Blackberry Bold Gaming

I love games, and I love my Blackberry. So when I heard about the OpenGL ES support coming to a Blackberry near you, I was very excited. Then I heard that this was only coming to Qualcomm based BBs (Storm 2 particularly), my hopes were shattered.

I understand the technical reasons of why my phone will not be getting support (after doing a lot of research on the processors and even contacting RIM), but I don't understand the decision to put a 3D capable CPU/GPU in one line of phones and ignore the others. The brand new Bold 9700 isn't capable of anything more than mine either... I would have to switch to a CDMA carrier to be able to get a Blackberry capable of running OpenGL ES. I wouldn't mind doing that, except that I'm locked into a 2 year contract at the moment...

So, until then, I've been looking around and trying to find games that the Bold can run. I was pleasantly surprised to find a gem of game called "Addictive Tower Defense".

This strategy game lives up to it's name. I think I put in nearly 3.5 hours playing it off and on yesterday evening. The game is not free, in case you are wondering. I found it on sale for $3.99 on mobihand.com, and it is the first app/game I've ever bought for a cell-phone. I'm extremely happy with my purchase.

There seems to be a community for making maps for the game, so the scenarios are probably endless, the gameplay is smooth, and the graphics are probably the best you'll ever see on an AT&T Blackberry. The only negative things that I could say about the game are that it has no sound (could be a plus depending on your environment, and it probably helps to keep the size of the app down), and that it works the Bold hard. It chewed through my battery, and at one point I thought it had melted the CPU as my screen faded to completely white and the BB stopped responding (wouldn't turn back on even after a battery pull), but hooking up the charger brought it back to life so I'm guessing the battery just died without warning. Either way, I'm going to try to start limiting my sessions with the game to less than an hour and half :O

I also found another game I am seriously considering as my next purchase. It is called "3D Super Stunt G". It's a game similar to Pilot Wings where you fly through rings to score and the environments look very well done. It's on sale now for $6.99 until Dec 31st.

Knee Problems

It's been a while since I posted anything, so I figured I'd hop on and post about my current situation.

The other day I was walking around the track at work and my knee just started hurting unexpectedly. I have had pains in my knee before, but they were usually just a little temporary thing that went away after a few minutes. This is something different. The more I walked the worse it hurt. It's now been 5 days and I'm still not able to walk like I did before. I plan on calling the Dr. today to see if they can take a look at it.

While talking to a friend about my knee problems, he happened to mention having knee problems after switching to New Balance shoes. What a coincidence...I thought to myself, I just recently started wearing New Balance shoes while walking around the track. So, when I got back to my desk I did a google search on "New Balance" and "Knee Problems" and found this blog with the author complaining of leg pains caused by these shoes, and a commentor who specifically mentions knee problems with them as well: http://blog.omnux.com/index.php/2005/10/30/new-balance-shoes/

I'm not sure if the shoes are the problem. I hope they aren't because I find them comfortable to walk in, but I can't think of anything that I've done to hurt my knee like this!