading experience by parsing the page and adding page indexes. It’s a bit like Opera Mini on steroids.

Now, this is a great thing to have on a 3G connection. However, the Fire does not have 3G (not surprising, I doubt carriers would be willing to make that commitment at that price). It has WiFi. So why do that? Just to add Page Indexes? This could be done on the device itself, it has a Dual Core Processor after all.

It doesn’t take much imagination and only a little bit of Paranoia to realize what this Feature does: By proxying all traffic through Amazon, they can analyze it and use it for advertising purposes. Essentially what Google is doing with GMail and AdWords.

I could whine about possible privacy concerns, but I think it’s an acceptable tradeoff if you are aware of it. You get a really nice, dirt cheap tablet and in exchange let Amazon monitor your Internet traffic. For people with Google and Facebook accounts, it’s not much difference anyway. I just hope that the amount of compatibility problems will be small, but since it’s an Android Tablet I am 100% sure you can just download a Firefox build for it at some point.

As usual, the Kindles come in a price reduced versions with Advertising on the Screensaver. That makes the new entry level Kindle a $79 device, which is a killer price for it. In fact, I ordered that just today with overnight shipping because it seems like a decent travel device, lighter and smaller than my Kindle 2 at the expense of 3G. I also preordered the Kindle Fire Tablet – if it turns out to be a dud, it’s still a dirt cheap, $200 Linux Computer with multi-touch screen, for which someone will make alternative distributions.

But really, I think we’re going to see a massive price war and the death of a lot of “Me Too” $400+ Android Tablets. And it fires the rumors of Amazon buying Netflix. And it should scare the hell out of Google. In any case, good times lay ahead.

I’ve been backing a Kickstarter project promising a unique stylus for the iPad: The Adonit Jot. Since I wanted to brush up my camera skills anyway, I decided to make a small video review.

Doing this I realized that a) iMovie is a really basic program (might look into iMovie Pro aka. FCP X) and b) I need to work on my accent.

To give away the conclusion: I really like it. Wish it had a pen clip though.

You can find their website at http://adonit.net/

Now, there are a couple of assumptions. First, a lot of people expect that a game that is in development for 14 years at least should cure cancer, bring world peace and send men to the mars just so that it is okay and meets the expectations. Then, they like to compare it to the predecessor and to other games in the genre, which is fair.

On the development time: I don’t know how long DNF was really in development and how much material was really scrapped. I looked at the fantastic 2001 trailer and and the various leaked material after the 3D Realms shutdown, and there is clearly a lot of content that was created at some point and then scrapped. I really don’t know how long the current iteration was in development for. However, when you play the game you can see that there are a lot of great ideas that made it into the game. You can play Pinball, Air Hockey, Pool, Whack a Mole, you can interact with the vending machines, toilets, vibrators and water faucets. You can write on some whiteboards, autograph pictures, control an RC Car or race around in one after you have been miniaturized.

The amount of versatility and interaction was one of the cool features of Duke 3D and still somewhat sets it apart from many shooters that have a very static world.

The enemies are great, with the Octabrain really looking freaky, the Pig Cops actually looking fearsome, the Assault Captain reminding me of a flying mancubus and of course the Alien Queen with her large… assets. To defeat them, you have access to an arsenal of weapons that pack a good punch: The Shotgun has a very satisfying sound effect, the rail gun bring in a sniper rifle, the RPG is as cool as in Duke 3D and pretty much every other good shooter, and of course the Ripper and Devastator which are just the perfect tools to rip through hordes of enemies.

So Duke Nukem Forever has everything to be a fantastic shooter? Unfortunately, not quite. First off, it’s based on the Unreal 2.5 Engine, aka. “Look, we can make anything look like it’s chrome plated, even the rocks!”. It looks rather dated, when a pig cop latches on to you it drags you right down into the uncanny valley. Also, the animations are somewhat simplistic. The minigames are a nice touch, but not very well implemented – trying to pocket all the pool balls is a true test of patience because the ball physics are way unrealistic. Air Hockey is better, but suffers from a weird perspective. The world is very linear, to the point where invisible walls block you from making a perfectly sane and possible jump – this is a sharp contrast to Duke 3D’s many secret areas and clever tricks. There are some Jump and Run passages that shouldn’t be in any shooter (but then again, Half-Life did it as well) and some sequences are too long (like the RC car drive through the Lady Killer). The Video Poker machine was quite good though.

