In this book, David Kushner documents the lives of two influential game programmers, John Romero and John Carmack - the guys who created Doom and id Software. It chronicles the lives, the company, the gaming industry, and the impact of these two young computer geniuses. It's a quick, fluid read that is not only entertaining, but is awe inspiring as well.

This is a fascinating book on many fronts. It describes how two kids got into games from the early childhoods, describes their fascination with computers in general, and their dreams. It goes from a tale of two kids with ideas, to their technological innovations, to business start, to their monumental growth, and finally to their fallout. It sheds light not only independent game programming, but of the type of people who develop and play these first person shooters like Doom.

Not only is this a biography, or a game book, it's also sort of the "startup.com" of the gaming world. With a good mixture of business, gaming, with unique and individual characters, it indirectly describes the world of gaming companies and what it takes to make a good, and bad, company.

While a good book for all, it's a must for anyone who loves games or is into software development.

This is one of those books that you read, and after you're finished, you're not sure if you liked it or not. It wasn't great, but there is nothing really wrong with it. It wasn't boring, it didn't drag on, but it also didn't captivate you.

A detective is working on a case similar to those annoying rich girl missing girl cases that randomly appears everywhere. This book explores this Scottish case, along with some internal police politics, and the lives of a few detectives. Intermingling clues concerning dolls, autopsies, and an Internet game all come together to help solve the mystery.

As with any mystery, the main part is the ending, and even though not terrible, it is pretty contrived and non-climatic.

I remember I would flip through the TV stations and get to ESPN2 and see the World Series of Poker. I use to laugh at the fact that there was a World Series of Poker, and laugh even more because it was televised. After this book, I have to admit I was wrong to do so.

In this book, Andy Bellin describes every facet of poker. From how it is played, to where it is played, to whom plays it, and how it is won. He describes his own stories, those of professional poker players and of poker addicts. He details how to win, and how skill and guile are used to make serious money.

To anyone who rarely or casually plays poker, this is an eye-opener. For example, he concentrates on Texas Hold Em', which he explains is the only game poker players take seriously. He goes through the history, nomenclature, the way the odds work, and how it takes years and years of practice and money loss in order to succeed. I for one didn't know how much math and observational skill it took to win. I always thought it was mostly luck.

So, when I flip to ESPN2, I'll just have to stick to making fun of Soccer and Curling. Any book that can make me respect poker players is a darn good book indeed.

This game had a cool feature, bullet time game motion. Basically a slow motion system that allows a pseudo-matrix style game play for a few brief seconds. Apparently, they thought that such a gimmick could sell a game. Unfortunately, thousands of people fell for it. The only real revolutionary aspects of this game are the new heights of tedium that this game induces.

This game starts off with a story consisting of a comic page animation (e.g. mostly still, cheaply made) with what apparently was an English major desperately trying to use big words and a raspy voice in order to sound sophisticated, deep, and dark. This fails miserably and the darn thing never stops. Then there is the game. You can only save at the start of sub-levels, which automatically brings it down two notches.

The game basically is a sequence where you turn a corner, wait for the slow bad guy, shoot, try to open a door, then try another, enter, wait, shoot, and on and on until you hit a save point. That's it. The first level is fine, but the second level gets you. The controls are clunky and shooting is jerky and unresponsive. Bullet damage is seemingly random. Sometimes, you shoot a guy point blank with a shotgun, and he's barely touched. You shoot a guy fifty feet away with a handgun, and he might go down for no reason.

The first level is almost fun, since you might die to the randomness, but you'll have to repeat the killing of one or two guys again. The second level, you sometimes have to face up to 15 guys. It's no fun when the 15th guy, at 100 feet away and out of sight, shoots you in with a handgun and destroys all your health. And it takes forever to return the same place beforehand. The producers apparently couldn't differentiate between needless waiting and stealth. By the middle of the game, I was so frustrated by the repeating, waiting, random deaths; I just turned it off and sold the game immediately. I have never gone that far in a game and not finished it. Just totally frustrating.

