Lately...

So where have I been for the last several days? Drowning at work under a sea of dumbassery, that's where. My Fair Lady has wanted to work out every day this week but since it seems all I've done the last few days is run full speed in place at the office I'm borderline content to get home past the point where we can do that.

Of course, I fully expect to get back into the swing of things this coming week but we've all seen how life has a funny way of dangling what you want in front of your nose then yanking it back at the last second. Then life will smack you in the face with said carrot just for kicks.

In gaming news, I've been playing The Godfather for the last few days and I have to say that I'm having a lot of fun despite the facts that it looks pretty dang bland, has a needlessly cumbersome control scheme, and is a blatant rip-off of Grand Theft Auto III. But considering that I haven't played that game in a year it's nice to play it again with a mafia-themed skin over everything. It also helps being a die-hard fan of the original film and that the missions are typically pretty fun. We've all played the sneak-or-be-caught missions along with the drive-to-escape-enemies missions but The Godfather remains entertaining despite its overt familiarity. The full review should be up at Gaming Trend sometime in the next week.

In the meantime, check out my review of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones right here because the game is fantastic despite looking uglier than its three-year-old proginator.

For the record, I love the original PoP game Sands of Time with something akin to reverence because it gets everything right. The combat came under the most fire because it was repetitive, but the thing that the complainers didn't get was that the combat was never meant to be the focus. The challenge was always against the environment, and it was magnificent to play. Not to mention that as a romantic (shh, don't tell anyone) it was wonderful to watch the playful and devil-may-care Prince slowly come to love the willful Indian princess Farah. The ending was brilliant and even moreso if you played through the game start to finish over the course of a day or two.

Compare that to the absolute travesty that was the sequel Warrior Within and you'll understand why I treaded lightly on the new game. Fortunately, the new game went back to the original formula and was terrific in its own right and perfectly ended the trilogy. I so wish I could give away the ending because it was note perfect, but my advice is to just burn through it and enjoy falling to the spell of a wonderous fairy tale elegantly told.

I also have the latest Metal Gear Solid PS2 game on deck so I'll fire that up tomorrow and see what Snake has been up to. Hopefully that review will be up late next week but we'll see.