Games Reclaiming My Time

Lately my time had been occupied, not by reading, but by games.  It was a bit of a change to be honest.

First, it was Final Fantasy: Dimensions on my Galaxy S II.  It was throwback to the classics FF game style in their NES and SNES eras.  What did not help, was that I lost my game saves when I flash my phone to Jelly Bean 4.1.2...  I should have redone all backup and not just update it.  Well, nothing I can do about that now though...  I am slowly playing it again with more insights on which directions I should take for each characters.

Second, Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC.  Like many reviewers and comments were posted about this DLC pack (4.5 Gbs in size which was like a whole game a few years ago), it was the biggest fan service of the highest order.  Dialogues were filled with inside jokes (Traynor's Toothbrush, ), ripping of the commander, reminiscing the fallen comrades and tied up a few loose ends (James showing his finished N7 Tattoo, Thane recounts what he was doing between ME2 and ME3, and connecting with team members.)  It was fun going back and learning all the missing pieces of their stories and such.  I finished the Citadel DLC in one afternoon and realized that in order to really get the whole story, I will have to played more Priority missions to meet all the members so they will showed up in the DLC.  So I did all that and now ready to complete the DLC again.

Third, Plague Inc. on Android, I heard about this game on KUEC pod cast so I give it a try.  It was...  somewhat fun.  The brain worm was fun to play as you get to infect the world *Then* enslave the humankind.  The other disease was quite difficult to determine how to win.  Other than the brain worm, the other common disease play through required a certain balancing act.  The objective is to eliminate all humankind.  The operative word here in *all*.  You will have manage the disease so that it will infect and then kill everybody.  Otherwise, the research for cure will began and you won't have enough time to kill everybody.  I must have played almost 10 tried before winning the first scenario.  After about five loses in the second scenario...  I will probably cool it for a while.  The game was a huge battery drain though.

Fourth, the impending StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarms.  I love game with story and StarCraft have enough to be a saga.  I am looking forward to learn what will happen to the rescued Kerrigan and where will this next arc lead her to.

So the reading will go on back burner for a while.  At least until first week of April in which the next book in Cut & Run series, Touch & Geaux, will be released.  I am really really really looking forward to that book.

Recent Activities

I know I have been lagging on posting (for almost a year now?)  I didn't realize that when I bought Kindle that it will also eat up the blog time as well :P

Kindle still works wonders.  Although it started to show some tears and wears due to accidental drop to the ground.  I am glad I got this cover when I bought my Kindle.  I am thinking that I will order the Kindle Touch when I went to US later this year for another Southern Decadence.  This time I will be seeing another friend in SF.  It would be a nice change from underwhelmed New York trip.

I have also been playing The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim for quite a while now.  Overall I feels that the experience is tighter than Oblivion.  Maybe because this time I didn't download too many mods and mostly just focusing on playing through different quests.  I haven't progress much on the main quest yet as I am still happily wandered the towns doing various quests.

This time I just abuse the console command to make the game more fun for me :P.  It helps that there were less gay romance novels released for Kindle that I have got time to play Skyrim.

But also because of Skyrim and Kindle, I haven't watch Dexter season 6 yet.  I planned to do that during the Christmas break but then both Skyrim and Kindle took most of the time.  I think I might try to finish Skyrim main quests in a few weeks so I will maybe went back and finish L.A. Noire.

A New Start on My Blog

I am still have not finish the traveling posts. And I have been increasingly less motivated to do so... I guess I am more occupied with more constant personal gratification activities such as TV, mangas and games.

So I will try to finsih the traveling posts later and perhaps put it up intermittenly. Otherwise, I will be more likely to just abandon this blog altogether and I do not want to do that.

Right now I am highly enjoying the new DS game 'Radiant Historia' It has rich story involving nations at wars, political maneuverings, betrayals, mysteries. and gradual continent disasters. Overall I find the story is much more intriguing than Dragon Quest VI.

The Returns of the Building Leaper

I finally finish Assassin's Creed II a couple of days ago. It certainly was a fun game to play.

The story seems to continue right from the ending of the first game (seems because I never actually finish the first one). After Lucy help Desmond escape the bad guy's compound, she take her to one of the assassin's safe house to have Desmond use the Animus again, not only to utilize the bleeding effects to train Desmond to fight but also find the clues to the Templar's objective.

The gameplay as whole feels much more fun than the first game. A lot tighter and can be quick pace if you choose to focus on the main missions. The missions themselves, however, are not very varied but spaced out quite nicely.

The character models are the most expressive among the games I played lately. The facial expressions were done very well.

The game made quite a buzz for having the most uptight DRM system, the kind that required you to be online all the time to play the game. This DRM system is quite effective. None of the usual scene group come up with a proper crack for the game. However, all are not lost, by the efforts of some Russians group, a server emulation was created. The setting were done to fool the DRM system into looking for the server on 127.0.0.1 IP and the fake server program will feed the necessary value to the game, enable it to progress.

