Under Starters Orders at the Jade Pavilion

Advantages: Beautiful setting and gorgeous food
Disadvantages: Not the most salubrious part of town

...the police statistics showed that more crime happened during a hanging than was ever cleared up by it. Hence, hanging went private and moved to the local courthouse and eventually to Bedford Prison. Racecourse Park is now the centre of things each summer when the Northampton Balloon Festival comes to town - other than that, it's just a big open park. The racecourse attracted the local folks as well as the great and the good, and a pavilion was built to keep royalty and gentry away from the hoi polloi. Today, this pavilion is the home of an oriental restaurant called Jade Pavilion. After more than 4 years of saying 'We really ought to eat there' we finally got round to doing so a few weeks back. I phoned ahead on Saturday and despite understanding barely a word from the man on the phone, I was pretty sure I'd succeeded in getting a booking...

koshkha 11.11.2008 · Read review
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Review of Jade Pavilion, Northampton

Jaded Cocoon

Advantages: Presentation, design, merge monsters, voice acting, 2-player mode
Disadvantages: Battles a bit short of depth, no real puzzles, lacking in exploration

...Please note that my review and rating does not take into account the multiplayer aspect of this game. Despite the conflict between the people of Parel and the monsters known as Minions residing in the forest, the village of Syrus would eventually become one to coexist with it's surroundings. However, when many villagers were put into a deep sleep by a sudden attack from the Locusts of Apocalypse, it would be up to Levant, the new Cocoon master, to save them. Jade Cocoon is a joint effort between developers Genki and Katsuya Kondo - whom is known for his work on on a number of Studio Ghibli animations. The game goes some way to capturing the feel of one, in particular I felt the story had shades of 'Nausicaa Valley of the Wind' with a dash of 'Princess Mononoke'. There are a handful of anime sequences here which, although they look...

scream4bruce 06.03.2007 · Read review
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Review of Jade Cocoon (PlayStation)

Jade Empire Special Edition

Advantages: Everything, I cannot fault it
Disadvantages: At a loss to think of anything

...You begin as a student of Master Li at the Two Rivers martial arts school until an attack on Two Rivers occurs. Then begins your journey to save the Water Dragon from the Emperor. In Jade Empire you may select a character from a range each with their own fighting styles. Fairly early on you'll need to decide how you're going to spend your skill points to make your character strong at one fighting style. The stats are Body, Mind and Spirit. The points in these will determine your Health, Focus and Chi in that order as well as your Charm, Intuition and Intimidation. There is a good/evil element in that you can choose between Open Palm and Closed Fist. If you make decisions in a Closed Fist manner you follow the evil path, this generally means leaving NPCs to defend themselves. Depending on which path you're on you'll either be able...

CloudRuler 11.09.2008 · Read review
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Review of Jade Empire: Special Edition (PC)

Jade - Our girl

Advantages: Raise awareness and celebrate her life
Disadvantages: Exploit her family and other cancer sufferers

...Should Jade Goody?s life be turned to film? I?m sure we all know who Jade Goody is by now, her painful and tragic cancer has been throughout the news and tabloids for the past few months, painfully documenting the tragic loss of such a young girl step by step capturing every cruel moment of suffering. Today is the day of her funeral, which is also being so vastly publicised that it is coursing controversy and raising questions and eyebrows. I went to school with her husband Jack so because I live in the area I have, in the past, seen her shopping, drinking, getting her nails done, and being carried to the church for her funeral. Her funeral (televised on sky news) is today and the whole of my town and surrounding towns is completely blocked with locals, cars, police, paparazzi genuine friends and family and people who have...

amyloop 04.04.2009 (25.04.2009) · Read review
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Review of Reality TV Star Jade Goody's life to be turned into film. What are your thoughts on this?

Jade Cocoon.

Advantages: Cool gameplay, merging monsters, good graphics for the time, cheap/
Disadvantages: Poor graphics compared to newer consoles.

...Jade Cocoon is an RPG that revolves around capturing monsters, merging them and using these monsters in order to progress through the storyline. The storyline revolves around trying to save you're village from destruction at the hands of a mysterious evil force. Jade Cocoon is quite similair to Pokemon in many aspects, especially pokemon colleseum. The player or his monsters must fight of against groups of enemy monsters using abilities and moves that can be aquired along the way. The monsters have different attributes and the players have to combine them and fight them accordingly in order to get the most effective results. The system of merging two monsters together is a really cool idea, and even today it is extremely original. Different characteristics are passed on down the line as monsters are mixed over and over again, getting...

