STG's

The Athena Project, by Brad Thor, is a sci-fi thriller. The Athena Project of the title is a group of Delta Force female only operatives, which take on the hardest assignments. On the book, they have to unravel the plan of an evil group, which is using nazi super technology that had been (mostly) lost in the end of WW2. Overall, the action was fun. But I couldn't help but feel that the ending was a big anti-climatic...

I've just finished reading  The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman - by Tim Ferriss . It's an interesting guide that contains a lot of techniques to improve your body - such as a diet, exercises and concepts for gaining muscle, strength, speed, and improving you swimming, running or baseball performance. I thought it was quite interesting. Do the ideas make sense? Many seem to, and confirm published studies. Other seem a little crazy. The diet he proposes, the slow-carb diet, which has plenty of protein and vegetables, but no carbs with high glicemic content (rice, bread, etc), seems to make sense. There a few interesting ideas I'm already trying: You might have heard of drinking 500 ml of cold water when you wake up. I had, but since I didn't heard a good explanation I completely ignored it. According to the book, in at least two studies this increased resting metabolic rate 24-30%. Cold Showers: at s...

Another semi-generic retro game. Cute neon wireframe graphics, somewhat annoying music. In a variation on the classic 2D racer, you have shields and a few different weapons. Not worth the time of trying it out, unless you specifically like this sort of game.

Rush is based on a classic computer puzzle game - some sort of entity (in this case, colored cubes) are released or start from a point in the puzzle, and you must use some sort of tool (here arrows, teleports and conveyors) to make them go safely to a specific spot. As usual, you get the exact type of tools you need to complete the level (at least for the levels I played). The graphics and sounds are nice, but I can't say that the super abstract style seemed to help.  I just didn't like it. However, I'm not a big fan of this particular puzzle type. If you are, you might want to get their demo.

System Protocol One is another tower defense game. The game world is based on cool looking grids and components representing a server, in the glowing wireframe of the now classic retro look. The game has a competent tutorial, ok soundtrack and an interesting theme. It seems to have all the classics of tower defense games, both on attackers and defense, and a few interesting twists. If you are a fan of tower defense games, it's worth taking a look at this one.

Bejeweled 3 was released today. While I didn't like Bejeweled Twist - and I rarely bother to review casual games - Bejeweled 3 is a big enough release that I had to mention it. It's also pretty fun. Basic gameplay is very similar to the original (and oh so many other gem match games) - match 3 gems. As usual, there are many special gems, and the music is superb. What I found most interesting is the variety of modes. There is the classic mode, of course. Other modes: a lightning mode where you have a time limit. Kind of generic. Relic mode - which has a whole bunch of match-gems mini games - for example, on one of those you have to match on butterflies, on another you have to match on the bottom to dig for gold (?!?!?), on another you have to cover the whole gem grid. Zen Mode - an unlimited time mode supposed to relax you. It has a bunch of different relaxing features - nature sounds, breathing sounds and visual indicator, binaural pulses.  It all sounds pretty silly, ...