This emulation came out about a month after the game release. Quite understandable, since there were nothing like this before. At first all hope were lost because none of the scene groups release any working crack. The game publisher said that if a working crack came out they will release a patch to stop the need for internet connection. The pirates are successful in circumventing the DRM. But the game itself was not crack in anyway.

I wondered how the publisher will react to this. Since the game now can be played offline but the DRM system itself is not broken, just rerouted.

Anyhoo, the game itself it fun to play, it looks great, and it set in Italy!! They use Italian language in the game as well, which I like. I may play the game again to get memorize some of the words and line to use when I went to Italy next year :)

The Second Mass Effect of Dragon Age

It's been too long since I do a game review post. As usual, this will be a double-billed game review post :)

Dragon Age: The Origins

My first thought when I start playing it was "This is Mass Effect, the fantasy version!". The character movement, the scenaries, the speech animations, etc., all reminded me of Mass Effect. Not that it was a bad point, it just that the similarities were rather jarring.

Overall, the game was entertaining, though it was not innovative in anyway regarding redefining the genre. Every things in this game were rather standard fantasy RPG motif. From the races, the classes, the weapons & armours, the settings, etc. The story was even rather standard as well. Some big demon army is marching to destroy all of mankind and the hero and his peer must defeat the demons and save all of mankind. It even use the accidental hero thing where the main character was thrusted into the chaos without really knowing the magnitude of it all.

I do like the fact that you have to recruit various people, can court the same sex character, and companions' quip in the map walk. The dialogues, however, can be straining sometimes.

Right now I am at about 2/3 or 3/4 into the game and did not feels like continuing on. But I will do it soon... I do wnana see what the end battle scene was like.

Mass Effect 2

It start with a bang, literally. Soon after the first scene start, the Normandy got hit by mysterious cruiser class ship. Shepard then have to go drag Joker (the pilot) from the bridge to escape pod and got thrown into the space with ruptured suit. After being dead for two years, he got resurrected by old enemy, Cerberus. The head of Cerberus wants to recruit Shepard to spearheaded the fight against the common enemy, The Reapers, following the events of missing colonies citizens.

So commander Shepard takes on the impossible mission again with the new ship, mixture of old and new crews and squard, and some interesting missions.

This times everything seems to be sleeker and easier to get into. The weapon systems got simplified tremendously. Now when you found an upgrade, your whole squard got it. The number of skills has been greatly reduced. Your squard initially got only three skills and the last one can be unlocked after successfully finished the loyalty missions of that sqaurd member.

I finished the game once already. Only to find out later how to finish one of the loyalty mission correctly. So now I have been replaying it from an old save. It is quite enjoyable to play than Dragon Age somehow. I guess it is because the fighting in Mass Effect 2 feels a lot more fast paced and reltively quick to finish. After all, you were attacking with guns and biotic power instead of sword and magic which is a lot more melee.

As of last night, I seems to skill have not got enough Praragon point to choose the correct dialogue choice for *the* loyalty mission. I still have a few other missions I can gain more Paragon points on, so I will tried that and see how it goes. If it's really bad then I would have to do the Renegade option instead...

Also, I still have problem with the graphic card driver. I just read a tip about how to fix this. I will tried it later tonight, eventhough I wants to just go home and try it right now.

Interview Was Done, The Anxious is Over, For Now

I have done the interview... It was harder than I thought. I think I did ok, although I felt like I speak random things at times. They only need to *steer* me into the right direction a couble of times (that I noticed). When I asked about when I will know the result, they said I will be contacted next week.

My saving will be reduced significantly today, to pay my mom back for using her credit card to pay for the plane tickets. I will have to get a card of my own soon. Too bad the embassy did not return any of my documents... So I will have to spend another 200 baht to get the bank statement *sigh*

I tried The Sims 3 last night and boy it was quite fun :D. It certainly looks a lot liviler than the previous game. There are a lot more activities to do and gain skill of. Cooking is more tricky now that you have to do grocery shopping. Gerdening is quite a breeze as it included from the start. Now it completely occupied my time and my two other games has been put on tbe back burner :P

Busy & Lazy

It's been a while since my last post... My reason is that I have been both busy and lazy :P

Busy: I was quite busy at work last week, so the three days weekends was a nice change of pace. I have also been preoccupied with the new DS game 'Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2' The game play is quite addictive and I have been playing almost non-stop since the day it was released. Although I like some of the new system, I miss many of the old discarded ones. Anyway, I did not stay home all day on during the three days though. I had done a highschool reunion, a lunch date, and shopping trip, respectively each day.