JamieJCO 01.09.2008 · Read review
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Review of Jade Cocoon (PlayStation)

Jade Goody's life story

Advantages: Cannot think of advantages a film would have.
Disadvantages: Her life has been played out too much.

...It is really strange how one person has had so much impact on the nation, so much that her life is now to be turned into a film. Even stranger is that she was not even a winner of Big Brother - she came fourth. Winners of the show have not had the impact that Jade has had. So what do we know about Jade Goody? We know that she had a tough upbringing, often having to skip school to help her mum, who had problems with addiction. Jade was a trainee dental nurse when she applied to Big Brother in 2002. She came fourth, but managed to endear herself to the public and was able to court the press - to her advantage - for a long time afterwards. She made a lot of money from her own perfume, other reality shows, her autobiography, as well as other projects. She was not scared of work, but I think a lot of it stemmed from her childhood...

jules.34 02.04.2009 · Read review
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Review of Reality TV Star Jade Goody's life to be turned into film. What are your thoughts on this?

Jade's Workout!

Advantages: Good music
Disadvantages: Very complicated

...I tried this once. And never again. The music is brilliant, lots of good, modern RnB songs that you do really want to dance to, but Jade just isn't a good teacher. She launches into the warm up without explaining what it is that she's doing. Add to that, the warm up isn't a typical warm up as far as I am concerned and it's the most important part. I was worried that I was more open to injury due to the lack of stretching. It really throws you out of a DVD when the teacher starts saying, "Okay now xxxx" which is come move that isn't explained. Then we go onto the dance section. I will admit that I worked up a sweat, but that was more out of confusion and jumping about trying to get my feet where her's were. When Jade took the effort to explain what she was about to do, it wasn't clear and was a bit too fast. Maybe part of it is...

elisemarie9 20.07.2007 · Read review
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Review of Jade's Dance Workout (DVD)

Jade Empire is a pearl

Advantages: Engaging story, beautiful graphics, inventive fighting system
Disadvantages: Dialog may be too long for many, relatively short by rpg standards

...Following the success of KOTOR, Bioware surprisingly handed over the reins to the franchise and started work on a new project; Jade Empire. Although the settings for the two games could hardly be any different, an ancient Chinese empire shrouded in myths and magic being the backdrop for Bioware's latest endeavour, there are numerous similarities between the two titles. This is not a bad thing, given the achievements of KOTOR, whose influence is firstly noticed in the game's alignment system. After choosing your character from a number of different (both male and female) characters, each of whom have their own special style and attributes, the gamer will be faced with many different decisions throughout the game that will affect their alignment to either 'the way of the open palm', or 'the way of the closed fist'. Despite various long...

Newcastlebloke 24.08.2005 (15.09.2005) · Read review
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Review of Jade Empire (Xbox)

Ms Jade, What About the Ching Ching Ching?!

Advantages: --
Disadvantages: --

...Missy Elliot and Timbaland couldn't get enough of her and everyone from Nate Dogg, Jay Z to Tweet has featured on this album but why have so few people heard of her?? Ms. Jade was born in Philidelphia in 1979; she grew up in a poor but close-knit neighbourhood. Ms. Jade always had a love for music; she looked up to Janet Jackson, MC Lyte and Queen Latifah and she even learnt the words to all their songs and raps. During the 1990s while at high school she graduated to listening to Mase, Lil Kim and Foxy Brown. Her dream was always to become a rap star and become respected in what was a mainly mens business for her rhymes and flow. While training to become a hairdresser she continued to write her raps but she didn't stop there. No, she chased this dream. Ms Jade arranged countless meetings with producers and record companies in New...

x_helix_x 31.03.2005 · Read review
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Review of Girl Interrupted [PA] - Ms. Jade

Jade Goody - Modern Day Martyr Or Media Victim?

Advantages: Jade's illness made women aware of the dangers of cervical cancer.
Disadvantages: Not inspirational.

...How can a public who so criticised and loathed Jade Goody - a public who so cruelly turned their backs on her for speaking out-of-turn ? how could such a public have found it in their hearts to let bygones be bygones? Perhaps it was the realisation that we are all mere mortals? flawed and weak? and very much like Jade Goody in our own way. When the world, or so it seemed that it was the entire world at the time, cried out for Jade?s head on a silver platter, I couldn?t help but wonder why people were outraged? after all, wasn?t that exactly why they were watching a reality show? so that they could be shocked and appalled, so that they could be judge and jury? What was all the fuss about? Did Jade?s words possess clout? Was she so respected that her comments might turn neighbour against neighbour, friend against friend? Did she...

GoFigure 15.04.2009 (01.05.2009) · Read review
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Review of Reality TV Star Jade Goody's life to be turned into film. What are your thoughts on this?