Puzzle Quest

It's a great game, to much of my personal surprise! It's a puzzle Bejewled-like game combines with RPG items and stats element. It's fun and addicitive, well designed and an awsome game to play for an hour or so. It's quite satisfying to hear the female announcer saying 'You're victorious!' since the game does get unfairly tough at times (or maybe I'm just crap at puzzle games). I'm definately looking forward to next incarnation of this great title, hopefully with online play on the PSP. Hail to this great Aussies developed game!

There is nooooo power... for an hour

My electricity went down for about an hour today, not because I didn't pay the bill, but there was a fire in the local sub-station. Initially I panicked, quite a bit, so much that I started playing a real guitar! It would have been 2 years (maybe) since I even strum a chord on it. Since it's been so long, I just mucked around on it for a few mins before I put it down again. I also spoked to two of my neighbours about the outage, personal record.

Assassin's Creed

Or should it be called Jade Raymond's Assassin's Creed... Anyway, I had just completed the game, or so it appears... I hate cliff-hangers, I really do, especially in a game. You play as an assassin named Altair, assigned to kill nine historical figures in three cities; Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem in 1191. The animation of Altair is excellent, you can see him smoothly grab a ledge or window and pull himself up with some effort. The cities look quite good and realistic, except, all of them look pretty much alike with little variety to differ them other than just a colour filter. The most annoying "feature" in this game is however, the beggers and drunks, there are one or both of them every SECOND corner, sometimes more, and they harrass you ALL THE FREAKING TIME! So much that you would want to kill every single one you see, but... there's a penalty for doing it! For god sakes, do they really have to put that many of them in the game!? While the story is decent, the plot twist is quite good other than the non-existing ending. The major flaw of this game is that it's very very repetitive, beyond the point of infinite repetition and rep... you get the idea. To carry out an assassination, you first must gather intelligence on your target, there are a few ways of doing them; you beat them out of a dude, you steal them from a dude, or you sit on a bench and listening in some dudes talking, the whole game is rinse and repeat with no variation what-so-ever. While the sound effects and original scores are above par, the voice acting is stonic and emotionless, just like watching a dub anime. The one-button combat mechanic actually works, most of the time, requiring some precise timing to attack or counter-attack. This is a fairly well presented game, but the major downfall is the lack of variety in many aspects and the inconclusive and somewhat confusing ending.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is a Bioware RPG, on the Xbox 360, which I finally received on Monday. Having kind of rushed the game on the first play, I'm definately going to spend more time on the second play thru. It has, by far the most seamless character interaction of any game I've ever play so far. The characters are professionally voiced and modeled, and the dialog system flows very smoothly and naturally. The combat system works very well, being a hybrid shooter/turn based rpg. The soundtrack is top notch and feels just like you're watching a great sci-fi flick. But it also has some very minor yet annoying bugs/glitches, and they stop the game being one of the greatest RPG ever created. The vehicle driving is insanely idiotic and handles horribly, it appears that no one in Bioware plays any driving games, ever. Also sometimes the texture loads very slowly, at few instances it didn't load fast enough for fast transition scenes. And what's the deal with the slow arse elevators?? So the human race has mastered faster-than-light travel and yet they are obviously lacking in that department. The menu interface is also not very intuitive and feels very clumsy. The tutorial (or lack of it) is short and not informative. Overall, the game has an excellent presentation, with a great story and high replayability, anyone who owns a 360 and likes action/rpg genre should try it out.

Dragonforce? More like Trashforce

I came to know Dragonforce from Guitar Hero 3, their song, 'Through the Fire and Flames' is no doubt the hardest song ever in the Guitar Hero series, so far. So I decided to Youtube their live videos, and the disappointment begins. They can't play in time, their guitarists 'attempts' to dual solo in unison with out-of-tune guitars, all they can do is play really fast, but not very accurate at all. The singer is average at best, the band made him looked foolish since they can't play in time and he seems lost half way thru the song, very trashy power-metal wanna-be studio band.

Insomnia count - 1

Play-Asia took my money

Not once, but twice, before I even receive the products. This better be someone's mistake because I'm pretty careful with using my credit card online. I'm so deperately wanting to play Mass Effect and Assasin's Creed, should have just gone to JB and get them, sigh. The looooonnnggg wait is not over yet.

A few things...

Been a while since my last update, mostly because my internet is currently capped, so I just didn't bother, and that I've been playing a shit load of games, while enjoying the cricket. It's all thanks to Valve/Steam, that I blew pretty much all of my bandwidth allowance for a month in 12 days. The main culprit being buying Call of Duty 4 over on Steam. The game that Steam informed me that was fully pre-loaded, turn out wasn't complete, so I had to download the missing 2gb or so file. But it didn't stop there, the game refused to activate eventhought everything was in my hard drive and offically released on Steam. So I checked the forum for 'fixes' and it all went down hill from there. I think I have probably downloaded the game twice, in a 10 hour gap. The file size is around 6.25gb. So the result? I kissed my normal 230kbps download speed goodbye for the rest of the month.