However, the single biggest and devastating blunder is the weapons system, because you can only carry two weapons at a time. Two. While all the good old school shooters allow you to carry about 10 weapons (regardless of weight), DNF decided to be console friendly and only support two weapons (plus a melee attack). Because the weapons have only a small maximum ammo, this can lead to frustrating situations. For example, I was in the hive with a shotgun (28 shots maximum) and a rocket launcher (5 rockets maximum), and I ran out of shotgun shells when I was facing 3 Octabrains. As they can fly, I couldn’t melee them. As they can throw back rockets, I couldn’t hit them with the RPG. So I had to die/restart from checkpoint to pick up the Ripper. I felt that this was really bad design, and with a full arsenal the game would have been a lot better.

A lot has been said about the seemingly offensive content of DNF. There’s nudity, crude one-liners, toilet humors and in-your-face obscenities all over the place. Criticizing Duke Nukem for being offensive is like criticizing Apple for making Designer Products or criticizing Louis Vuitton Handbags for being expensive. The Duke IS offensive, and if DNF weren’t then it wouldn’t be a Duke game. If that is not your cup of tea – fair enough, just ignore the game and play a different one, there’s plenty of fish in the sea. The valid criticism is that DNF doesn’t do too much to add to the formula. It’s mostly the same one liners, and some elements are drawn out too long or were removed (no option to tip strippers anymore).

As weird as it sound, but I think the one thing that DNF is missing is polish. Maybe another year would have radically improved the game. On the other hand, a year from now the graphics would look even more dated, so it’s the decision between cholera and the plague for the devs.

The game has a lot of rough edges, weird level design limitations, poorly implemented mini games, graphics that were cool in 2006 and worst of all a broken weapons system. Many great ideas, sometimes poorly executed. But for me, it was still a fun experience and overall a satisfying game. I’d give it a 5 out of 10 for being a straight forward, old school shooter with plenty of Duke, lots of explosions, great enemies and enough devastation to keep the action going.

On the other hand, if you are more into these awful almost-on-rails shooters that traded fun for broken scripted sequences then DNF is certainly not for you. If you believed that 14 years of development would create a shooter that is better than Half Life 2, Halo 2 and Gears of War combined, then this isn’t for you either.

The game is underwhelming and broken in parts, but I hope that there will be a fifth entry in the main Duke Nukem series.

Of course, the late 70's/early 80's were a great time to be visionary. William Gibsons Neuromancer came out in 1984 and had this very vivid description of cyberspace, years before Hackers gave us another iconic vision. Hajime Sorayama had his Sexy Robots artbook published in 1983 - I'm absolutely sure that you saw some of his pictures, as they were in all the computer magazines for more than a decade. WarGames taught us that the only winning move is not to play, and Synthesizer Music was still en vogue, especially in TV and Movies. I was born in the early 80's, so these things shaped my childhood and therefore who I am now. I belong to the generation that loaded it's (mostly pirated) games with LOAD "*",8,1 and I remember when the Internet first came up and I could waste hundreds of dollars (actually Deutsche Mark) of my parents hard-earned money browsing the web on my 14.4k modem after installing a TCP/IP stack on my Amiga.

So yeah, Tron. It polarized: People either hated it or had it fundamentally impact their future life. It wasn't a commercial success, but it had a cult following. It's one of those movies that should really have a sequel, but which at the same time can't really have a working sequel. What would a second movie improve? The story wasn't that great and the visual effects were now done. A mere 10 years later - in 1992 - Terminator 2 would destroy all limitations of special effects, and three years later, Toy Story would break down the last remains of CGI limitations. So a sequel that has no place in our time, to a movie that was a commercial failure? That has to be a disaster, right? Wrong. Tron Legacy isn't as Visionary as the first one and won't make the same impact, that's for sure. It may not even have any impact on the current generation of kids and adolescents (It's hard to believe, but the youth of today doesn't necessarily know what a floppy disk is, they never spent hours setting up a BNC network to play Doom with friends and never had a chance to listen to the glorious music generated by the SID chip). It's Fan Service, it's a movie for the people who attend ComicCon since 30+ years. It's a movie for the people who saw Chris Metzen talk about Geeks and kept nodding in agreement all the time.

