hey, its me the mighty Turbojugend!

Just thought I’ll let you know about a game I’ve been playing for the past couple of weeks called Second Life. Which…to put it in words us other hardcore gamers can understand, it’s a ” Sims Killer,” and its free! My volunteer coordinator told me about this game, and I decided to try it out. Although I was a bit skeptical at first, because my laptop couldn’t handle the extremely good graphics, but after logging in a few times, it began to get used to the huge file download each time I played. Other than the massive lag most of the time, (my fault for not putting more ram in laptop) it is still way better than The Sims. I say this because when you walk around, you can interact with thousands of people from around the world, via the instant messaging feature. And if you failed typing class in middle school, do not fear, teamspeak is there! Yup I said it, you can talk with a headset to your friends too I find this feature very interesting, because it’s kind of like skype, without the extra phone number, and its also free. Although Second Life is mostly a way to interact with diferent people, you can also build….Anything, as long as you know how to script. However, if you have no idea how to script or code, they have classes! I of course haven’t gotten that far, because the script teacher people were not online when i wanted to take a class, and because my computer was lagging so badly. It’s kind of bittersweet, because your class isn’t available at the moment, but you realize, there isn’t any computer players, there all real people on the other end of the wire. Another interesting thing I have to let you know about is that besides the cool features that second life has, like building, changing your appearance, interacting with people, there is one thing about second life that i enjoyed the most, Flying. yes, you can fly in this second life that you have. Take that Sims! but believe it or not, there is quite a few wonderful things to do in Second Life, and I recomend that you check it out, who knows, you might even see the ever famous Draken Umarov on there playing as well.

Teens throughout Pinellas County will have an opportunity to celebrate the novel with an evening of Gatsby trivia, games, dance lessons, music and a costume contest.  The program will be at the Largo Public Library on October 26 at 6 p.m. 

The Bourne Ultimatum

By Sandor Hugert

This was probably the best movie of the summer.  Everything about was close to perfect.  The action was amazing, the story was interesting, and the chase scenes were probably the best scenes of the movie.  Matt Damon still did a really good job playing Jason Bourne.  You have to pay pretty good attention to all of the things happening to fully understand what’s going on, plus it also helps if you’ve seen the first two movies.  This was probably the best movie of the three made and hopefully they will make more Bourne movies.  The story in the movie finally explained everything, and for once the conclusion wasn’t disappointing unlike in many other movies.  The action was probably some of the best action we’ve seen this year, it’s even better than the action in Live Free or Die Hard.  The chase scenes were really cool.  At times though, the movie made it seem like Jason Bourne is a superhero considering all the times that he jumped threw windows and hardly even got hurt.  The camera was also a bit too shaky in the movie when there was a fight going on.  Overall though, this has to be one of the best movies of the summer.

Score:  9 out of 10

Marathon:  Durandal

By Sandor Hugert

This is the new arcade game that came out on the XBOX 360 this week, and I was pretty disappointed.  I’ve never actually played this game before, but I’ve heard all types of good things about it plus the makers are Bungie, which is the company that makes Halo.  I heard that the game is exactly like Doom but possibly even better, and the only difference was that the Marathon games were only created for Macintosh computers.  Doom is one of my favorite games so I had my expectations pretty high for Marathon.  After I bought it for ten dollars, I start playing co-op with my friend, and we were both pretty amazed how weird the game is.  The game doesn’t even come close to how good Doom is, the weapons are dumb, the aliens you’re fighting are weird looking, and considering that everything looks the same in the game it’s almost impossible to find where to go.  The main problem I had with the game is that it gave me a huge headache, which I’ve heard, happens to many people from this game because of the weird colors and graphics in the game, and how you move and aim is also a little weird.  I definitely recommend for anyone to try out the free trial for this game before buying, just like I should have done.  The game probably would have been a lot better if I didn’t get those headaches, so if you’re one of those lucky people that don’t mind the weird colors and graphics than you might enjoy the game a lot, but I didn’t.