The best way to describe this game is like the non-car missions of Grand Theft Auto, without the fun. I know why this is called Max Payne now. It hurts.

This small book starts off nicely with a "Fireman" name Montag walking down the street. This takes place in the future where books are banned, and fireman set fires to houses with books. It's a world where the government controls everything, and people are content watching television. As Montag walks he encounters a strange girl. A inquisitive teenager who tends to slowly open Montag's eyes to the life that himself and the government has tried to prevent him from seeing.

However, the book goes downhill from there. We later learn that the girl died, maybe or maybe not by the government. Then all forms of subtlety are thrown out the window. Montag burns a lady and her house down, but only after picking up a few books. He starts a conversation with a former literature professor, who discusses how the government and people disengaged themselves from the world of literature, and how to change their thinking. The worst part was when his fire chief enters his house and gives the typical bad guy expose to the good guy on what the government is trying to do. This dialogue is extremely forced and contrived and quickly bores the reader along while taking away much of the imagination of the what and why.

He later kills that fireman and goes on the run after his house burns down, only to be left in a the countryside as a survivor, and tries to resurrect the world of books and open thinking. This again overtly ties into an over the top message on the good of literature and open-mindedness.

For those who value subtlety and imagination, this book is not for you. While I respect and admire Bradbury's plot and perspective, it could have been done in a much more presentable, believable, thought provoking, and by far more engaging way.

I've heard the reviews saying that Devil May Cry was one of the greatest games ever. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but it is a good game. Devil May Cry is a fight and slash game with a haunting background and a terrible storyline. It does work well though, and flows nicely.

This game has some problems, but those are not problems that detract from the gameplay too wildly. First off, it commits the greatest cardinal sin or all time - you cannot save at any point. This immediately means that at least some of the game will contain repetition. My second biggest gripe is the camera angle is situated at stationary spots. It does not follow you around like other games. Worse, is that when you move, the camera angle will switch to a vastly different view. This ranges from inconvenient when navigating a room, to hellish when you're running and jump attacking a monster and the room suddenly flips on you. I also thought the front end and menus were a little unintuitive, and the fact that you couldn't adjust the music and sound volume separately was also annoying.

The game starts off with a bad storyline, and then Dante, whom you play, is placed into a dark foreboding castle, where the entire game takes place. It's safe to say this background rates up there with Final Fantasy 10 and Ico. You then fight your way through different small levels, collecting orbs and objects to advance to the next level. At about the third level, you can choose which difficulty you can play. With the easiest level, you can just hack and slash and special attacks will be automatically done. In the harder levels, you can do those stupid random up up down A B L3 right down down combo moves that are in Fighter games. Needless to say, I took the more straightforward level.

The game consists of a little over 20 missions. Some missions consist of moving from one place to another, others are a little more complex in that it requires you to gather an object and place it with an another, and some require you to beat a boss. Either way, the missions rarely consist of backtracking, there is little wandering or not knowing where you are going, and there is a little repetition. The movies are rare and skippible, so the action is rarely interrupted. This means that the game has a great flow.

All in all, it's a good game. As a greatest hits game, it's a superb value.

Pros:
Haunting atmosphere.
Which difficulty selected determines type of game.
Great flow.
Hardly any pointless wandering.

Cons:
Fixed Camera
Cannot save at any point

Time:
12 hours (easy difficulty)

Frustration Level:
Low

John Grisham can weave a great story, but sometimes he just feels like regurgitating the same tired formula. An underdog, poor lawyer goes through some life changing thing, fights off some highly paid unstoppable law office, struggles a bit, but in the end finds out true happiness. This book isn't really that different from the rest. While not as obvious or black and white as The Street Lawyer, it definitely doesn't compare to the Rainmaker, the Chamber, or his non-law books like a Painted House or Skipping Chirstmas.

This time the young lawyer is a young district attorney who stumbles onto a case where he meets a mysterious man who leads him into a mass tort litigation. After leaving his girlfriend of many years, he quickly becomes entangled in the rich mega lawyer lifestyle of mass tort firms. He changes from a man who cares little about money to a money hungry lawyer who has a trophy wife and plane.