Okay, 500 words in and no word about the actual movie yet, so enough of that nostalgia. I don't want to spoil the story too much here, although the trailers already did that pretty well (Trailers 2 and 3 are awful. Why do movie trailers these days have to spoil all the major plot twists? I noticed that on other movies as well. What's the point of watching a Movie if you already seen all important scenes during the trailers?). So you got Kevin Flynn disappearing and his Son going into the Grid. The story isn't award-worthy, but it keeps the movie going along nicely. As said above, the movie is fan service, so it was quite a few references and one-liners that cater us old people - although at times it can be a bit cheesy, for example when a certain WarGames quote is said almost word for word. There is also a scene that seems to be heavily inspired by the newer Star Wars movies - but it works. Bruce Boxleitner returns (although his role is very small), and so does Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn. He nails the role perfectly. It's a pleasure to watch him, he is so relaxed yet serious. The rest of the cast is equally great - I never heard of Garrett Hedlund before, but he plays a great Sam Flynn and really passes as the son of Kevin Flynn in his looks, behavior and dialogue without being a verbatim copy. The female lead - Olivia Wilde - is an equal as well, not just the pretty girl that's just there for the looks.

With the technology of this generation, they made the movie look spectacular, but not sterile. Sure, it's a very polished world, but one that still has character and spirit. And it's a stylish world, a high gloss world, a world where Beau Garrett is wonderful eye-candy without feeling out of place and not just (completely) thrown in for the looks. The Light Cycle sequences look spectacular, and so does the Disc Wars game, and so do the costumes.

Tron Legacy is a highly refined, polished and evolved sequel to Tron that manages to introduce strong new elements and characters while staying true to the original. Does it bring anything really new to the table though, something that the original didn't have? Does it have one really memorable, stand out element? In my opinion yes: The Music. Of course, the original Tron had a great score by Wendy Carlos that is playing throughout most of the movie and nicely adds atmosphere. But the Tron Legacy score is lightyears ahead. It's made by Daft Punk (who have a great cameo in the movie), which is reason enough already to like it. It seems that parts of the movie were actually but to fit the score, rather than the other way round. I can't praise the score enough, I really can't. It's perfect from the first moment to the end. Especially the end. The Tron Legacy End Titles song is finally a reason to stay during the credit roll and not just get up and leave. The only caveat I might have is that sometimes the music is too loud compared to the voices.

I did watch the movie in IMAX 3D, and if I could give one advice to maximize your viewing experience, then it would be this: Do not waste money watching it in 3D, the experience is utter crap. It even says at the beginning that some scenes are 2D (all the scenes in the real world are), but even the ones that are 3D don't work. So far every movie I've seen in 3D - both IMAX 3D and real 3D - was a huge disappointment, so Tron Legacy is the last 3D movie I've seen until someone invents proper 3D without the glasses or I get invited for free. The IMAX experience itself is great though, with the usual caveat that there are only about 20 good seats in an IMAX theater.

Does Tron Legacy have its cheesy moments, non-working gags and a Michael Sheen that is slightly overacting? Oh Yes. Is it going to be as visionary as the first one? Nah. Should you watch it if you didn't like the first one? Possibly not. Will the story win an award? Neither the Academy award nor the golden raspberry. Does it do a great job introducing the universe to people who haven't seen Tron? I don't think so, you should definitely watch Tron first.

But would I recommend it? Absolutely. Whether it will have a lasting impact or not, it is a great experience. Can't wait for the BluRay to come out.

A few weeks ago, a new site called TekPub launched, created by Rob Conery and James Avery. If you don't know them, here is a brief bio: Rob used to work at Microsoft on the ASP.net team and also created SubSonic, an open source ORM. James is a long-time developer and founded several advertising networks, including The Lounge. What they provide is Training Videos about several technologies.

