Condemned, Jumper, and life in general

So I gave Condemned 2 almost a week, and found enough gory stuff to turn me off to it. It goes back to gamefly tomorrow.

the game itself had a great feel to it. It was beautiful in terms of graphic quality. It looked very gritty, raw and very realistic. The ambience quality was phenomenal. The first round of stages take you through various abandoned alleys and buildings, very little natural lighting, so you walk about with a flashlight on most of the time. Regardless of flashlight or no flashlight, it's still freaky. I give it an 8 on my freakout meter...Bioshock got 9, Eternal Darkness got 10. So there you go.

It's not your average shooter either, as there are actions involved instead of just shooting. In fact, for 90% of my playtime (finished several levels), I didn't even have a gun. I was resorted to grab 2x4's pipes, anything swingable. That created a sense of desperation and got me more involved. You could also use simple fists in good ways as well. It wasn't just a punch here and there. You could alternate between left and right jabs and use combos to really mess up the bad guys. So pretty impressive.

Either way though, the games content was too yuck for me, it's in the envelope and will be on the way tomorrow.


So there.

I've been trying to read more lately. i'm notorious for reading the same book over and over again even when I'm bored with it. It's something I know and am comfortable with. I hate picking up a book, only to not be able to get into it and then stop reading it. It's a gnawing feeling of unaccomplishment when I don't read it all the way through.

But luckily, www.textonphone.com is helping with that. If you have an iPhone or iPodtouch, I recommend it. You create an account and can access a directory of books and read them on the "go"...for iPod touch users you will need at least a Wifi connection long enough to get to the website and open up the book. The site will cache up to 10 pages at a time should you lose connection while reading. You can configure up to an apparently unlimited amount, I have it set to 100 pages so I can keep a good amount with me. As long as you do not navigate away from the page, you're ok. I've read a few good short stories on there, and found a title just the other day called "Jumper".

I've read up on it, and there apparently was a movie just released about it. I'm not sure how close the movie is to the book, as I have not seen the movie and am halfway through the book now.

I love this friggin story. The first 20 or so pages left me feeling kind of rough (reading or hearing about abuse of any kind leaves me feeling...weird)...but as I continued on, I had a hard time putting the book down. I even found myself stealing a few reads while I worked at the office. Running Windows updates on a laptop takes awhile...I was able to squeeze out about 100 to 150 pages.

The story (for the uninformed) is about a 17 year old kid who is constantly abused by his father realized he can teleport to places he's previously visited by just thinking about them. The story is wrapped around his discovery of his ability and his life with this ability.

I was kinda pleased to see that this was not a "kid who has ability turns into a superhero" story. [at least not yet] It's typical for people to assume that if anybody were to gain amazing abilities, they would automatically use it to help people. Not so, there are so many stories out there of people with great abilities who just...live. This is a good story and worth a read. Pick it up.


Reading this story "Jumper" brings to mind the age old question once again, I figured I would share it with the class.


If you were given an ability (for the sake of argument, I'm letting you choose it)....what would it be? And with your ability, would you use it for good (hero stuff)...or would you just...live?


Discuss