Of course, anyone can predict how the whole thing would end, so there is no big surprise. Grisham continues his predictable formula once again. Though not really bad, it's nothing great. At times enlightening, it's mostly made so anyone can quickly breeze through it. As usual, Grisham remains fluid and doesn't get sidetracked or bogged down in annoying or useless details.

A decent book, but a somewhat bad one for Grisham.

I saw this at a bookstore, read the first chapter, and decided that this book was going to be great. However, to my horror, the first chapter has hardly anything to do with the rest of the book. It's becomes quite apparent that Cantor didn't want to write about the plague, but wanted to write about a few isolated characters during that time. The publishers could not have cared less about some friar or some random land holder from the middle ages, so he disguised this book as a book about something interesting.

I'm not sure Cantor had any intention other than to relay some random, useless research into a loose collection. This book lacks readability, cohesion, and fluidity. In this small book, he devotes almost a fifth of it to a one useless young princess who dies. He describes her life, her relatives, her travels and on and on. He goes into every detail about her life, except he forgets that no one cares. This book should be about the plague, not about some random midevil life. He pulls nearly the same stuff with other random people that really don't shed any light about the plague. He intermittingly and hapharzadly throws in some stuff to tie things together.

About only a quarter of the book is about the plague, and most of it lacks statistics or scientific merit. The only reason this book is not truly, truly awful is that some of the reading is informative, especially about the origins of the plague and other diseases in the mortality chute in the Nile region, and the possibility of anthrax contributing to the death count.

All in all, this book is almost worthless. Just ignore the title and the summary on the cover, as it is a total fabrication.

This has got to be one of the most intriguing non-fiction books of all time. It's basically how a group of MIT students combine together and take millions from major Casinos. Using team play, sound probability, expert training, and skill, they do the impossible and create havoc for the Casinos, and later themselves.

This book describes it all, and yes, it's better than any made up story a fiction writer could produce. Mezrich describes how Kevin Lewis became involved in what later became a lifestyle of glamor, big money, and even woman. Kevin goes from a geeky swimmer at MIT to a big player winning big money.

Mezrich knows how to weave the story. First he discusses the introduction, then the frightening orientation. He delves into the mathematics, the strategy, and how the teammates fit into what character roles. He shows how intricate the team aspect of blackjack works, and how they capitilized on it. Both seedy and genious, it sheds a whole new life on blackjack and casino gambling.

After that, he then starts showing how Casinos work, especially how they treat you when you're a big player versus when you're a card counter. Without giving too much away, this story not only deals with the winning, but also with the repercussions. Mezrich brings into the lifestyle, not only with the glamor, but also the suspense and terror that accompanies it.

This books is one of those few books that you cannot put down. It's a great story and most importunely, a great eye-opener. To top it off, it's all true.

No one who reads this will be able to gamble the same way again. No exaggeration. Just pick up this book. I bet you can't put it down (terrible pun intended).

books when I was a kid,except for this one. The thought of miniaturizing one's self and going into a body in order to save it seemed lame and contrived. Because of this, I avoided this book for the longest time. Finally, I gave in and gave it a chance. It was worth it.

The book has some flaws. The flow of the book is not very fluid. It's somewhat abrupt and I was forced to re-read a few paragraphs, especially in the beginning. Even though the level of detail is great, it sometimes became too much and I was bogged down with a cell structure instead of concentrating on the action.

That said, the rest of the book is amazing. Asimov does a great job explaining how miniaturization works, and develops an interesting scenario involving wars, weapons, spies, and scientists in which such a procedure was neccesary under a specific time frame. The characters themselves are not truly developed, but instead are used to focus and contribute to the action. A major plus indeed.

Asimov seems to weave a story where the human body turns out to be a major battlefield. A place where blood flow causes havoc and where white blood cells are monsters. He transports the reader into a new dimension where the mundane suddenly becomes catostrophic. With this, and his knowledge of the human body, he make a great action and suspense novel.

This is a short read and gets to the point. Asimov wanted to write a great tale involving action and biology, and it is well done.