It’s opening day for Bourne Ultimatum and before checking the final day’s Bourne Ultimatum game, there’s a good deal going at Best Buy to snag the Bourne Files 3-disc collection.

This includes the Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremecy and a special third disc containing 45 minutes of bonus footage as well information about Bourne Ultimatum. Normally this package retails for $17.99, and is on sale for $14.99 plus you can get an additional $5 off by paying with your Mastercard. Since we’re still flying credit card less, we paid with our PayPal card which can be used like a credit card and still received the discount and get 1% bonus cash back. Sweet deal and way to catch up on the preceding Bourne flicks before checking out the Bourne Ultimatum.

Day 15
Follow the link in the agent indicator to ReadTeStOn.com and click on the numbers. The numbers will lead to a familiar agent IM window asking for a passphrase using the clue: “Which set of files was Pamela Landy looking for in Berlin when she found Bourne’s fingerprint?”

Hint: You’ll need to know some details about the Bourne Supremecy movie to find the file name. If you’re going to see the movie today, just pay attention to what files agent Pamela Landy is looking for in Berlin.

After solving today’s final mission there isn’t any message that we’ve reached the end, at least for those of us with less than the required 25-32 sightings (I finished with 11 sightings). You can still enter a drawing for the iPhone by postcard as long as it’s postmarked by tomorrow according to the Search For Bourne Official Contest Rules.

It’s going to seem kind of empty on Monday when there’s no more game missions to solve. Google and Hollywood need to get together to keep this streak alive. Movies coming in the future that could make for cool contest suggestions? How about Star Trek 11?

Most of the mods I’ve seen for game systems haven’t been something I’ve felt comfortable doing, but Gamepro’s how to for swapping out the 60GB PS3 hard drive looks like a mod that a guy with eleven fingers could do.

The 160GB 2.5″ SATA laptop drive Seagate Momentus [5400 RPM] costs between $110-150 USD online according to the article and bound to come down in price as the TB drives start moving in. The 160GB drive will give you 150GB of usable space, a 100GB boost over the existing 60GB drive.

We’re down to 33 GB of free space on our PS3. How much of the 60GB, er 50GB, do you have left?

Only one day left in the Bourne Ultimatum game. If you’re just now getting into this there’s still time to start at the beginning and catch up with everybody else, but time is definitely running out. Here are links to all the days of the game which contain hints for each day’s missions. Day 15 if everything remains on schedule should be available at midnight EST (GMT-5) tonight.

Day 1 & 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14 (this post)

Oh, and I got another Bourne sighting yesterday, bringing my total sightings to seven for the contest.

Day 14
Today we must use IM to talk to Mustapha Nayet and then run down a phrase by Jason Bourne that is a lie.

Hint: Search for the phrase in all lowercase “bourne lie detection treadstone” on Google images and you’ll see a couple images from Dater Notes with the phrase Bourne said from yesterday’s YouTube video. That video is also in your agent console video section (see screenshot).

Good luck to all players!

Day 13
Today in the Bourne Ultimatum game we’re watching a slightly altered trailer and doing some instant messaging with the man himself, Jason Bourne.

Hint: Watch the trailer and be prepared to pause the frames for a message handle to put in the instant message section for Bourne and be prepared to copy his answer in the instant message window.

I’m up to six sightings of Bourne now. That’s probably not too good comparatively, how many sightings do you have?

After getting through today’s challenge there’s only three days left of the Bourne Ultimatum game. What will we do until the next movie challenge comes along? Google should just go from one movie to the next with these challenges. There has to be enough movies in the pipe to warrant a continual stream of games like these. They don’t take too long, are fun and engaging.

Day 12
We’re back to Nicky Parson’s Dater Notes profile and particularly scanning her pictures in the image filter.

Hint: Don’t forget there are three image filters, A, B and C.

We got another break over the weekend, which means this will be another full week of the Bourne Ultimatum game. Here’s the schedule:

Monday July 30 - Day 11
Tuesday July 31 - Day 12
Wednesday Aug 1 - Day 13
Thursday Aug 2 - Day 14
Friday Aug 3 - Day 15 = it’s over

Day 11
Ugh. A crossword puzzle. What’s next, Sudoku? Good thing Bernice stopped by this morning and told me to not bother actually doing the crossword puzzle.

Hint: via Bernice:

LISTEN to the video that David Strathairn does when you log-in…then use those nifty tools we have … clue: it’s a city name.

Thanks Bernice!

On Thursday the Heavenly Sword demo was made available along with two free Heavenly Sword wallpapers that PS3 owners can plaster over their Playstation 3 dashboards.

I haven’t followed the Heavenly Sword game, but I know at least one reader is into this game. The Heavenly Sword demo gameplay reminds me of the game Final Fight. You go around and pull off different button mashing sequences to kill the bad guys.