Currently (December 2009) they have Git, NHibernate, Building a Blog Software and two newly launched series about jQuery and Linux. Also, there is a free series about Concepts and evolving from a Coder to a Developer. Those are pretty "hip" topics, but more importantly, those are topics that (in my opinion) are not very well covered. Sure, there are tons and tons of documentation, tutorials and samples about Git or NHibernate, but a comprehensive, A to Z, Start to Finish series is rare. That's the reason I still buy books, and that's the reason I immediately became excited when I first saw the TekPub announcement.

Let's start with some technical details first. The Videos are large. The WMV Version of the Git series is 1000x748 Pixels, and it shows positively. You can download the videos in WMV or MP4 format without DRM if you have a yearly subscription or buy a series. For monthly subscribers, there are no downloads. In all cases, you can stream them through their Silverlight player. There seems to be an issue with download links pointing to the wrong files, but that only seems to happen if you open multiple videos in tabs and try to download them – downloading them one by one caused no wrong files. Overall, the picture quality is very good. The fonts are readable and the slides are usually concise.

The audio quality is also very good, and this is one of the very strong sides. English is my second language and while I believe to speak it quite well, I do have problem understanding people who speak muffled (I cannot understand one word of Marlon Brando in The Godfather…) or too fast. On the other hand, people who speak too slow and too clear are boring me to death and often I watched Webcasts and wanted to shout out loud "Dude, get to the point already!". TekPub so far has great speakers, regardless if it's Rob, James, or Ayende on the NHibernate series. They have the right pace, they have a clear pronunciation and usually they get to the point fairly quickly. It has a very casual feel to it, which is exactly what I like. I hope they can keep it like that; I used to be a customer of another video training website (Lynda.com) and saw a lot of Hit and Miss when it comes to the speakers.

There are a few minor issues in the early episodes though. Every video starts with a short intro, playing some music and the logo. On some of them, the volume of the music is too loud compared to the narration, so I have to turn the volume down at the beginning and up as soon as the talking starts. Luckily, that is fixed in the newer episodes.

Now to the actual "meat" - the content and its presentation. I watched most of the Git and Build your own blog videos, giving the NHibernate ones a quick look as well. Each episode in a series focuses on one or two points, and the episodes usually build upon each other. That makes it more a Training than a quick reference. With the help of these videos, I managed to start understanding and using Git and I consider them a very good introduction for people who already know Source Control and want to switch or use Git in parallel. But sometimes, I feel like there was no flow. The Git and Build your own Blog series jump from Topic A to D to B to F to C. You may need to watch them a few times as some of the stuff explained later makes it easier to understand some of the concepts before. Also, sometimes the speaker either does not fully know about something at the time of recording or makes a small mistake, and in those cases there is an overlay on the video explaining the mistake or giving more detail. That's okay because I know that re-dubbing or re-recording a section can be painful, but it can be confusing. But these mistakes are very rare. I think I saw them twice.

You can clearly see them improving and you can clearly see the different directions. Build your own Blog is more like a Video Blog of "Rob builds a blog software for himself" whereas Git and NHibernate is straight training.

Would I pay $200 for a yearly subscription? Good question. So far, there is not that much content and you are investing in a promise. On the other hand, they started two more series in the past 2 weeks. They are also clearly improving, as the later videos are better than the earlier ones. Also, they are not some no-names and also they are not known for abandoning projects and letting people down. Finally, one could argue how much the NHibernate series alone would be worth if they wouldn't sell it for $25.

The alternatives to the yearly subscription are a monthly subscription (no downloads, only streaming) or purchasing a series. These options are easier to recommend, I definitely think that Git and NHibernate are worth their purchase prices. I'm undecided on Build your Own Blog and it's too early to judge the jQuery and Linux for Softies series.

But overall, I am very positively surprised. For me, the pace and clear pronunciation is a huge thing, and the content is certainly top notch. Not flawless, but you can see that they know what to talk about and that they are not misleading anyone. They may need to improve the overall flow a little bit, but so far I haven't found any video that wasn't at least good. I definitely recommend keeping a close eye on it if you're interested in video training.

