Yeah, I didn’t really stand a chance.

Synopsis

So the story of Professor Layon and the Diabolical Box starts off pretty much where we ended last time. I assume no more than a month has passed between stories. This isn’t important, I’m just giving context here.

Anyways, the Professor and Luke are sent a message from one of the Professors old friends. Said letter contains the friend’s ramblings about getting his hands on something called the Elysian Box. This box is said to kill any person who opens it. Of course the friend opened said box, and no one has heard from him since.

The Professor and Luke go to investigate, where the find their friend prone on the ground. After some additional investigation, the Professor and Luke make for an elaborate train that their old friend had a ticket to. The story gets decidedly more messed up from that point on.

Oh and of course you are solving puzzles pretty much from the get go.

Mechanics

Very little has changed, in terms of basic game mechanics. You still tap your way around the map looking for hidden Hint Coins (a currency used to buy hints to puzzles that have you flummoxed) and hidden puzzles. You have to solve puzzles to progress throughout the story, and there are points when you need to solve a certain amount of puzzles in order to progress.

There are three mini-games built in which I shall quickly go over:

• Broken Camera: Within the story you are given the task of repairing a camera. This involves finding the pieces, and then assembling them all so that everything fits within the frame of the camera. This isn’t as hard as you’d think so long as you look at it practically. The flash goes in the flash area, the plunger goes in the plunger area, and the lens goes in the lens area.Once you have built the camera, you can take photos of certain areas and have a most fun/infuriating time spotting the three differences between them. Succeeding in this usually results in being able to find yourself a hidden puzzle.
• Fat Hamster: You are given the task of getting a rather obnoxious and impressively obese hamster into shape. You are given a selection of hamster toys throughout the story which you can use to make the hamster run to. Getting him to run to enough things, lowers his weight. When you get him to a rank of 0 (in shape) he returns the favor by obnoxiously pointing out the location of hidden coins on the screens your traverse.
• Magic Tea Set: The magic tea set is given to you by an old woman after completing a set of puzzles from her. The idea of the tea set is to create 12 teas using a variety of ingredients that you pick up along your travels. But what is the point of making tea if not to share them with people?This comes to the second part of the game: helping others. Throughout the game, you will come across people who appear to be sweating. Approaching them at this point will give you a dialogue where you have to give them a tea that will meet their requirements. This can be a total pain in the ass if you screw up, because you’ll have to go back and forth to that screen until they’re sweating again so that you can have another shot.

Other than that, the game plays out pretty much identically as the previous installment. The puzzles will ask you to circle, draw lines, or input a number. Or slide things. Lets not forget the God-forsaken slider puzzles. There are enough of those to make you hate your life, I can assure you.

Oh, and yes, there are secret doors in the Bonus puzzle rooms. No I have not opened any because my girlfriend happened to save over my completed game from the first game. That means no code which means no secret doors for me. I know what’s behind them, but I’m not telling.

Words from the Wise

There isn’t really too much I can give in terms of advice. I’m not going to answer any riddles here, so if you’re looking for those, you’ll have to try somewhere else. Having said that, here are some things you can do to make your life a little easier.

• Tap everywhere. You never know where puzzles or hint coins are located. The hamster won’t show up every time, so be thorough. Beyond that, the hamster won’t point out puzzles, so you’ll have to scrounge for those yourself.
• Think hard before you answer. I can’t tell you how many times I lost points because I was impulsive with my answer. Just take a beat and think about your answer before you click that submit button.
• Don’t be afraid to use hint coins. They’re there for a reason. Sure you may want to man through it and not use any, but that doesn’t make your awesome, it wastes your time on stupid puzzles that could be solved much quicker if you just took a hint.
• Don’t feel bad about cheating. I did it, and I don’t feel bad. There are some puzzles that will blow your mind way open, and as such it will simply be beyond you to answer them. I cheated on most of the sliding puzzles, and one or two math ones. I don’t feel bad because after putting in 1000+ moves into each slider puzzle, I decided to bow out and let the Internet guide me. As for the math questions? Well when you have to make a Quadratic Equation just to figure something out? Go fuck yourself. I signed up for riddles, not math.

Overall

The writing, voice acting, and overall story was fantastically. The puzzles were, overall, enjoyable and gave my brain a workout. Having said that, slider puzzles and complex math questions can all go die in a fire. I’m aware that they’re concepts and cannot die in a physical fire. I can still wish for the concepts to die in a conceptual fire. Other than those, the rest of the puzzles were pretty solid.

The music was well done. Hell I’d go so far as to say that the music in this one was far better than the last game. The artwork was top notch, and it translated perfectly into the videos. Even the CG used in the videos was some of the best I’ve seen when blending CG and animation.

The story was odd, border-line cryptic, and had all the little details that really made the story come together. If you can take the extra time to talk to everyone in the game, you’ll get a much better understanding of what’s going on and gain a much better understanding of the depth to which the writers actually went.

All in all, it’s an enjoy able game and it’s a good way to kill 30 hours of time.

8/10

Writern Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, 500 Days of Summer is shockingly not about global warming. No, the story revolves around two people: Tom Hansen (played by the under-rated Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (played by equally under-rated Zooey Deschanel). Two people who met almost by chance, talked, dated, broke up, met again, and all the highs and lows that happen throughout.

Tom works at a greeting card company, where he thinks up slogans for the company, and prototypes cards. Summer comes into the company as the bosses new assistant. Though Tom tries to fight it, he is drawn to Summer for reasons he can’t explain. You see Tom has always believed in “the one” and felt quite certain that Summer was it. Summer on the other hand doesn’t really believe in boyfriends or any of that “fate” stuff.

Tom falls in love.

Summer doesn’t.

Within the first five minutes, you are introduced to every major character, and thrown right into the darkest part of the film. 2 minutes after that, you are thrown into the lightest part. It’s almost mind-boggling, but it holds itself together beautifully.