And it was not all relatively relaxing as I thought... Since I was banging away on my DS, playing my way through FFTA2 game. I even slept quite late because of it too :p

I also felt like I should went and see some movie... It's been so long since I was in a cinema that I forgot what was the last movie I saw! Hellboy 2 will be in theater next week... I think I will catch it on Monday after next, just before my London trip :D.

Lazy: I was really preoccupied by that game that I have little interest in other things. Except food, regular TV shows, and comic books.

Something strange also been going on for quite a while now... I cannot open anything from blogspot host, without using proxy server. I wondered if it just some mishap with connection or the government try to blocked out some blogs... The strange thing is that I can still open blogger host, as I can make this post, so this is quite perplexing

Moving On To Another Topic

It seems that none of my fans (little as they are) are in London... So I guess I will moved on to another topic...

I recently read some more infos on Final Fantasy Tactic A2, due to be release late June, and I got the urge to play it right away :P Since it is not release yet, my thought went to the GBA version that I still have not finish since a few years ago. I was at the point where I need to finish several more missions and then I will clear the game but I do not have the items required for those missions.

After reading up on the mission requirement and such, it still take me a few more days and frustrating moments to tricker the mission availabilities. Once that's done the rest is a breeze. Especially after adding level cheat code :P

It was enough to sate my hunger for the game for the time being, but it still be almost a month away from the release. The new season of House would also help :)

I am also struggling to complete my self assessment form required by the office. I am drawing blank on what I should write about... I think I will ask to see this form from one of my colleague...

The World Ends With You

Here is a brand new Action-RPG DS game review that I currently play (although it was not so new for Japan... it's been first release by Square-Enix a while ago in Japanese language)

Our main protagonist, Neku, find hihmself in the middle of Shibuya district when he was attacked by strange creatures. Then a young girl grab him and ask him to make a pact so they can fight off the creatures. Although he still daze by the situation, he accept the girl's request and began to fight off the attacking parties. Afterward, Neku realize that he has no recollection of his past, other than his name. He is more of a loner and tend to shut other people off, saying they are dragging him down.

The girl, Shiki, then informed Neku that they are in a 'Reaper's Game'. The objective is to survive for a week or face being erase of existance. A mission will issue each day, the players must complete the objection or face erasion.

This game is very unique in that you actually fight in both screens on DS. You control the upper screen with either D-pad or buttons and the touch screen with stylus. It was quite overwhelming at first but you will get used to it after a while. There is also an auto setting to let the upper screen fight automatically as well (or manual mode if you can Really multitask ;P). Neku fight with a variety of pins. Each pin represent a psych, each with a different way to stroke or touch the screen with stylus to execute. There are a total of 304 pins to collect and each pin has cool design as well :) Click here to download the pins images.

The soundtrack of the game are J-Pop style and modern music, which set it apart from the usual orchestra music found in most RPG game.

It is a really good game, with surprising story and characters growth. The fight sequence are fun and fractic. There are many things to collect and 'New Game +' mode to replay the game with all your stat and inventory intact, which added the the replayabilities.

If you have DS, this is certainly a game to have :)

From Phoenix to Apollo

After finishing two of the Phoenix Wright series and starting on the third one, I tried the fourth game as a change of pace and continue to see it through. I finish it just last night :p

This game take place 7 years after the third game finish. Instead of playing as Phoenix Wright, we played as Apollo Justice. At the beginning of the first chapter Apollo is a rookie attorney defending a client. The client is non others than Pheonix Wright who also have a daughter, a gifted magician name Trucy!! Who was disbarred and became a pianist as a front for being a mster poker player. During the first chapter, as it turns out, Apollo's boss was the murderer of the case!.

You will meet few of the old casts from the previous games who are all grown with new sprite, sans one quirky character :p,.

There are four cases in total in this game. The first one is also involved with the fourth one and the fourth one tied up all the circumstances involved with how Wright got disbarred seven years ago, how Trucy became his daughter, and how the murder in the fourth case involved with the murderer in the first case. The fourth case is probably the best case of the series, with all the twists and turns and complexity of a good crime novel. It is all unfolded to shows how each events links together which results in the downfall of Phoenix Wright and his scheme to find the truth and turns againts the plotter/murderer. As it turns out, the motive of the murders stem from pettiness of the murderer that started by that seven years ago case.

The game, however, is not without flaws. In my opinion, it still suffers the same slow texts, linearity, and tricky trigger events that make me stuck unless I read walkthrough. There was, literally, no back story on Apollo at all. No friends, families, or backgrounds mentions. Except for a little mention, in passing, from another character.

Overall it was an enjoyable experinece. While, the gameplay is nothing new, the story is very strong and since this is a story driven game it compensate for other weakpoints.

Hold It, Take That, Objection

The title meant that I am reviewing another DS game that I had just finish today, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, in case most people were wondering :P

Despite its, in my opinion, weak beginning/tutorial chapter, the game real episode began a real intriguing court drama and story soon after the prologue finish.

