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Note: This article is the third in a series examining the God Of War game stories in detail:
1. God of War II and The Sisters Of Fate
2. Will Kratos Live Happily Ever After?
3. God Of War: What Were They Thinking?

Late last night I finished my replay of God of War in the God of War Collection for the PS3 and I feel I've calmed down enough from the infuriating experience of clawing Kratos up the spiked poles of Hades to be able to talk about my impressions of the story some years after originally playing through it on the PS2.

The core problem I have with it is that I don't fully understand what the gods of Olympus had in mind. Each of them hands over a magical power to Kratos during his journey, and I can't tell why they do it. Ares is terrorizing Athens, which is Athena's problem, and all she does is urge Kratos on to go after Pandora's Box. Poseidon gives him an area of effect lightning attack. Aphrodite lets him use a gorgon's head as a weapon. Zeus hands over the thunderbolt. Even Hades gives him the souls of the dead to command. Given how strong and determined Kratos was, and how effective he had been so far, what did they think he was going to do with those things?

(In case you haven't noticed, there are plot spoilers in this article.) Read more »

I’ve talked about the Maemo platform’s commercial failure in the past, and recent months following the N900 – both on the Maemo.org forums and in Engadget coverage – haven’t exactly convinced me of its longevity in the US market. As a phone the device is limited to AT&T for voice and 2G data, or TMobile for voice and 3G, and as an app platform it has an extremely weak Ovi Marketplace. Seeing Intel and Nokia announce the merger of their mobile platforms at Mobile World Congress, however, has given me even larger doubts about the platform’s relevance.

I can’t help but see this merger as Nokia giving up on Maemo and tossing whatever assets it had left in that fight to the Linux Foundation to merge them into Moblin. As far as I can tell no Moblin product has ever hit retail, and the Linux Foundation Wikipedia entry notes that Intel basically handed off its Moblin project to them some time ago. So far the score looks like this: Failed Open Linux Platforms: 2, commercially successful Open Linux platforms: 0, and both of those failures are now in the hands of the Linux Foundation. Read more »

I started playing one of the oldest games on my shrinkwrap stack this week, Far Cry 2 on the PlayStation 3. This game was released in October of 2008, right alongside LittleBigPlanet if memory serves, and I believe I purchased it in early 2009. I think I'm at just 5% complete with the single player, so I'm just starting out. Here are some notes on my early impressions of the game.

Playing at the Easy difficulty level is a welcome option since it appears no single player Trophies depend on completing it on any particular difficulty.

Having to choose a person to play as, plus the bits of the game that take control away from you briefly such as when a malaria pill wears off gives me a stronger sense of identity. This plus the occasional grisly first-aid you perform to stabilize your condition shows more of the character to the player (e.g. pulling bullets out of arms, etc). Read more »

Google's browser hasn't quite been out for a year and a half and it has just surpassed Safari according to one online bean counter's stats. It's now the number three browser, behind Internet Explorer and Firefox right behind it.

Both Chrome and Safari have mobile versions to bolster their numbers, and Safari has to date been emblematic of Apple's comeback. Those Apple stores are still humming along happily, but the Google juggernaut can't be underestimated. The mobile version of Firefox, code named Fennec, is in development and can be found for the Nokia tablets, but those devices are so niche -- I should know, I own one -- I don't expect them to make any kind of dent in Firefox's numbers.

In the end I imagine this just makes the folks at Opera really angry. All of these years of putting out quality browsers for all sorts of platforms and they haven't been able to reach the number four spot. One possible way to boost Opera's numbers? Promote the Internet Channel on the Wii that uses the Opera browser. It seems like everyone owns one of those now.

Seen on CNet.

I recently finished the main story of Red Faction: Guerrilla on the PS3 and found myself suddenly relaxing, as if unwinding from a tension I'd been holding onto while playing. It took a little while of motoring around Mars and cleaning up various leftover missions before it fell into place in my head. I'd been waiting for the single player game to start sucking, and it never happened. The pieces were there, the potential to fall apart, but it never did fall down like that. So thank you, Volition, for not screwing up this game. How could it have gotten messed up? Just three ways to start with: plot, trophies, and the last mission come to mind. Please note that talking about these below obviously deserves a Spoiler Warning! Read more »