What I Liked

I am a huge fan of how this film was shot. amazingly simple yet strong shots really helped bring home. simple things like Tom on the Bus, freaking out about the song on his iPod, to he and Summer sitting in the Diner at the start of the movie, to the single best example of a movie breaking into a full-out choreographed song and dance number. Everything about the filmography had me, director Marc Webb does nothing less than stellar in the direction of this movie. The transitioning between scenes gave it an almost Tarantino feel, except for you know what the hell is going on. I loved the subtle use of colours and foliage changing that was a small foreshadow of how the next scene was going to play out.

I loved loved loved the use of typography in this movie. Now sadly, I’m not so much of a typophile to be able to tell you what font specifically was used, but I know it’s one I’ve seen, and it worked so very well for this movie. The transitioning between days was made that much better by the simple numeric counter that was featured (in said font, of course).

And lets not forget the music. From the Smiths to Feist, this movie ranges all over the place. What really impressed me though was how well the music actually went with each scene. Some of the musical choices might have been considered a little out of the way, but they really helped bring in the subtly of feeling that the audience needed. The soundtrack to this movie will be getting into my iTunes one way or the other, I can assure you of that.

I’m also going to give a shout out to whoever built the sets and/or found the locations to do the shots. There are some stunning locations in that movie. So much so that it made me want to crawl into the movie just so I could look around in wonder.

What I Disliked

Though I love Matthew Gray Gubler, his use in this movie was woefully contrived. He was quite literally “the friend” that you needed to fill in scenes or to say specific lines. His character, though enjoyable, was one-dimensional, and little was done to really add to it. His one moving line was too little too late to save the character.

The ending. Or, at least I should say the near ending. When Tom and Summer meet up and talk about what’s happened to them, I felt a little annoyed that Tom let Summer get off so lightly. Maybe I’m just a bitter person, but I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have been as big of a man.

Oh wait, yes, the actual ending. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but the name choice at the end of the film. Really? You actually went for that? Not even the least bit ashamed at the contrived selection? No? Well you should be.

Overall

I am a big fan of this movie. I may even pick up the DVD and add it to my very small pile of “DVDs I Can Be Snobby About Because I Love Them So Much” That’s right, I have that pile, and I am snobby about the movies in it. Don’t get me started on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we’ll be here for a while.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth the drive and the money. I would know, as I am a semi-extreme case. It’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s simple yet complex. It’s everything I wanted out of a movie, and it was delivered to me in spades.

P.S. Thank you 500 Days of Summer for not using Hand-drawn block text for your movie. There seems to be a trend with indie films and that damned font-face.

8.5/10

Perfect.

So without further delay, here is my giant list of (mostly) free mac apps.

Communication

Adium

Adium is basically the chat client on the Mac. Since Microsoft’s version of Mac MSN looks and acts like the original Microsoft messenger did, people have tried to find different chat clients that can pick up the slack. I’m sure there are others, but Adium is my clear choice for this.

Out of the box, Adium supports 20 services including (but not limited to): MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, and Google Talk. Hell it even has support (albeit a little shaky) for Facebook and Twitter. Beyond this there is a large collection of plug-ins that extend the functionality of this already robust program.

It’s also got a slew of options to customize the look and feel of the program, Growl support, and a whole boatload of customization options.

There are only two major limitations to Adium, and I’m not entirely sure one is their fault. The first is that Adium supports the viewing of custom smileys, but to date I have no figured out how to add my own. The second is that there is no sharing box. This was a big blow to me, as I was using my sharing folder a lot with the windows version of MSN.

Beak

Raise your hand if you use Twitter. Yeah, you and a gazillion other people. With the recent super-adoption of Twitter, applications to sift through the mass of 140 character messages are becoming more plentiful, more powerful, and way prettier. I know a lot of people will advocate for TweetDeck, and I wouldn’t disagree; TweetDeck is a fantastic program if you’re really into Twitter and/or have large screen real estate.

For those of us who have small screens, TweetDeck is just too big to be practical. It literally takes up 90% of the screen, and that’s not something I want when I’m doing quick alt-tabs. Beak fills in this role quite nicely.

Thankfully there is a huge list of Mac-Twitter applications in the Twitter wiki, but the big ones are generally TweetDeck, Twhirl, Twidget, and Tweetie. Beak isn’t as big as some of the others and it’s still in Beta, but since it’s most recent release it’s been amazingly stable and does everything I need. Tweetie is pretty solid, and similar to Beak (with some differences), but I don’t really want to pay 20 dollars American just to use Twitter (yes I’m aware there is a free, ad-supported version. That’s not much better.)

You get everything you’d expect from a solid twitter app – posting tweets/DMs, ReTweet, Favoriting, mentions, search, and link statuses – but with none of the cost. Now you can’t have multi-user support, something I personally don’t need to worry about, nor do you get TweetDeck’s Multi-column viewing. Everything that is featured is offered in a tabular view, meaning that you can easily switch between views. It also has a neat feature to display a users twitter information inline.

Everyday

Firefox

Let’s be honest here. I don’t need to advocate for a browser that advocates for itself. I’ll say that I’m not a fan of Safari, as I’ve always found the interface to be a little wonky. I know there are other options out there: Camino, Chrome,  Flock, Opera, SeaMonkey, Shiira, and I’m sure there are many, many more. I’ve been with Firefox for a while, and it’s done me well. I’m not a zealot, but even I must admit that Firefox does it’s job, and it does it well.

Hell I’ve been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix. That’s how old school I am. Kick it.

Thunderbird + Lightning

I’m aware the Mac comes with Mail and iCal, but neither of them are all that impressive. They’re light-weight, and do their jobs with minimal imagination. I tried mail out for all of 5 minutes before I was sick of it and downloading Thunderbird. Ditto for iCal.