Back in the Amiga Games and in Germany, there were quite a few games that pretty much everybody who owned an Amiga had, games like Das Erbe and Das Schmutzige Erbe (created by the German Department of Nature*), Energie-Manager (by the Department of Economy*) or Das Telekommando (and Das Telekommando kehrt zurück) from Deutsche Telekom and two games from BiFi... (A list of Amiga Promo games is here)

Now I do not know if that is a German phenomenon (that Johnny Walker Game seemed to have some success outside of Germany as well), but those games were a relative success in terms of distribution. As they are free, they came bundled with magazines and shareware collections regularly. I just wonder: What happened to this genre? Sure, those games weren't really "Game of the Year" material (Although the adventures were surprisingly good - the somewhat dark atmosphere in Victor Loomes or the first BiFi game is excellent) and had little to no replay value, but they gave a few hours of entertainment. The reason why I'm thinking about those games is that I just finished Dorito's Dash of Destruction, a free ad game that is of mediocre quality, finished in about an hour, but it's free and it's a reasonably fun hour (and 200 free Gamerscore).

Do those games actually work out for the companies? Is it too expensive to develop them nowadays? Hard to believe, as said, ad games never took their appeal from the quality of their assets, they were simply appealing because they were free and did not suck too badly. Is it easier to reach people using Flash Games? Also hard to believe, but maybe I'm just the wrong audience. Heck, maybe it's just because all the good Ad Games are adventures and the adventure genre went on hibernation a few years ago.

I don't know. I don't even know if there is even a point in this posting, except maybe to say "Bring back some good free adventure games!"...

* Isn't in interesting how the German government saw computer games as a medium to reach people back in 1992, while in 2009 they seem to think that computer games are as evil as Hitler's Mein Kampf?**
** And yes, Godwin's Law on this post.

The FF7 one had some great music, but they kept the original structure 1:1, which means it was at times somewhat incoherent and had a wild mix of styles. Off-Topic: Scenes from a memory is my favorite on that Album.

With the FF4 Soundtrack, they decided to re-arrange the tracks to make it more like an opera/musical, which for the most part works fine. The soundtrack fits nicely with the Story of Cecil. Overall, the Album is a lot more homogeneous than FF7, even though it still mixes a lot of styles, artists and elements.

Now, let me start with the bad, just to get that out of the way. Let me also say that this is not meant as destructive criticism as I respect the artists and their work, and I recognize that taste differs between people. That being said, Act 2-02 Metal Mage (Palom and Porom) is the absolute low point of this album. The Music is actually quite good, but when that boy shouts "Come on people, I want Metal!" I just had the urgent desire to /facepalm as hard as possible. Also, some of the songs feel somewhat lacking, for example Act 3-07 Evoking the Dawn. It's a beautiful piano piece, but for it's 4:20 length it's missing some variety in the middle. Same goes for Act 3-09 The Still Land or Act 1-08 Emerald Beauty - beautiful songs, but a bit too long. Of course, they had to stay true to the source material so this is hardly their fault, but maybe a bit more "extreme" remixing would have been a good idea.

The really memorable tracks on the Album are of course the ones with vocals, but also some others. Act 1-15 Fighting for Tomorrow boasts a choir of monks together with rock music but also some arabian influences - I think I can call this piece "Rock Opera" without second thoughts. Another interesting track is Act 2-06 Rhymes with Elixir, which is a Hip-Hop/Rap track, completely with Shiva doing some smack talking. I'm not a big fan of Rap-Music, but the song is well done.

One of the great non-vocal tracks is Act 1-14 Golbez 'N Goblins, which is in bLiNd's usual techno-style (that often produces great tracks, but also some big misses) but manages to build up an atmosphere. Similarly, Act 3-13 Facing is great for an Epilogue.

