Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

The final installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is set to be released on July 21st. This is music to my ears, especially considering that I wasn't expecting it until next summer. Rowling says that two more characters will die in this one. You won't find any predictions from here as to which ones, though. Rowling has been deliberately tight-lipped about it, refusing even to provide hints as to whether Harry himself will survive his trial with Voldemort. But the cast of characters she has created is broad, so there is hope yet that not only Harry, but Ron and Hermione, as well, may yet live to tell the tale.

And now we wait. The end is near. Who will die? And who will triumph?

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Tags: entertainment, speculative fiction

Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

My wife bought me this game for Christmas since it had been on my list for quite a while. Prince of Persia is basically a game of puzzles, with a healthy dose of sword fighting thrown in for a change of pace. It's a short game - I completed the whole thing in just under 10 hours of gameplay. It requires both brains and coordination to make it through, as booby traps and pitfalls abound. There isn't a whole lot to the story - as plots go, it's fairly basic and could probably be told in under five minutes. But this game doesn't actually need much of a storyline to be fun (which is probably one of the only times you'll ever hear me say that). The enjoyment here is in solving every riddle and finding solutions to every secret.

One of my favorite features of the game is the cinematic effects. The camera angles shift as you move along, providing you with unique and interesting viewpoints. Of course, these camera angles can also sometimes be annoying, but such instances are few and far between. The fighting sequences are both fun and frustrating, but once you get the rhythm, they're generally pretty easy¹ to move through.

I really enjoyed this game, so much so that I've already started a second run-through, and despite having beaten it once, it's actually no easier the second time around. Of course, a healthy dose of over-confidence may be partially to blame for this.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time comes highly recommended from me.

1. 'Easy' here is a relative term. [↩]

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Tags: entertainment, reviews

Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

NBC’s hit show Heroes is back and the writing is as good as ever. I love what this show is doing, and I’m really beginning to like the direction it seems to be heading in. It’s taken 12 episodes, but as Suresh’s closing voiceover states, the chaos of the various story arcs are beginning to approach something like order, as each character explores their abilities and forge new alliances.

I’ve discovered that I’m not one of those people who enjoys endlessly speculating about what sorts of things could be, especially in a genre such as this. In Heroes, we’re still learning the rules of this universe, so it’s difficult to make any kind of predictions, simply because we don’t really know that much about it yet. But it is fun to ask questions, and these are a few of the questions and observations that arose in my mind while watching this week’s episode:

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Tags: entertainment, speculative fiction

Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been wondering lately whether or not Hollywood would make any money from a movie that was actually done in such a way as to do justice to whatever book it is trying to reproduce for the silver screen. We all complain about how book-to-movie adaptations invariably go wrong because it’s next to impossible to condense a 300-page novel into 2.5 hours of film. Shortcuts must be taken in order to tell the story in a timely manner.

But what if no one worried about how long the movie was, focusing instead on making the sure the fullest story possible could be told? This means we’d be talking about a 10-15 hour long movie, possibly longer. Would there be a market for something like that? Film the movie, release it to theatres in pieces, send it to DVD on a 4-disc set. I think I’d be up for something like that if it meant seeing a book I enjoy done properly for the visual arts.

Of course, about the time I’m pondering this, I find out that HBO is way ahead of me. They’re producing George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series as a TV series, with plans to devote one season to each book. This basically means that the stories will stand a greater chance of being told visually as they ought to be, with no worries about taking shortcuts in order to make sure the audience will sit still long enough. This option may even be better than the one I’d originally thought of because it breaks it down into bite-size, manageable parts.

So, kudos to HBO for doing something new and original. I hope it’s successful because I wouldn’t mind seeing this kind of thing done more often.

Tags: books, entertainment, movies