Thunderbird is Mozilla’s local mail system. It has all the bells and whistles that you would expect from a mailing system, but it’s free. Sadly it’s not as polished as say, Microsoft Outlook – lets just pretend they’re not going to use Word to render emails for a minute – but it does it’s job and does it well. It has rule support, multiple account management, and a crap-tonne of other features making it a very appealing option to those who don’t want to log into a website to check their mail.

But what is an email client without a calendar system? Light-weight, yes, but not nearly as useful.

That is where Lightning comes in to play. Now on it’s own, Lightning is very much like iCal, if iCal tried a little harder. Lightning can hook into services like Google Calendar (so can iCal, I know) and allow you to actually create events, tasks, and everything else with amazing ease (something iCal does not do).

Now they’ve gone and developed a plug-in that gives you all of the abilities of lightning, integrated into Thunderbird. This effectively removes the need for an additional program running. One less thing running is always a boon to me.

Jomic

Back when Watchmen was coming out, I had no idea of the story specifics. This resulted in my having to read the entire story in one sitting. Now I didn’t mean for this to happen, but as it worked out Watchmen was a fantastic graphic novel, and Jomic was a fantastic comic reader.

Jomic is a sourceforge project, and though their website was obviously developed by a programmer, their program has a solid finish to it. Now I’ve tried a couple comic viewers for the Mac but I can assure you that Jomic was both the smoothest functioning and simplest to use.

It features nifty abilities such as being able to go straight into the next comic in the series (I assume this works off the concept that every comic is within the same folder), two page spreads, zooming, and keyboard navigation. If you want to read comics on your computer (those not in the ‘web’ format), Jomic is totally the way to go.

NeoOffice

There is absolutely no shortage of Mac text processors out there. Given that the list is as long as I am tall, it’s hard to pick out a sure-winner. NeoOffice is not by any means a sure winner, but it does it’s job.

Now I cannot explain all of the many things that NeoOffice apparently does, as I’ve only ever used the Text and Spreadsheet portions of it. What I can say is that from what I’ve used, everything worked as expected (minor visual hiccups aside).

I can’t gush over NeoOffice, because to be honest I haven’t had to use it that much. I’ve recently found myself gravitating more towards Google Docs, which is filling the need for a text editor pretty well.

Smultron

Everyone that develops on the Mac needs some sort of editor. Many swear by Coda, which I admit is a good program. The issue with Coda is that it isn’t free, and that doesn’t swing it with me. I ended up coming across Smultron and I haven’t looked since.

Smultron offers me everything I need from a code editor: Snippets, extensible colour coding, multi-file editing, project support, and automation commands. Now I’ll admit that it doesn’t have built-in FTP support, something Coda brags about, but it does work well with Cyberduck in allowing you to edit files you open and save them right to the server. This works just fine for me, though I totally understand the appeal.

Maintenance

ClamXav

I’ll admit that I’ve never really had to use ClamXav. That doesn’t make it a bad product, in fact it’s very simple to use. See the issue is that I have yet to run into a virus that would affect me. Having said that, it’s always good to be prepared, and that’s where ClamXav comes in.

Though its interface is far from sexy (nothing like having a giant frame with your disclaimer in it on the main panel) it does have a feature set that makes me happy. You can target specific folders for instant scanning, set up scheduled scans, and have a watch dog-style setup so that anytime a file is added to specified folders, they’re scanned instantly. Very handy.

OmniDiskSweeper

This is a very straight-forward program that has one goal: Tell you where all your Harddrive space has gone. I tend to run this every once in a while when I notice my hard drive space tanking out, and I cannot figure out where all of the space is being used.

Now OmniDiskSweeper isn’t a big program, nor is it all that impressive, graphically. It does, however do it’s job perfectly. It scans through your computer and lists off the main folders and the total size that they take up. From there you can drill down into the folders and find out what, specifically, is eating up all of your hard drive space.

OnyX

I love OnyX. It is pretty much your one stop shop for every day MacBook maintenance, tweaking, and general upkeep. Hell it even allows you to access functionality that would require you to operate a couple of programs.

It verifies your startup disk and file structure, it can run general system maintenance scripts, it can configure hidden parameters for things like Finder, Doc, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, the Login window, and more. It can delete caches, it can clean out logs and files. It also cuts Julianne fries (no it doesn’t).

Basically, if there’s something you want to adjust to your MacBook’s settings, run maintenance scripts (I didn’t even know the MacBook had maintenance scripts), and generally do some spring cleaning, OnyX is your best choice.

XSlimmer*

This is the only program I’ve paid for in this entire list – hence the “mostly” in the title. To that end, Xslimmer is so worth it’s money that not buying it is just silly.

Xslimmer basically saves your computer from having to store binaries of code that aren’t required. Universal installers are compiled to run on either the new chipset or the old one. This requires you to have twice the amount of code stored in your app in order for it to work across the board. This is a fantastic idea for developers, but for those of us who only install and use the product, it takes up twice as much room as it needs to.

This is where Xslimmer comes in.

Xslimmer is quite literally a program slimming utility. You can either select programs for it to attempt to slim, or run the Genie, and have it list all of the products that you have installed to see what can be slimmed. It has a built in blacklist you can update to help it know what programs don’t operate properly when slimmed. You are also given the option to install programs “pre-slimmed” meaning that you drop the app into XSlimmer, and it will slim it down before installing it to your system.

It has backup and restore functionality as well, so if you slim a program and everything borks, you can restore the previous version of the code without any terrible aftermath. XSlimmer also allows you to report any programs that should be blacklisted, allowing you to contribute to the community!

I am pretty sure I saved roughly 6 gigs of memory from running XSlimmer the first time, but I can’t remember. I do recall that it was some obtusely large number though, and that makes Corey happy… and talk in the third-person.