Oh, and then there is Act 3-11 and 3-12, aka. Finale. The atmosphere is so great in these, especially with the female voice in 3-11 sounding so distant and somewhat surreal - that builds up suspense like in a horror movie (Or imagine the first Silent Hill game). In 3-12, that evolves into a dialog between the female and a male voice. I'm just not 100% sure about the growls by the male voice though. The tracks can certainly work as a Black Metal piece, but I'm not sure if the singer is really up to what it takes to make growls sound good and work together with the music. I think it's a bit silly at times.

Overall, I really like the Album. It's good tracks are really good and it's bad tracks are still "Okay", it's in spirit of Uematsu's original work but something unique and new.

Before talking about Terminator 4, I'd like to spend some time talking about T3 and T2. When asked about Terminator 3, James Cameron said that he had finished his story with Terminator 2. This also seems to be the majority of fan opinions: T2 was a stellar sequel to a good movie, concluding the story. Two Terminator movies, Cyberdyne destroyed, Sarah and John Connor alive, all is good. But the Terminator universe had more potential. I remember playing Bethesda's First Person Shooter games - Terminator: Future Shock and Terminator: SkyNET - in the mid-90's, and I was fascinated by the dark atmosphere and the way the game builds suspense by the simple fact that not much happens at times, but you still have to expect a sudden robot attack at all time. While those games are non-canon, they prove that the man-machine war has a lot of potential for good storytelling. I always look at the Star Wars franchise, where the Expanded Universe - stories by authors other than Lucasfilm - has brought us some great characters and stories, sometimes on par with the original movies. So just like George Lucas' Star Wars universe was brought in many new directions, so could the Terminator universe be. The potential is certainly there.

I do not know the exact reason why T3 was made, but from watching the movie, I see a sole purpose: Make sure that T2 was not the end and lay the groundwork on which future films can built. Yes, T3 was not as good as it could have been. Yes, to some people it feels like an irrelevant movie. But with the purpose in mind, T3 could never have been a movie on par with T1 or T2, because there was just no chance to really add something new. The movies job is to save John Connor and start Judgement Day, and the movie does that job. Terminator 2 had an ending, Terminator 3 had a new beginning.

So while T3 had an excuse to just be an "Okay" movie, Terminator Salvation (T4) has no excuses whatsoever. Quite the opposite, it's just rightful to expect T4 to be near T1 in terms of quality, because it is a) mostly free of any story constraints and b) starting a new series. When doing T4, the creators had the choice which characters to focus on and which part of the story to tell, and actually they made a decision that I support: They did not create it as a prequel to T1. This is not really the story of John Connor, this is not about sending Kyle Reese back into time. They went to a point before that, and this is a decision that I applaud. Sadly, it's one of the only things I really applaud about the movie, but more on that later.

So at the beginning of the movie we learn that SkyNET is about to produce it's new Terminator, the T-800. We learn that John Connor is not the leader of the resistance, because some see him as false prophet. We also learn about a guy called Marcus Wright who is executed in 2003, but allowed Cyberdyne to use his body afterwards. This is where the first of many ridiculous events happen, as Marcus agrees on the condition that he gets a kiss by the doctor. That really looked stupid and forced, mainly because we do not know the doctor at this point. Later when Marcus is in the SkyNET HQ, we see an illusion of the doctor giving a speech, and here I see a lot of wasted potential because the character is just not developed at all. I hope that T5 adds just a bit more life to her character, otherwise this is just wasted.

Seeing Marcus reincarnated after the discovery of the T-800 of course already makes everyone in the audience believe that Marcus is a Terminator. I liked this part mostly, because the idea of an Infiltrator who does not even know about it is good, although of course not very original (Sleeper Agents and such). I just had the feeling that they tried a bit too hard to re-create the Terminator 2 effect where everyone was believing that Robert Patrick is the good guy and Arnold the bad guy. But Marcus acts too much like a machine to really have the audience feel with him. Also, the second really ridiculous scene happens around Marcus again, this time it's that love plot with Blair Williams. I mean: They barely met, he is beating up some guys who tried to assault her and she is instantly falling in love. Seriously, it's not like there are not enough men left in this world to take the time to pick one, right? That felt really stupid.

