Monkeys ate my brain

The first chapter of the new Tales of Monkey Island game is really rather good. Lush 3D graphics, an OK navigation system (once you realise you can also use the arrow or WASD keys to move like in Wallace&Gromit because the click/drag mouse control sucks) and the typical click to interact with/pick up objects and characters controls. The inventory has two special slots for combining items (drag each into a separate slot, click icon) which is a bit tedious. Don't know why you can't just pick up one object and drop it on another as you do in the game world.

Those are the two only drawbacks, really. The dialogue is well acted and reasonably witty and there are enough references to the old games (and other LucasArts titles) to keep oldtimers like me happy. It's not as outrageously funny as the originals but it's not groanworthy, either. The puzzles are all logical but you need to pay close attention to everything on the screen (and the dialogue) and sometimes have to pan the screen with the cursor to find all clickable objects. The timed bits aren't too tricky and doable even on a laptop without mouse and the two map navigation puzzles are nicely done. I think I only had one or maybe two "try everything with everything" moments but when something worked I usually thought, 'Why didn't I think of that?'.
There's no combat in this chapter. I don't know if this is going to change but I'd love to see a return of the insult system or something similar as timed/exact clicking systems rarely work well in point and clickers where the emphasis is on story and puzzle solving, not pixel accuracy.

It took me about seven hours to finish so it's not that long but it's only the first chapter (there's a total of five, one a month) so the full game will be good value for money ($35). I for one can't wait til Chapter 2, especially with that cliffhanger.

As they did with Sam&Max, Telltale made a classic their own while still staying true to the orginal. If you like point-and-click adventures, you'll love this, especially when you've played the three classic ones (and other LucasArts games).

[Photography] Canon Powershot G10

Did a little road test this afternoon and overall, I like it. The controls are reasonably apparent to me (a non-Canon user who usually doesn't know where to put his fingers on non-Nikons). It's quite heavy and feels solid in your hands. I took a few shots with rather long shutter speeds (down to 1/8th) and was able to hold it almost as steady as I would a SLR with a lens you can use as support.
The optical viewfinder is OK but obviously no comparison to the full view from my SLR and it has no settings display. However, it is there, which is rare in compacts these days and one of my main points to look for because even the best LCD won't be visible in bright sunlight.
I've only used it in aperture priority so far and am really pleased with the handling of exposure, even with difficult situations (the window in the examples behind the cut).

Pros:
- Fully manual, in every aspect (aperture/shutter, exposure bias, flash with slow shutter/rear curtain sync etc., ISO)
- Many functions with their own dial unlike other compacts where you control everything over one menu
- deals well with difficult lighting situations
- still compact enough to fit in a pocket but feels very solid
- impressively slow shutter delay
- RAW format, which Lightroom can read. This should come in handy in difficult situations like gigs.
- Good colour accuracy/white balance

Cons:
- I don't need 14.1MP. On a compact, this is actually silly. The file size is almost 15MB in RAW which means you need a lot of memory. Good thing I have enough big SD cards from the D80.
- In full manual mode, I'd prefer a second dial for adjusting shutter speed and aperture simultaneously, without having to switch between the two.
- nothing else that isn't covered by "it's a compact".

I wouldn't recommend it to beginners because its strengths are the manual controls and the price (£352 at amazon.co.uk) is a bit steep but for photographers who want a camera to slip into their pocket for when they don't want to drag along their SLR kit, this is rather cool indeed.

( Samples )