Utilities

Burn

I recently had to make a couple copies of CDs for the place I am working at over the summer. Now as far as I can tell, the MacBook only comes with the “Burn Folder” which is all well and good if you’re doing a data cd. But what If I have to make a copy of an instructional video for a class, and I can’t keep the original?

Burn comes to the rescue!

Burn is a painfully simple burning program that allows users to backup, burn, or make copies of CDs and DVDs. What I really liked is that when you back them up, it allows you to make a backup as a mountable hard drive. This means that you can actually emulate the CD/DVD from your desktop should the need arise.

Amazingly simple, yet surprisingly powerful. Now I don’t know how it would handle copy-written material, but that’s not something I generally use my Mac for anyways.

smcFanControl

smcFanControl is one of those programs that you kind of wonder why it had to be made in the first place. I mean really, I shouldn’t have to download a program in order to tell my computers fan(s) “ohgodtoohotburninglapcoolthisthingdownmoreitburns” but sadly, that does seem to be the case.

smcFanControl is a tiny app that sits in your menu bar, and allows you to change the current RPM of your fans on a whim. You can create your own settings for quick swapping (I have Default, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, MAX) and even has MacBook Pro support so that you can control your fans separately. It’s free, it’s tiny, and it’s saved my computer from melting while running intense Photoshop sessions. A total must-have.

Cyberduck

I used to use OneButton FTP, which I still think is a fantastic program. But when I moved servers, I had to change FTP clients because OneButton does not support SFTP or some other advanced connection options. So I went hunting around and eventually got my hands on Cyberduck.

Cyberduck does everything you expect it to do, and that’s pretty much it. It’s simple to use, easy to navigate, and can even detect local servers to connect to (a la Bonjour devices). It supports opening documents directly from FTP and saving back to, which is always nice. I’m not sure how common that is in FTP programs, but there it is.

It does everything the big, costly FTP apps do, but it’s free.

Oh, and there’s a widget that you can get with it to quick-upload things from your dashboard. So that’s handy.

FontExplorer X

Made by Linotype, FontExplorer X is a great way to quickly access, activate, deactivate, and test your fonts out. You can tell it where to install fonts (like the normal spot, or wherever you want them to go), you can organize them according to labels, and even have sets and smart sets.

Basically FontExplorer X has all of the features that Finder has for normal files, but for your fonts. Conveniently, FontExplorer X has the ability to buy fonts and download them direct from LinoType (much like iTunes).

All in all, it’s actually a very smooth process, and for those in the graphic design business, or for those new to it, FontExplorer X is a God-send.

UPDATE: Apparently this one is still downloadable, but no longer supported. I still recommend getting it while you can. You can always pay for the pro version, but once again: money.

DropBox

I really don’t know how much more I can really talk about DropBox. I have boasted it’s pure sex functional experience before.

I don’t think I need to get on my soapbox again, but let me say this: It’s a backup system that is simple to use, easy to install, and works. What more do I have to say that I haven’t said before?

Get it.

Senuti

I’ve only had to use this once, and that was only because I had to migrate all of my music that I had on my iPod. Now I know you can pull off the music from your iPod by making it act like a drive – blah blah blah – but when you do that, the file names are still encoded by the madness that the iPod runs off of. So what do you do if you need to get your music off of your iPod? iTunes won’t do it, so you have to go somewhere else.

Senuti is one of those solutions.

It’s fairly straight-forward, and does what it says it does. Plug in your iPod, select what you want to transfer, and you click the Transfer button. You’re asked where you want to save said files, and then it goes. Simple, to the point, no annoying setup times.

UPDATE: Apparently it’s not exactly free anymore, which is a damned shame. Still, if you only need to use it once (like I did) the trial will do you just fine.

Transmission

Not much to say about Transmission: it’s probably the easiest and best torrent program you can use for the Mac. Granted I don’t really download things often, especially on my Mac, but when I do have to Transmission makes it as simple as possible.

It’s got a clean interface (the most recent upgrade has improved it even more-so). If you’re in the habit of downloading legitimate, non-illegal files using torrents, Transmission is the way to go.

See what I did there?

VirtualBox

I heart VirtualBox. I don’t even need to run it all that often, but I still love it. As I use a Mac, it is generally thought that I cannot run any Windows applications because Microsoft and Mac don’t play well together. Well with the new Mac software, you can do a dual-boot into Windows. This is all well and good, but most people don’t want to have to reboot their computer in order to run Windows.

This has lead to programs such as Parallels, Coherence, and Fusion. The issue with all of these solutions is that they cost money. I’ll admit that they all work well and are probably worth every penny. I, however, prefer not spending money when possible. This of course has lead me to VirtualBox.

VirtualBox works by creating a sandbox environment for your new operating system. It’s sort of like picture in picture, with your Windows (or Ubuntu, or whatever) build running in a window. What really makes VirtualBox shine is that a) you can full-screen the environment making you “feel” like your in windows, b) you can make network drives to folders in your Mac (allowing you to share files between builds), and c) you can customize the beejeezus out of your box. How much RAM you want, what ports are enabled, localization, everything.

If you’re looking for a way to run your install of Windows on a Mac, and don’t have any more money because you spent it all on your install of Windows, then make sure to check out VirtualBox.

Conclusion

So there you have it, a collection of programs I use on my Mac, and I’ve only paid for one of them. I think that’s a pretty good track record if I do say so myself. I hope that my quest to not spend money for programs will assist you, the reader, in doing much the same.

If you have anything to add to my list, feel free to comment them in this post.

See the problems with my playing these sorts of games are:

• I’m no good at them.
• I lack the toned fore-arm muscle of the veteran gamer.
• I lacked a console.

