kite runner

I finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini more than a week ago. It’s a rather good book. To be honest, it started a bit slow. Usually, when I read a book, it would be difficult for me to stop reading, but with The Kite Runner, that didn’t happen until I got through more than half of the book. I was thinking to myself, hmm.. how come many people seem to like this book, because it wasn’t that interesting to me.

Halfway through however, it got a lot more interesting and towards the end, the pace did seem to be a lot quicker. I even slept late on a couple of weekdays just so that I can read what happens next.

I guess the slow part of the book was important to setup the story. I can’t expect every book I read to be action-packed. Nearer the end, the story seems to be concluding, but they were still many pages left. I thought, oh no.. oh no.. this seems like a good ending.. but the book’s not finished yet.. is something bad gonna happen. Full of suspense. If you wanna know what happens, why don’t you read it? Or if you’re not too bothered, just wiki it.

I even watched the movie version of the book, but it was a bit disappointing. Yes, I can understand that some parts of the book couldn’t be included so that it wouldn’t be too long. However, there were some parts of the movie that didn’t do justice to the intensity of the book. For example, **SPOILERS AHEAD!**, when Amir jan is calling Soraya about the marriage proposal. She was telling him about her past which she wasn’t very proud of and if Amir would still want to marry her now that he knew. When he said yes, I imagined them to be really high with emotions, but the way it was portrayed in the movie.. *sigh*. Nasib baik the actress who played Soraya boleh tahan jugak la cute dia. Hehe.

Oh and the next project is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

prince of persia

So… I’ve completed my first project. I actually completed the game last week or was that the week before? Well, it’s not important anyway. Before I go on, I need to warn you that this is quite a long post, so if you have no interest in video games whatsoever or if you actually hate them, then just stop reading. That's right, just stop, close this browser, turn off the computer, and go to bed. Now.

Okay, now that we've got rid of those people, let me tell you a brief history of Prince of Persia (PoP). The first PoP was developed by Brøderbund in 1989. It was a 2D game (of course la kan) where the Prince ran and jumped to avoid deadly traps, fought the bad guys with swords and solved puzzles. I think I did play it when I was small, on a DOS computer. That seems to be a long time ago now. In 1994, Brøderbund released PoP 2: The Shadow and the Flame. The Prince marries the daughter of the Sultan of Persia, hence becoming the Prince of Persia. Then in 1999, PoP 3D was released by Red Orb Entertainment. This was the first PoP game that incorporated 3D graphics.

Ubisoft then took over and developed a PoP trilogy (The Sands of Time, Warrior Within, The Two Thrones) much loved by many people. The story is different from the first trilogy. The Prince is actually the prince of Persia (duh!) and he still runs and jumps to avoid traps and fight the bad guys, but this time he’s more acrobatic and the games are all in 3D. The puzzles are really good as well. The main theme of the whole trilogy was about the sands of time, including the implications of altering/slowing/travelling through time. I enjoyed playing them (although I haven’t actually finished playing the third one).

Because I enjoyed playing the trilogy, I was really enthusiastic about the new PoP, which prompted me to buy the PoP Collector’s Edition. The black case is nice but the CD case is just the normal green plastic one, so it was a bit of a disappointment for me. My Gears of War 2 Limited Edition set is much much better, with a metal CD case *big smile*. Ok, back to PoP. Ubisoft released a new PoP game last year, which unlike the previous trilogies doesn’t even mention the words Prince and Persia in the game! The word of is mentioned plenty of time however.

The so-called ‘prince’ is a thief who, while looking for his donkey, gets lost in a sandstorm and meets up with Elika, a princess of a mysterious land. Together, they have to cleanse the land from the ‘corruption’ of the dark god Ahriman. I agree with Hyree that the game is quite easy compared to the Sands of Time trilogy. You’ll see marks on the wall where you’re supposed to jump and the screen becomes pale when you need to call Elika to help you jump. And you can’t even die in the game, which is a good thing I guess, because it will avoid you from being frustated if you just die all the time. The puzzles are simple and easy to solve. I wish they’d be more challenging so that I’ll get that satisfied feeling of completing a difficult puzzle. Also, I miss the running-up-the-wall-and-then-jumping-over-the-opponent-and-then-striking-with-a-sword move from the previous trilogy. But most of the jumping and Elika fight moves are rather cool as well.

Even though it’s ‘consumer friendly’ as mentioned by my good friend Hyree, it was rather enjoyable playing the game, mostly due to its wonderful graphics. It has a water-colour-ish style, but in a 3-dimensional way. And the view after the land is healed is beautiful. There are even Assassin View and Titanic View achievements on the Xbox360. You can also change the skins of the Prince and Elika. The other skins for the Prince are Altaïr from Assassin’s Creed, the Prince from Sands of Time and the prototype Prince, while Elika’s other skins are Farah from Sands of Time, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil and the prototype Elika. Talking about Assassin’s Creed, the trailer of Assassin’s Creed 2 is super cool! Can’t wait to play that later. Oh and don’t ask me about Beyond Good and Evil because I’ve never heard of that game before.

If you want to get Xbox360 achievement points easily, then this is the game to play. You can get at least 700 points by just finishing the game, but you’ll probably get 800+. There are only 4 achievements that I didn’t get (yet?), which are Light Seeds Accumulator, Light Seeds Protector and Light Seeds master, which involve collecting many light seeds, and the Combo Specialist, where I need to have performed all the combos in the game, which I’m not too bothered to do.

In February, a downloadable content (DLC) was released. For those of you who don’t know what a DLC is, it’s just something that the developers of the game make you pay for to play extra hours on an extension to the game. It’s called PoP Epilogue and it continues after the ending of the game. It costs 800 Microsoft points on the Xbox360 which is £6.80 and not something I’d pay to play. So I just youtubed it to know its story. Basically its ending is *SPOILER AHEAD* as bad as the original game, because the developers want to make a sequel to this game so that they can further cash in on our money and I will most probably fall victim to their evil scheme.

All in all, PoP is an enjoyable game and I recommend you to play it, especially if you’re new to gaming. So that’s my first project completed. My side project of sorting out Easter roadtrip photos is also done. I currently have another side project, which is playing Gears of War 2. Why is it a side project? Well, it’s because I only play it on Friday nights with Amir Soldier. It’s not as enjoyable when played alone. Now, my next main project will be…

Reading The Kite Runner!