Ridiculous Scene number 3 is everything involving the transporters. Seriously, seeing that huge Machine taking prisoners is one thing, but then it stands up and launches two Mototerminators from it's legs? WHAT THE F***? I actually had to double check that I'm not accidentially sitting in Transformers 2 instead of Terminator 4, because this felt so out of place, like another forced homage to T2, this time the motorcycle chase. Oh, and don't get me started on the USB-Ports that those Mototerminators have...

Speaking of forced homages: So Kyle Reese delivers his "Come with me if you want to live" line, and John Connor gets a chance to say "I'll be back", but both occurrences are out of place and badly timed. In John Connors case, it was just completely obsolete, and I don't see any chance for him to deliver that line anywhere in the movie without it being stupid. On the other hand, Kyle had more potential. In the movie, he is still very young and inexperienced, so they could have given him the "Come with me..." line as some sort of signature line, but as he is so young, it could have been like a pickup line that needs perfection. That could have worked if they a) used it a bit more often and progressively improved it or b) used it on characters that are properly developed. Instead, he uses it on Marcus at a point where we know neither Marcus not Kyle. I would have placed it just a little bit further, maybe after the Hunter-Killer destroys the building. That would be a good place to have a little talk and then Kyle could offer Marcus to come with him if he wants to live.

One homage that I really liked what the fight between John, Marcus and the skeleton T-800, because that was mirroring the T1 climax (with some T2 elements thrown in) very well, but it was placed in the proper place in the movie and properly integrated. This is really a homage that worked. Also, the T-800 that looked like Arnold from T1 was great, although his introduction (smashing the door of a holding cell) was unnecessary weak.

And then, there is the ending. I have seen many bad endings, illogical endings, ridiculous endings, out of place endings, downright stupid endings. But this here takes the cake. So John Connor is stabbed by the T-800 and barely rescued, lying on the table, more or less dying because his heart will not make it. And then Marcus offers to take his heart. Seriously, not even a double facepalm is strong enough for this. I was expecting two different outcomes after John was stabbed: a) He dies, and then Marcus takes over. That would be kind of a plot hole but could still be stretched a bit to fit. In his dying words, John could have given Kyle the photo of Sarah and tell him to go to the past once the time comes. Kyle could then have decided not to tell Sarah about the death of her future son, which could also be used to resolve the resulting anachronism. Overall, the death of John Connor would be one solution, but maybe not the best one. Then there is b) John is killed without anyone noticing, and then replaced my a Terminator, similar to Marcus. Maybe even Marcus could turn out to be evil and involved in the death of John. That would have some serious potential for the future.

But killing off Marcus to give a heart transplantation? I mean, let's forget about things like organ-incompatibilities and the fact that sterile operating rooms are unlikely to exist. No, the ending is such a big fail because it highlights the fact that both Marcus and John are seriously underdeveloped and the audience is unlikely to care about even one of them, certainly not both.

So while T4 added some interesting story bits, and while the scenes in SkyNET were quite good, it is ultimately a disappointment because of all the wasted potential. Underdeveloped characters, badly timed and executed homages, a forced love plot and action scenes that would fit a Transformers or Matrix movie really bring down the movie. I mean, it's one thing if your movie does not have a lot of potential from the beginning (Like T3), but it's another thing to really mess up if there is so much room for excellency. There is sadly not a single character in the entire movie who really goes through some character development, which is possibly it's biggest fault. At the beginning I was saying that I like the decision not to have John Connor as the focus point, but to look at other characters. Unfortunately the character they picked as the main character - Marcus - is killed off at the end without leaving anything behind, which means he is just a throwaway-character. They should have focused on Kyle Reese in my opinion, because he should be the main character of Terminator 5 and could have used some more focus to turn from a naive and inexperienced boy into the man he is in Terminator 1.

Conclusion: Terminator 4 is just irrelevant, because it adds absolutely nothing new to the universe. The movie has simply no purpose, no goal, no mission, no lasting value - which puts it at the opposite of Terminator 3 which at least had a clear goal and executed it.

If I were only to pick out one standout scene, it would be the everybody dance now segment starting 1:23, but George Takei declaring that all our base are belong to them is also memorable.