Well I now have a console, so I have no excuse as to whether I could try to play them or not. Turns out I still suck at them, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. The forearm muscle is a slow process, and I’ve already given myself muscle strain resulting in a fantastic carpel tunnel attack. You just don’t feel like a man until you’ve got to ice your forearm because of extreme button mashing.

Or is it “You just can’t feel like a man when you have to ice your forearm because of extreme button mashing”?

Either way, it hasn’t stopped me from playing Castle Crashers with extreme vigor.

I am currently very in love with The Behemoth‘s Castle Crashers. It’s a game that I can pick up and put down for an hour or so at any given time. It’s got this quality about it that lets me enjoy it (whether it’s frustrating the crap out of me or not) every time I sit down to play. Maybe it’s the solidity of the game mechanics; maybe it’s the well-placed fake-outs and humor; maybe it’s the constant challenge it provides. It’s very probably because of the joy one gets from beating the hell out of various enemies with reckless abandon.

Probably all of the above.

Mechanics

So as I said, the game mechanics are pretty solid. I’ve only ever run into one issue with the game crapping out, and that was at my friends house where a cut scene didn’t activate. We have no idea how we did it, nor do we know how to recreate it. We weren’t too pleased with that fact, as we had to do the whole damned level over again.

The enemy A.I. is only so complex, and yet it still manages to take full advantage of when you’re down. It thrives on kicking you in the kidneys while you’re on the ground. Revels, one might even say. They see, to have a set pattern of having equal numbers of guys attacking you head on and magicing/arrowing your unfortunate self. It does get aggravating after a while.

Castle Crashers has a bit of an RPG element to it by including an experience bar, four stats you can add points to (Attack, Magic, Defense, Agility), and even has hidden items, weapons, and pets. A neat twist with it all is that you gain experience by landing blows on enemies, and not by killing them. It took my friend and I a while to figure out why he was exceeding me in experience despite my doubling (sometimes tripling) him in kills. This introduces an interesting quandary: Get a weapon that adds to your Physical or Magical attack, or sacrifice those stats for increased Defense (allowing more hits on bad guys).

The sweetest part about the game is that after you’ve beaten it in normal mode, you can switch to “insane” mode and play through it all again. Now I used to wonder why they dubbed it “insane,” until I started playing through it. Hard mode, as it turns out, is for sissies. Insane mode basically triples or quadruples every enemies defense, health, and damage. Believe me that we are actually stuck fighting through a certain area because my friends magic user is useless in it. We honestly can’t do enough damage fast enough to the murder-machines.

Castle Crashers also does a fine job of introducing a variety of game modes. You have your standard side-scrolling bashery, your auto-scroll dodging level, your random swimming level, and even a flying portion. They really manage to mix things up as well as making everything feel fresh. It actually tooke me a moment to realize that there are a bunch of auto-scrolling levels, because they don’t really feel like them. That’s impressive

Humour

I cannot talk too much about the humour of the game without giving away most of the gags therein. Suffice it to say that there are many times when my friend were caught laughing for far too long at a well delivered joke. The active humour aside, many of the animations within the game allow for a solid chuckle. Watching the King bounce around on his Pony while being attacked by thuggish bees is just so absurd that you can’t help but laugh.

Did I mention that you play a game of volleyball as a “boss fight?” No? Well there you are then.

Visual/Audio Appeal

Castle Crashers is, quite simply, nice to look at. Sure, it’s not some insane 3d rendered planetscape where everything looks photo-realistic. In fact it’s almost simple in its cartoony goodness. Having said that, there is obvious polish that has been added to everything. Subtly added things that just help make the presentation of the game that much better. Maybe it’s the fact that you can see a bad guys skeleton when he gets electrified, or how enemies smolder after they’ve been hit with fire. How about an enemy that throws up the horns before you fight?

I have to mention quickly that when you’re not fighting for your life, make sure you give the backgrounds a gander. They aren’t amazing in and of themselves, but they do usually contain within them more humour and added style that makes everything just that much better.

It’s the little things that really bring about a great visual experience, and this game does it in spades. Oh, and the game is HD ready. That’s an added bonus.

Now the audio in this game is something that just cannot not… not not be enjoyed. The boys over at Newgrounds (where some of The Beheamoths crew came from) have released much of the music in their Castle Crashers section if you’re interested. Much of the music loops flawlessly (there are some exceptions, sadly) and I can guarantee that at least one of the songs will get stuck in your head. The common one for me is the song that plays within the Ark.

Throw in some solid action sounds (raising undead baddies never sounded so good!), and you’ve got yourself some really solid audio to enjoy.

Replay Value

This game comes with so much potential replay value that I am tempted to use the term “oodles.” I won’t but it’s right there, in the shadows, waiting patiently. First off, You have all of the Achievements, which are standard 360 fare. Then you’ve got all of the pets to collect, All of the weapons to get (some of which require you to trade with other players online), and 20 unlockable characters. If that wasn’t enough, there are even two mini games added on:

• All you can Quaff: this game is basically an exercise in pain. You mash the X and Y buttons repeatedly trying to eat your food faster than anyone else. First to finish five plates wins!
• Arena: It seems to play the first arena in offline mode, and I can only assume that online mode yields a “to the death” mode with the players.

On top of all that is the fact that you can play Castle Crashers with up to three other people online making it all that much more fun. Many of the Achievements actually require you to play in online mode, which is both a good and bad thing.

Cost

Dirt cheap. I can’t recall the exact price (somewhere around 800 Microsoft Points rings a bell) but it’s utterly worth it. This game pays for itself in play time as well as over all enjoyment. Added to that are DLCs (Downloadable Content Packs) which give you access to new playable characters, weapons, and even a new pet. They currently only have one DLC out (costing 160 Points), though there are many hints as to more.

Overall

Totally and completely worth it. If you have an XBox 360 and you don’t have this game, you are basically shaming yourself. It’s cheap, it plays well, it’s funny, it’s enjoyable, and it’s got oodles of replay value. I can’t think of a reason you wouldn’t want to get it.

