Folklore

Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs
$29.99
The huge success of recent movies like the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the Harry Potter movies, and the Narnia series shows that dwarves, knights, and magic have never been cooler than they are now. But just as interesting than those works of fiction is the folklore that they draw upon.

"Medieval Folklore" gives short articles about all sorts of topics, from specific folkloric characters (such as Prester John, the Wandering Jew, the Seven Sleepers), traditions (like Jewish, Italian, and Irish medieval folklore), motifs, works ("The Decameron," "The Seven Wise Masters"), authors (Dante Alighieri, Geoffery Chaucer), and more.

Although formatted as an encyclopedia, the writing stays lively thanks to high quality editing. Almost every page will yield an article that is interesting to the layman and the expert.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with a potential interest in medieval life, history, or literature. It would be a welcomed addition to their library.

The Forest in Folklore and Mythology
$12.95
This title is a new edition reprinted from the original, published in the late 19th century. As is common in books of its time, Porteous' is more a compilation of facts about trees in folklore, gleaned from a myriad of other sources. The Forest is less a book to be read from cover to cover than a reference. Well indexed, it is relatively easy to find information on just about any mythological association to trees and other woodsy denizens. Europe, Asia, North and South Americas, the Pacific Islands... there is hardly a region of the world not represented here. I did notice that much of the data in this volume can also be researched on the internet (although I have not googled for Asian/Eurasian/Middle Eastern material, I must admit.) Nevertheless, The Forest is handy for quick, all in one place fact finding.

Valkyria Chronicles
$39.99
I'm inclined to say it's my favorite game ever...I love the fire emblem series, Civilization, Final Fantasy series, but this beats them all in my opinion.

Great story, characters, gameplay, music. It is not difficult the first time through so the pacing works perfect. I thought the artistic style worked perfectly. The book mode worked perfect.

Only downsides I saw were a few cheesy dialogues and the AI was fairly dumb (at least in the first run through...maybe better in the harder mode). These didn't take away from the fun of the game though.

Heavenly Sword
$59.99
Lets get straight to the point here: I absolutely hated this game.

The reason why I called my review Heavenly cannonballs, is because this was the biggest most dissappointing thing for me in the game. I thought there were too many sequences in this game where you had to steer objects with the controller. There is practically as much or more of this horrible gameplay mechanic you have to deal with in the game than there is hacking and slashing, and the game is short enough already!

I am not new when it comes to hack and slash games (they aren't my favorite), but this one was just so completely disappointing. When I got to the last boss, I couldn't take it anymore.. after 11 tries I quit, took the disc out of my ps3, and gave it away to a friend immediately without even beating it. The same friend told me it took him 3 months to beat the final boss on God of War when I complained about the difficulty. Question: How is that even remotely fun? It shouldn't take more than a week to beat a non-rpg single player game in my opinion. Anything beyond that, unless the game is extremely long, is just frustrating and unpleasant. Its like watching a long movie, that takes all the wrong turns when you wish it would take a right one.

I walked out of G.I. Joe because it was a horrible movie. I gave this game away before beating it for the same reason.. HORRIBLE. This game is overrated, and I feel like I completely wasted my time, energy, and money on it. I will not allow this game into my PS3, let alone my home ever again.

Bottomline: There are better games out there for PS3. Skip this one unless you absolutely love Hack & Slash or unlike me, have extreme patience.