However, Call of Duty 4 is a fantastic game, it was the Call of Duty style that I enjoyed when I played the series for the first time. Single player is as intense as it could possibly be, and had a good story. The story alternate from the point of view of a British SAS and American USMC sergeant. The non stop action drives the linear story combine with a nice relaxing level call 'Death from above'. It's being said that it is the most realistic video game moment in history so far. You basically take a point of view from a gunner in an aircraft, with one of those black and white infra-red vision one would often see when you watch the news coverage on modern warfare. The music is scored beautifully by Harry Gergson-Williams, his style of music is a perfect match for this game. Althought I have not play the multiplayer component much so far, mostly because of my onboard soundcard caused multiplayer to run at 10 fps. I had to remedied with calling someone with Skype before I load a multiplayer map (as insane as it sounds, it's actually true and works for me).

Now onto Crysis, which I just finished not long ago, it's by far, have the best single player campaign of any FPS I've ever played. From the open sandbox style at the early levels, to the action packed more linear story telling in the latter stage, they are all designed so perfectly. Boy, I would love to have one of those Nanosuits. It is a system killer, there is no doubt about it, quite literally. The graphic is by far the best there is right now. My high end computer was running it at quite acceptable frame rate with high settings, except right at the final boss fight where I most needed it to perform, it cluggs along quite baddly.

To my own surprise, I found myself enjoying Carcassonne on Xbox 360, a Live Arcade game, maybe because it was free. It's quite a nice and relaxing game to play in between of all those action packed FPS.

Guitar Hero 3, and my left wrist...

So after jumping out from bed resulted from a somewhat unexpected but hopeful delivery from Australian Post for my Guitar Hero 3 and Metroid Prime 3 that I have ordered online weeks ago, I was up at 8:30am and started playing Guitar Hero 3, for 4 hours.
My only comment so far for GH3 is, my left wrist really hurts, alot. I never ever remembered playing a real guitar for 4 hours straight so long that my left wrist hurts, but here I was slugging on the fake one like a wanna-be rocker (not for the first time either). Looks like I won't be playing Metroid Prime 3 for a while.

skate.

Apparently that's how you suppose to spell out this game... right EA... I'd been completely hook for a few days in this game, not that because it's really addicitive, it's just sometimes this game frustrate the hell out of you. In general the 'Flickt' control works really well, except when the game ask you to do a specific trick follow another, because the analog stick can be not that responsive sometimes, it is quite difficult to pull them off. The other problem I've had with is the camera angle, it's suppose to emulate from a point of view of a camera-man following you, from a low angle. At times I have problem seeing what is in front of me because my skater blocks the view and does not go transparent more often than he should, I wasted many hours retrying races and trying to grind on certain rail. The loading time is also quite hideous and feels like that part of the game is poorly coded. Load time is way too long for its own good, at times when you moved off from 30m of where you originally started and you retry to start from your original spot, the games goes into a loading screen, I spent alot of times retrying and the loading just doesn't help the cause.

Overall, it's a very solid game and offer something new to the skating genre that's been dominated by Tony Hawk. This game will likely have a sequel and I hope the problems above will be fix in the near future.

My Xbox 360

Got it today, yah! I'm loving it so far.




Skate is the only game I've been playing the most. The game's very unique control scheme does take sometime to get use to. It is very different from the Tony Hawks games I've been playing over the years. The realism of the game makes it completely different than Tony Hawk.

Endless frustrations of online gaming

Well the couple of games I've been playing the most recently are the Warcraft 3 mod, DotA (Defence of the Ancients) and Team Fortress 2. Since it's online and being only half good (or half bad, depends on how you'd look at it), sometimes they frustrates the hell out of me.

DotA has one of the worst online community I've ever encountered. If I get a dollar everytime someone talk trash on about how godlike/uber pwnage/'IM SO PRO' they are, I'd be pretty damn rich. Sure with anonymity of internet, people say whatever they like without any consequences, so they just keep talking shit until the game is over. It pisses the hell out of me on how lack of any sportsmanship people playing this game has, they just can't stfu and play the god damn game. So when I get fed up with DotA, I moved onto Team Fortress 2.

Since Team Fortress 2 is relatively new, there are alot of noobs in the game. People who doesn't know what the objective of the map is, constantly calling for medics when there isn't a single one in the team or even know what key to press to built a damn sentry gun. When you die, you wait around til you respawn again, while you're dead, you can observe what you team mates are doing. It gets frustrating watching noobs, makes you kinda feel like pulling your hair out. When I get to that stage, I usually go back to DotA, thus the endless cycle of repetitiveness.

But afterall, they're only games, you're meant to have fun, just make the most of it when you are having it.

A routine Saturday

My Saturday usually look like this - sleep deprived while waiting the latest Stargate Atlantis episode to air and then to download, and generally following that, video games and more video games.