9/10

God damn it all to the Abyss I said “oodles.”

Regardless, since using Dropbox I can only say that it does everything perfectly. If ever you could have a backup system for the lazy, the inexperienced, or the uninterested this would be it. I know that casts an odd light on Dropbox, but trust me when I say that it is probably the single most impressive piece of software/service that I have ever installed. I’ve commented on using Dropbox before, but now I’m going to get into it with more detail.

So what is Dropbox?

Though their website explains it well enough, the jist is this: Anything in your Dropbox is automatically synced with any computers attached to that account, as well as the Dropbox web server. That’s a lot of things that are awesome all in one sentence, so I’ll try and explain in greater detail.

First, most back-up devices require you, the user, to do something; click a button, tell the system to sync, commit your files, etc.. Sometimes you have chron jobs set up to do these things for you. The joy about Dropbox is that it’s all automatic. Even better is that it’s silent about it. If you add a file, it just tries to sync to the server. If your computer isn’t connected to the Internet, it just sits there patiently. No error messages, no dialogues, no chicken-with-head-chopped-off reactions from the program. This is fantastic.

When you are connected, and you add or remove files, it silently updates your computer and the server, and when it’s finished, it will tell you what has changed. It silently ques files to upload or download and just goes to town. No confirm or allows required.

Second, you can sync as many computers as you want to the same account. This means that personally, my laptop and my desktop have all of the same files within their Dropboxes. This allows me to share files between them even when I’m not on the network. This also means that if anything explodes, I’ve got at least one backup. The kicker is that my files are also stored on the Dropbox server, so if both of my computers die, I’ve still got the ability to recover anything that was in my Dropbox.

This as an added bonus. I have a niece, and she’s recently started in ballet. My mother is gaga over the little’un, but as she is currently in Alberta and we in Ontario, viewing is a limited practice. MSNs Sharing Folder decided to stop syncing. This is something that happens between specific users, and I have no idea why. In any case, I opted to get around it by creating a Dropbox account for my brother and my mother and linked their computers together. They can now share files hassle-free. Brilliant

Third, they’ve got a solid online management system. You can view a history of files you have changed, as well as that copy of the file. This is an impressive step on their part. Basically if you over-write or delete something, you can actually go and recover the file. You can set permissions on files to allow public linking, download entire folders as zip files, and even view what computers are attached to your account.

Fourth, it’s free. Well alright, you get two gigs of server space free, and if that’s not enough, you can upgrade to 50 gigs for 100 dollars a year (or 9.99 a month, if that’s what you’re looking for). This simply blows my mind, and I know that when I really get into designing and freelancing, this could very well be the best 100 dollars I could spend on my business.

Fifth, it acts like a normal folder. Add files to the folder, delete some, create sub-folders, whatever you want. Dropbox will replicate the structure and files on the server and any of the computers sync’ed to the account. No fancy interface to learn, no special keyboard commands to learn; it lets the operating system do all of the UI work for structure management.

Lastly, it’s unreasonably easy to install. You can either get Dropbox running in basically two ways:

First way

1. Go to www.getdropbox.com.
2. Make an account.
3. Download and run Dropbox.
4. When asked if you have an account, say yes.
5. Fill out account info.
6. Finish.

Second way

1. Go to www.getdropbox.com.
2. Download and run Dropbox.
3. When asked if you have an account, say no.
4. Fill out account creation form.
5. Finish.

That’s it. That’s everything you need to do to have Dropbox up and running. It honestly puts WordPress’ famous “Five-minute install” to shame. If you have a fast connection and quick fingers, you can have Dropbox running in about 2 minutes. That is an impressive engineering feat.

So what if you want to add another computer to your account?

1. On new computer, go to Go to www.getdropbox.com.
2. Download and run Dropbox.
3. When asked if you have an account, say yes.
4. Fill out account info.
5. Finish.

Now I think there could be a confirmation requirement on the web interface, but I honestly cannot remember. I don’t think so, but I’ve been wrong before.

Additional perks

So I’ve talked about Dropbox and what it can do from a main feature stand-point, but what about those who are more technologically inclined? What is there in Dropbox that really makes it a solid program technically?

Well first off, you can specify where you want your Dropbox. By default it picks a location (Users/coreydutson/Dropbox on the ol’ Mac) but if you want to store it somewhere else, you are more than welcome to.

Using one set of credentials, you can attach multiple computers. This means that you only need to remember one user name and password for all of the computers attached. Though I admit that I haven’t found a way to attach to multiple Dropboxes (probably avoided purposely to negate free account abuse), and this could be considered a limitation, you must remember that it was made to be simple. This means that some consessions had to be made.

You can set Dropbox to use Growl, if you’re on a Mac and that’s what you’re into. You can also set maximum upload and download rates to help stop Dropbox from slowing your connection down. You can even have proxy information for those that need it.

So what?

Well for me, this is my only means of backup at the moment. This may horrify some people, but remember that should my hard drive fail, I can always replace it and re-install. There isn’t very much on this computer that I couldn’t get again. Everything stored in my Dropbox are files that I cannot replicate; namely all of my school work, resume information, and some freelance work I’ve done.

I can rest easy knowing that should my computers die at any time, I can still access all of my schoolwork upto this point. This is something that any student can appreciate. Those who work with a lot of important documents (layout PSDs come to mind) can probably share a horror story about losing a HDD or over-writing a file and being utterly S.O.L.. I’ve been there myself, and I now operate under the “once bitten, twice shy” method of job/school security.

In Summary

If you need a way to back up files safely, easily, and hastle-free Dropbox is for you. I cannot recommend it enough. I’m going to mention it to my Professors at school, and who knows, it may become standard practice for students. It’s totally worth the 2 minutes to get up and runnin.