Score:  4 out of 10

Army of Two

By Sandor Hugert

This game looks absolutely amazing.  The graphics look really nice, and the game play just seems really cool.  The whole game is about working together cooperatively with a friend throughout the whole campaign.  They have shown things like back-to-back shooting to cover each other, carrying your friend while he is wounded, and driving and shooting in all types of vehicles.  It’s also really cool that you can also play on this game online with a friend over XBOX Live.  The trailers have also shown that if you can’t work together properly with a friend then you won’t be able to beat the game.  Everything about the game seems pretty good, and hopefully it will live up to its expectations.

Release Date:  Delayed Till March 2008

Halford

By Sandor Hugert

Halford is a band named after the lead singer:  Rob Halford.  He was on Judas Priest back on the old days, and now he even went back to his old band.  For some reason, in my opinion he created the best music when he was into his solo albums.  He’s got some great songs such as Trail of Tears, Forgotten Generation, and One Will.  His music is like a mix of rock and metal.  If you’re into that type of music than definitely check this band out considering that Rob Halford is also known as the “Metal God”. 

Grand Theft Auto 4

By Sandor Hugert

Everyone is hoping for this game to be the next great Grand Theft Auto game.  From what I’ve seen, the game definitely has potential to be one of the best games of the year.  The graphics look amazing and actually realistic unlike other GTA games where the graphics looked like they came from a comic book.  I’ve read a lot about the game and it seems much more realistic as well considering that your character uses a cell phone to get in touch with his bosses for each mission, and then you have to find a computer in one of the libraries to find your destination or possibly send e-mails to your boss.  It has also gotten way more difficult to get rid of the cops when they’re right behind you which just makes the game better and more realistic once again.  I hope the Rockstar might add some online games to the whole package as well.  The only weird thing is that they chose New York City as the setting considering that it has been done in so many other games such as True Crime and all the Spider-Man games.  I suppose that if they just make the graphics really nice then it will be a much better looking New York City (the game calls it Liberty City just like in GTA 3).  I have pretty high expectations for this game so hopefully it will deliver.

Release Date:  Got Delayed Till Spring of 2008

Super Contra

By Sandor Hugert

This game is basically just as good as the first Contra.  It’s still a really fun 2D game, and even more enjoyable when you play with a friend in cooperative mode.  The weapons are really awesome in this game and way better than in the first one.  I guess the levels are better done, but it’s still not that different.  There are levels that are presented in a bird eye view, which doesn’t work that well in Super Contra.  The only bad thing about the game is just how difficult it is.  It’s almost impossible to beat the second level even with a friend, I guess it’s a plus that there are only five levels when you look at it from a difficulty perspective.  The game is still worth five dollars on the XBOX 360 Arcade, so just buy it or at least download a free trial of it because it’s still pretty fun.

Score:  7 out of 10

Zodiac

By Sandor Hugert

This was probably one of the most interesting movies of the year.  The whole movie is about investigations for finding out who the Zodiac really is.  I’m not going to give any spoilers on who he really is or isn’t, but I will say that the ending is not quite satisfying.  If you know something about the real Zodiac case then you know why the ending can’t be good for the movie.  I looked up some facts about this case, and apparently the movie stayed just about 100% faithful to how the real case turned out.  The movie showed really well how people became obsessed with this case, and basically just ruined their lives just to find out who the Zodiac really is.  All of the actors in the movie portrayed their characters wonderfully.  Everything about the movie was just perfect except the fact that it was almost three hours long.  They could easily have made the movie like two hours long if they would’ve just skipped some parts that were really didn’t contribute anything to the whole story line.  I really didn’t expect much from this movie, but I was really surprised that it’s probably one of the best movies of the year.

Score:  9 out of 10 

Heavenly Sword

By Sandor Hugert

This game for Playstation 3 looks really cool.  It looks a lot like God of War, which is never a bad thing considering God of War 2 is probably my favorite game.  The graphics for this game look absolutely amazing.  The fighting seems really cool and it looks like you can perform many types of combos in the game.  I’m really glad that Sony finally decided to make this game for Playstation 3 not the PS2 unlike God of War 2.  I doubt that this game will have any type of online play, which is always a negative, but I doubt that these types of game can really even have any good online play.  I hope that this game turns out to be as good as God of War 2, or even better.  Make sure to download the demo to the game, which is released on July 26, 2007 on the Playstation Store for free on the Playstation 3. 

Release Date:  September 4, 2007