This week is no different of course, 'Travelers' is the new episode aired today. I quite enjoyed it, Larrin (played by Jill Wagner) is the leader of this new advanced human race who call themselves 'Travelers' introduced in season 4. They live on space ships that's capable of hyper space travel to avoid the Wraith. Larrin is sexy, beautiful and smart, did I mentioned sexy? She has great chemistry with Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and it seems like there is quite a bit of sexual tension between them. I look forward seeing her again in the near future.


Clive Barker's Jericho is a squad based FPS with horror elements. Visually the game is average, the colour in this game is so dull, the whole game's texture has a very grey element to it. Even the blood is not bright red, just a dull maroon colour. Graphics isn't bad, but not the best either, it gets the job done. The atmosphere of the game feels quite good, at times it is a bit scary, like you're in a dark room and monsters jumps out from beneath trying to grab you. The music is quite good, help creates the horror themed atmosphere, but the voice acting is a bit average at times. It seems like I'm about 1/3 into the game since I heard the game is quite short.

PS: GOD DAMN TINY MOTHS, one just flew right across my notebook screen while I was typing this, almost scare the shit out of me, I had to grab this PSP case near by and squash it. There are so many of them lately...

SGA RENEWED!!

FUCK YES! I'm glad I was wrong! 100 episodes, WOOT!!

Frets on Fire

Bascially it's a Guitar Hero clone on PC, it's a freeware and comes with 3 songs. I've downloaded it from its offical site http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net. Somethings to get me by til Guitar Hero 3 comes out on Wii. I'm downloading the one with more songs off Blackcats. Man I'm rusty, haven't play like this since I played Guitar Hero at Jason's house in Burnaby, Canada. On the side note, I feel a bit silly holding the wireless bluetooth keyboard upright and use it like a guitar =/

Stargate Atlantis

My gut feeling is telling me that SGA will likely meet the fate of SG-1. The ratings hasn't been good since there are these things call TiVO in this country call USA, apparently it's quite popular there. Instead the network trying find a solution take advantage of TiVO or trying to establish a reason why their network rating is in decline, they just try to find the cheapest cost cutting method, which is to cancel a show. Now I haven't seen many shows on SCI-FI, but I'm presuming that many of SCI-FI's original production aren't much better, in ratings or qualities. The Stargate franchise has one thing for it thought, a huge international fanbase. Sure I download the show since Australia is so much further behind, but I do buy the DVDs when they come out. SCI-FI really shouldn't ever had locked SG1 up for the 11th season so the producers couldn't make the show with another network. This deal probably has extended to SGA, so if it does get cancel, this would be it. Let's hope the new series that's currently in development find its way to another network that is more supportive other than SCI-FI.

Xbox 360

Mostly likely get a Xbox 360 sometime in November or December the latest. List of games which will likely get: Halo 3, Forza 2, Skate, Mass Effect and Assasin's Creed. Looks like it'll be around $1000 if I get the Elite version. The wireless network adapter is ONE HUNDERED AND SEVENTY FUCKING dollar, WTF is it so expensive. Good thing I can connect it to my notebook next to the plasma and get wireless via ICS.

The next gen consoles

The way I see it, Playstation 3 is by far the weakest system thanks to lack of good games available right now, and the bunch of shitty lies Sony is feeding to consumers. For examples, from a promised worldwide launch to a 'worldwide' launch of North America and Japan; 'OMGWTFBBQ rumble is so last gen, motion is the next gen!!!!111' to releasing Dual Shock 3 which is pretty much a wireless Dual Shock 2; 'PS2 backwards compatibility is a core value of our believes' to no backwards compatibility in the 40gb PS3 (not that I personally care much about BC), so one year later all the 'core value' just goes out the window. Sad fact is, they expect people to continue to believe their lies. Sure I want a PS3, and I'll probably buy one in the future, but they are alienating their potential customers by doing this kind of shit. I do however, wants to get a Xbox 360 probably by the end of the year. There are enough interesting games on the console right now and in the future. I think Wii is awsome, but there are just too many casual games aim at mass market and those games are pretty crap as well. Developers needs to use their creativitiy to produce games that doesn't make the wiimote feature feels tack-on to their games, create games with enough depth to keep playing, and Nintendo needs to make their online feature better.

First entry

Woot.

Bleh, not like anyone gonna read this anyway.

Portal - fantastic, intriguing and mind twisting. (The cake is a lie...)
Half Life 2 - talk about twisitng, the damn game made my stomach twist in more than just one way. I hardly had any problem with motion sickness in all the games I'd play, but this game is one of them. Saddly I cannot even enjoy it without feeling like crap after 5 mins, maybe I should turn the graphics settings down so it looks less realistic.
Team Fortress 2 - Awsome multiplayer game, reminds me of good old Enemy Territory days. I remembered I used to play it alot and very much enjoy every moment of it.

I can't believe I gave in and made a Facebook account, what the hell was I thinking.