Get Dropbox.

To start, I want to say that I’m going to avoid explaining  Evil Dead The Musical is so chalked full of tribute lines that it’s a little impressive that they got some of them in. I admit that one or two of them feel a little forced, overall they had excellent delivery and got great crowd reactions. The Dialogue was pretty solid throughout the entire play, and true to the movie there were so many bad puns and plays on words that it was killing my a little on the inside.

This killing was in the best way possible, of course.

Ryan Ward does an almost creepy job of emulating Bruce Campbell while at the same time giving the role his own touch. He delivers the 12 gauge S-Mart speech so well that everyone who knew it were saying it along with him. Truly fantastic. The rest of the cast do a great job of bringing the show to life, and without them the show probably wouldn’t have been nearly as good as it was. Special mention has to be given to Tenja Hagenberg and Mike Nahrgang for standing out and nearly stealing the show with such solid acting. Truly fantastic.

The songs were, quite frankly, rather rude. I’m not complaining about it as I tend to swear more than your average sailor. The singing was entertaining, on key, and far better than I was expecting. The sound in the Diesel Playhouse really helped make the experience that much better. When you have song titles like: “Stupid Bitch”, “What the Fuck was That?”, “All the Men in my Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons”, and “Ode to an Accidental Stabbing” you know you’re in for a good show.

I have to give special mention to the props, or a lack therein. The sparcity of the props really made for an interesting performance, and really puts the pressure on the actors to deliver a strong show. The props played a subtle but important role by accenting everyones work. Especially the blood.

There was a lot of blood.

Let me take a moment to explain the ‘Splatter Zone.’ If you are sitting in the splatter zone, you will get soaked in faux-blood. They even hand out poncos to people who want them. The blood they use apparently washes out easily, but somehow still smells exactly like blood. It sorta freaked me out when I smelt it and I wasn’t even in the zone. The Splatter Zone was also completely sold out when I went to purchase tickets, though you do pay a premium to be there. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it would have been totally worth it.

I was so entertained by the show, I and emplore everyone to go and see it. The show ends September 6th of this year, so get out and see it. For twenty bucks, you can’t go wrong.

8/10

Pros

• Fairly large library to choose from.
• Making playlists is easy.
• Music player is on every page, either featuring music, or displaying yours.
• Adding Songs to a play list is all inline, and doesn’t require any sort of popup or extended form. Search, Add, Select profile, OK. That’s all
• Built in profile, preferences, user base, messaging, other web 2.0 stuffs.
• Available in a snot-load of languages (with a few spelling hiccups)
• Player is somewhat robust, sporting repeat, shuffle, pause and preview options.
• Ability to upload your own MP3s, which are stored privately for you only. Part of this scares me, as cool as an idea that it is.

Cons

• Some of the worst UI decisions I’ve ever seen, some very unintuitive locations.
• Some rather funny spelling mistakes
• Everything is in flash.
• Some of the most annoying ads that actually break the page and stop it from loading until you close it. Go to hell milk ads.
• Community aspect sorta sucks, as there’s no real way to get people interacting. All users must be found via search, which makes it hard to get participation up.
• Weird lack of rather common songs.
• I’ve manged to totally bugger up their player by clicking to fast.

last.fm

Pros

• Clean, simple interface
• Downloadable program to stream music from program instead of browser. Program also relays what you play in programs such as iTunes, and saves your tastes.
• Wide and diverse musical library
• Great user interaction. Friend listening lists etc. Good community aspect.
• swappable theme (stupid, pointless, and sweet)
• Excluding the music player, everything is HTML (not Flash)
• The player will slowly introduce new music/bands/artists that are similar to your choices, allowing you to be exposed to more artists.

Cons

• Distinct lack of common songs
• The program doesn’t allow for the picking if individual songs, nor does the browser player
• Adding songs to your library feels like a chore, and has a few too many clicks.
• Creating playlists is way more buried than I would have expected.
• Their new layout feels a little TOO minimal to me, and I feel a little lost when trying to get around. The dropdown list beside your name is not what I would expect for navigation.
• Player doesn’t have a pause. What the hell.

Which would I choose?

It actually depends.

If I’m in the mood for a type of music, then last.fm wins hands down. If I want specific songs, then Deezer is actualy more of a playlist-oriented system. Last.fm has a much stronger community function-base, which is great if you’re looking to connect with other people over music. Deezer, though it features community fetaures, it’s not nearly as stong as last.fm. It’s playlist pick and choose style is fantastic if you want to simply listen to your favorites (if they’re there). Deezer allows you to store your MP3 onlines, making it’s playlist features that much stronger.

Moods, friends, factoids: last.fm

Songs, playlists, storage: Deezer

They offer a wide variety of services, but they are mostly tied in within the original scope of the site. A brief rundown:

• Profile management – a staple.
• Private Messaging – another staple.
• My Quotes – Quote you’ve found that you enjoy.
• My Writing – A neat way of getting your writing out there. You maintain the copyright to anything you write, and it collects it all for you. Very smart idea.
• My Groups – Another staple. You can join groups and converse there. There are also systems in place to meet people, and rolls up a list of people online in your country.
• My Comments – Collects and displays all of your comments on the site.
• My Events -Allows you to create events that you are attending or making. Think of Facebooks event management.
• My Books – The heart and soul of the site, and what I’m sure was the original conception to the site. This section lists all of the books on your bookshelves (you can customize your shelves) as well as your reviews for them as well as ratings therein. Really nice system, straightforward.

I’m glad someone actually went ahead and made a site like this. The user base is still fairly small all things considered, but it has potential. What I really like is that when I first log in I am presented with a list of all of the reviews that have occurred in my absence. Considering I just added Bart and his girlfriend (somehow she’s already up to 78 books in her shelf… in 5 minutes) I’m already being assailed with a large list of books that I can note down as to-read or actually add my own rating to.