Even with my subpar screencaps of 1080p gameplay, the game looks worlds better than Final Fight ever looked. And it’s 3D versus heavily pixelated 2D.

The Heavenly Sword gameplay features page lists additional details including:

Andy Serkis, the world’s leading CG actor, famous for his roles as Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” and Kong in “King Kong,” was heavily involved in the creative process. As well as starring in Heavenly Sword as the
villain, King Bohan, Andy was a major contributor to the character development, writing, casting, directing and performance capture for the PS3 title.

Interesting how more games continue to be produced these days like major motion pictures.

No wonder it takes millions to produce a game like Heavenly Sword. I’ve gotten a lot of entertainment value out of games that were created with a dramatically smaller budget than titles like Heavenly Sword. A feature that would make me more interested in this game would be the ability to play live co-op with others over the Playstation network. Not sure if that will be a feature or not, but it should be. That and being at 1080p, of course.

Woohoo, my o-fer Bourne sightings streak has come to an end! Today in the Bourne Ultimatum game it said that two of my cameras had seen Bourne. Now, you can stop chuckling at my plight, Nathan Let’s see if I can get a streak of sightings going the other way, like the rest of you playing. Although I must admit your idea about trying to keep the streak going of least sightings was intriguing.

Reader, and self-confessed part of the “crew”, Bernice got to see an early screening of Bourne Ultimatum last night and left her glowing review in yesterday’s comments: “It’s a wild ride and will leave you tired. It rocks!” Her complete report along with some additional hints for today’s mission can be found here, no spoilers.

Day 10
Today’s mission isn’t anything new really. Just go follow the links from the last two days at priceless.com and Google Groups and look at Ross’s clues which are provided by the message transmitter. In fact, today’s answer was the one I thought was yesterday’s answer originally.

Hint: Look at the pictures in Google groups carefully.

A depressing night here as the Seattle Mariners dropped their sixth game in a row. Hopefully I don’t go 0 for 9 with Bourne sightings. I don’t think I will, so let’s get an earlier (earliest for our coverage anyway, but probably late for Bernice) start on today’s Bourne Ultimatum game.

Day 9
Back to another IM conversation with Simon which leads to a Google Groups post to find out where he’s at.

Hint: When you reach the Google Groups list look for the picture circled and the general area around that, not the circled area specifically.

Good luck to all players!

Back in January, we looked at Handipoints and decided it was a bummer it was aimed at younger children since, well, all out kids are teens. And then last week on the delicious popular list another game based on chores hit my radar.

The lines between our first lives and virtual lives continue to be blurred. Enter Chore Wars which allows family members to earn experience points (XP) completing chores.

Instead of simply rolling dice, the character creation process involves optionally choosing different “natural talents” like paying bills, making phone calls, decorating, grocery shopping and more.

Since adding a pool, the need to skim and clean it has become my chore. Mowing the lawn is a chore that also needs to be assigned. I decided to add these two chores.

Adding adventures (chores)
The recommended amount of XP to award for chores is using the amount of minutes it takes to complete the chore with a maximum of 100 XP. Since mowing our full lawn takes about 60 minutes, I assigned 60 XP to that task. Usually the kids split up the lawn, so I also created an adventure called “mow half lawn” (with half the XP) as well as “weed eat full lawn.”

Next you must choose the relevant stats required for the chore: strength, constitution, intelligence, dexterity, charisma, intelligence and wisdom as it relates to the chore. For mowing the lawn I chose: medium strength, medium constitution, low dexterity, no charisma, low intelligence and no wisdom.

After that it’s time to optionally choose an amount of gold pieces to optionally award during the adventure. If you make the range 0 and 0 then no gold will be awarded. I decided to choose the range 10-20 GP for mowing the full lawn. leaving half that 1-10 for mowing half the lawn.

Treasure can optionally be won by completing an adventure and slaying the monster (if there is one) and you can assign a percentage to how often the monster will have treasure. I used 10% for mowing the full lawn and 5% for mowing half the lawn. This means there is a greater chance of the kids earning a surprise gift after completing the chore if they mow the whole lawn by themselves versus half the lawn. 1:10 chance of possibly earning say a new Xbox 360 game seems like a pretty good deal.

Finally, you select the percentage chance of a monster encounter and whether or not any gold will be awarded for completing the chore. I chose a higher percentage chance of a monster encounter for mowing only half the lawn versus mowing the full lawn which makes it more perilous to our brave adventurers for mowing only half the lawn. Players (family members) earn XP by completing chores and logging their activity. Perhaps it is my GM days with D&D that had me enjoying the process of choosing different monster encounters while mowing the lawn like mosquitoes, snakes and bees.

But does it work actually getting more chores done with less friction?
Our teens seem somewhat interested in Chore Wars. I’ll have to blog back with an update of whether or not it’s actually making them more responsive and helpful with their chores around the house, but we’re giving it a try.