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Monthly Archives: April 2010

Prince of Persia countdown

A lot is riding on the next Prince of Persia properties.

First, there’s the videogame sequel to 2008′s next-gen relaunch of the series, Prince of Persia. The new chapter, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, will be released on May 18. Only ten days later, Jake Gyllenhaal will star as the Prince in a Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time movie, in theaters May 28.

If all goes well and nothing sucks, this could turn Prince of Persia, finally, into the Lara Croft replacement that the gaming world has long been searching for; a franchise that rocks as an adventure game and as a movie franchise. Lara never quite lived up to the hype as some of the games really stunk and the movies, despite a decent female star in Angelina Jolie, were largely disappointing and only bring back bad mac memory; but at least the Prince of Persia games rock.

Now all that remains to fall into place will be whether the movies are any good at all.

Brees the newest Madden cover guy

New Orleans Saints fans might want to take out a life insurance quote on QB Drew Brees; the Saints’ signal-caller has been selected as the new Madden ’11 cover athlete – and that rarely means good things to come.

Much has been made of the Madden Curse, and most of it is probably genuine hogwash and circumstantial bull. But you can never be too sure. While it’s a great honor for Brees to be recognized by EA Sports, one has to wonder whether his selection could portend a down season, a mid-season injury or some other tragedy.

Let’s hope not! (Except for any time they face my Vikings!)

Out of the Park Baseball impressions

I’m not ready to offer up my official review just yet, but there are no exit signs on a game like Out of the Park Baseball. I’m digging into the depth of the game and really having fun exploring it at the moment.

The game has a lot of depth I haven’t really dug into before; it has historical seasons dating all the way back to pretty much the beginning of baseball as a sport. I need to study up to see if the game is historically scaled on salary models, but it’s certainly a lot of fun to have a game that is designed by folks who so obviously love the sport they are designing a sim around.

New toy: an iHome dock

I’m liking enough of my stuff that if I were a home owner I’d start seriously considering security cameras to protect myself from break-ins. Actually, it’s not all that special, just an improvement over what I had.

Until recently, even though I have an iPod, I still had a huge boom-box radio/CD/tape player in my bedroom. It’s large and bulky and aside from being an alarm clock, I rarely use it anymore.

Finally, today, my wife and I agreed to reluctantly replace it. I bought an iHome AM/FM/iPod dock radio with three alarm settings, auto-time-sync, it charges our iPods and it has great sound.

It’s also a slightly dated model that iHome was closing out on, so Best Buy had a clearance special and I was able to get it for about half off! Originally a $150 deck, I picked it up for $74.99 plus tax. That’s nice savings!

Plus, unlike docks that retail normally at $75 or so, this model sounds WAY better; I got $150-level sound without spending nearly that much. I really think I’ll enjoy it. Best of all, it has a battery back-up so if we lose power, I’ll still wake up on time! Yay!

Shaun Sullivan, Wolverine begin beta for PureSim 3

Several months ago, developer Shaun Sullivan moved his PureSim Baseball franchise to a new publisher, Wolverine Studios. Now, for the first time since the move, Sullivan and Wolverine have admitted that work on PureSim Baseball 3 has begun; the announcement was made by Sullivan, through the act of establishing a PureSim Baseball 3 Beta topic in the Wolverine Studios forum.

PureSim 2 is available for $19.95 from Wolverine’s Web store and currently is in Official Release version 2.59. Virtually no other information is known nor has any been made available at this time. However, I’m not sure I’d trade a Sony VAIO for any guarantee on a release date; the overhaul is expected to be significant, which means a fair amount of development time, I’d guess.

Looking forward to new OOTP Baseball

I’m looking forward to the latest version of Out of the Park Baseball; the company behind the game recently contacted me and offered to send my review code. Since I enjoy reviewing PC sports management sims, I gladly accepted.

Out of the Park Baseball has improved every year I’ve had the pleasure to review it, extending all the way back to m days with Dignews.com. I’m sure the OOTP team has some new wrinkles up their sleeves for this season’s version, and since it’s already quite solid, my hopes are high.

But we’ll see; I’m also very demanding, so if there are issues, you can be sure I’ll offer up an honest opinion. Still – yay! – it’s baseball season. The Twins are in Target Field, a new version of OOTP is on my hard drive… I’m ready to play ball, and that’s not just the testosterone cream talking!