In addition of the whole participant social scene within the site, there is also an author listing, which is really interesting because not only does it give you a biography of the author, their site, and what they’ve written; it also allows you to become friends with them. I find this an interesting change from the norm; it’s like taking the fandom and bringing them a step closer. It’s a neat idea though I wonder how many authors would actively participate in the site.

One thing I’m really in love with is the fact that when you rate a book it’s instantly added to your “read pile.” What this allows you to do is search for your books, add them, and then you can go back on your own time and add your reviews. A great way to increase user use and acceptance.

The Bad

I am perpetually cringing at the UI. I know I’m not a designer yet, and I know that my opinion is one of many, but there are just certain things that you don’t do:

• Using Georgia for EVERYTHING on the site is painful, and gets really hard to read. From what I’ve learned, Georgia is a “heading” font, not a “content” font. The reason for this (and I could be wrong here) is because Georgia isn’t as readable at a smaller size then say, Arial or Verdana.
• Having a lot of text on a page can get painful when it’s not divided properly. Sometimes less is more, and if you simply have to display what you are displaying, then maybe applying a Grid to the content could help clean it up. This allows for a greater amount of text without being as busy-feeling.
• Overuse of Google ads gets annoying, and detracts from what you’re actually trying to sell (in this case, the functionality of the site)
• Does it need a lot of the functions that it’s offering? I know they’re cool and all, but some of them could be dropped, or possibly expanded upon and moved into their own sub-site (My Writing comes to mind). The Events section is neat, but is it really required? Facebook does a pretty solid job, and sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, and Pownce do a great job of handling small blurbs about where you’re going.
• Thing’s feel a bit buried. It takes too many clicks to do some things, and it gets painful. The general rule is that three clicks should bring you where you need, and they do meet that (for the most part). What’s weird is that at the top right of your personal home page, there are “Add more books” and “Add more friends” links, but to add anything to the other sections (Quotes, Writing, Events, Comments) You need to go into those sections to add anything. Why not have those links under the first two Add links?
• I’ve noticed a couple of programming bugs that make the coder in me cringe. Nothing major, but the site could use a little polishing, code-wise.
• The search isn’t all that robust. When it doesn’t come back with any results, it doesn’t offer any suggestions, which is becoming the norm. More than once I had to use the amazon search to find what I wanted, then when I added it, it magically found it within the system. A little annoying.

Ending Thoughts

Pretty neat, and I’ll give it the old college try. I’m glad someone actually decided to come out with a website dedicated to the review and sharing of literature, I just hope the site doesn’t go belly-up due to lack of participation or some other crummy reason. A lot of cool features, though I think that a couple bog the system down. The UI hurts my brain, but I’m willing to get past that because the website has real merit, and I want to contribute to a community that I can actually get behind.

A little slow and pointless off the bat, it feels very typical for the first 20 minutes or so. Once it has been established that, yes, he is the only guy around, it gets to the good parts. I shouldn’t paint it so negatively, because I Am Legend does a wonderful job of building tension. I mean, you know shits gonna go down, and you know it’s going to be hardcore. The movie refuses to throw the viewer into it right off the bat though, and I have to respect that.

Suffering from flashbacks, Robert has a personal mission that seems to be the only thing really keeping him from going utterly insane. Packed with near silent and toned down shots where nothing is said (there’s no one to talk to!) that i felt were used very well in some instances, and felt awkward in others. On that note, a lot of the shots were exceptionally well done, and really helped set the mood. There were so many times that I thought something was going to burst out, B-movie style, and the film refused to go there. Way to go on that.

Will Smith does a very good job playing his role, and I can honestly say that he was a very good pick for the film. I can also say that he was super ripped, and scared the hell out of me with his rugged, survivalist, man-body. Girls will like this movie simply for him doing chin-ups. Guys will love the everything else.

Though I am sure it was unintentional the Alpha Male in the movie reminded me very much of Grendel in the CG’ed version of Beowulf. I’m not sure how that worked out, but sadly it really hurt my perception of the character and made it hard to take that part of the movie seriously. I’m sorry, but the hilarity I found in Beowulf really hurt the team on this one, and I can’t really hold it against the film itself and so I tried to avoid that when making my marking decision.

I will say (without giving anything away) that the ending really irked me. I can’t explain why without giving away the movie, but I got to be honest, I hate when that exact situation occurs. If or when you see the movie, you’ll at least know what I’m talking about. All in all though, I cannot rag on the movie that much. It is what it is, and that’s about it. It won’t win any awards, but it’s a good movie in the end.

7/10

Now They’re all gone. There’s only me left. I’m free, now.
I’m the last of my kind, and I miss Them. You’d think I’d forgive Them for what they did, so long ago. But I can’t. Somethings are unforgivable.
I was a Time Lord in exile.
Or was I an animal in a zoo?
Excerpt from Doctor Who: The Last Dodo

The Last Dodo takes place a bit in the future, where the Doctor and Martha show up on an artificial planet that features the rarest creatures in the universe. Literally, the last of (almost) every creature is kept in this massive Museum of the Last Ones. The Doctor is horror struck when he sees what’s going on, but before he can get into his tirade he is told that some of the creatures are going missing. Let the mystery begin.

Though still fairly typical as far as Doctor Who new adventures are going, this one was entertaining for a couple of reasons. One: it’s actually 3 adventures in one, though I cannot explain that without giving away too much of the book. Two: Half of the story is actually told from Martha’s point of view in a fourth-wall-breaking sort of way. Three: it contains one of the creepiest internal thoughts of the Doctors that I have ever read. And lastly, four: never have I been so impressed with someone writing from a creatures point of view then I have with this book. The author really makes you feel for the Dodo species.

As far as the new series go, this is the best one I’ve read.

7/10