You will play as a novice defense attorney, Phoenix Wright, on his first case ever under the guidance of your ample-chested boss, Mia Fey. The first case involved Wright's long time friend, Larry Butz, who got arrested in a murder case. The goal of the game is to get the client acquitted and get the verdict of 'Not Guilty'. The court system will sure looks unfamiliar to many people who are used to see the American Court Drama TV shows as it is based on Japanese system. The game even up the stakes by having game played in the near future where the court system has been revamped to finish within three days!

Anyway, after the rather bland prologue case, the first chapter began with a bang. The boss, Mia Fey, was murdered and her little sister got arrested for it!! During the course of this chapter you will learn, from the sister, Maya Fey, who dressed somewhat like a Miko that the women side of Fey family are gifted as spirit medium. Then during the course of the remaining chapter, Mia will came back and give guidance through Maya who, although in training, invoked the spirit of Mia when she became distressed.

The game soon weaving the tales of corruption, evidence forgeries, and murders by the prosecutors and police no less. Each chapters played out in 4-5 hours, I guess it could be less if the texts are faster to display. The text should be *pressable*, like when pressing one button the text came in full instantly.

In the end, the stories that unfold are very intriguing tales of lies, deception and redemption. It is a fun endeavor that I eventually play till 4:00am last night... Which is not good, it was a work night after all. But it sure was Fun :D

Reclaiming Memories

Last night I began playing a DS game called 'Another Code: Two Memories' an Adventure game on DS platform, I ended up finishing the game in one go...

It is a story of a young girl, Ashley, who went to an island to meet her father whom she thought was dead 11 years ago. While on the island, she encounter a ghost of a young boy who call himself D. D told Ashley that he have no memories of his life and want her to help him reclaim his memories. Ashley who is also looking for her father agreed to help him out and thus the adventure began.

Another Code is probably the only game that I have played on DS so far that utilize ALL the functionalities of the handheld console to the fullest. From using the basic touch screen function and microphone to actually close the lid to mimic stamping and have the screens reflects on one another to see the hidden message.

Although the game is fairly short, it was adequate in telling the story and tied all the loose end.

For me the game ended nicely, although a few loose end still unanswered, it still an enjoyable experience. It worth my time to play and finish it. I would highly recommend it :)

Minor Update: Weather

Following a chat with a friend of mine who is currently in HK with his bf and was in BKK for the weekend. It is March, which is summer time here, and yet the weather did not get very hot.

Instead we had rain yesterday and it was fairly cold in this morning. Not that I mind but it feels... Out of place. I wondered if this is the effect of Global Warming. I have watch Penn & Teller show Bullshit!. In one episode, claim that Global Warming is not as big of an issue as it claim to be. But I think most people would not deny that the weather pattern seems to be out of order lately.

I have been enjoying my new purchase :) I have figured out of how to use cheat code :P So I am enjoying it more right now. it is pleasant surprise to find that I do enjoy a charming game 'Professor Layton and The Curious Village'. I would highly recommend this good puzzle/mystery game to anyone.

Here Comes the Crimson/Black

I did it... I finally jump into the deep end, pry open my coffer and buy myself a NDS Lite. In Crimson/Black color no less.

The I was planning to buy it from was closed yesterday. Since I was in the mood to shop, I decided to go to another shop near by.

I ended up buying just the basic package with 1Gb MicroSD memory card and a headphone. Since they ran out of airfoam bag and the casing. I guess I will have to go again later to buy those. I wants to put the DS in my bag.

So far I have been playing several games on it and it was fun :D Especially Eco Creatures: Save the Forest Game ;)

So Close

It is so close... I could feel it creep up on me, like a hunter prowling toward the prey. The prey, me, is fully aware of the hunter and plotting the course to ward it off a while longer. Yet, I know it is almost inevitable. I am close to succumb to the temptation and the take the plunge, jump the gun, and yield to the desire...

I am barely able to resist buying a DS Lite...

Over the Rooftop Came a Hidden Blade

I have been playing Assassin's Creed for a few days and I must say... It is FUN to play. Despite it's keep crashing randomly for some reason...

The graphic is beautiful plain and simple. The whole town is your playground and you can climb up the roof, splinting and jumping between buildings, climbing the tower and taking a 'Leap of Faith' into the stack or cart of hay below. All of these activities were presented with fast pace and large map to roam in. It is strangely gratifying when your character jump on top of a guard and impale him with the hidden blade. I particularly like the 'View Point' where you have to climb on top of particular tower or guard post to overlook the area. The scene of the character perching on the ledge like eagle overlooking the city is gorgeous, as well as the 'Leap of Faith' to come back down :) It should be applauded that it take rather short load time for the size of the map.

Now the cons, while it is believable that there will be beggars in the city. It is not fun to have them keep cutting in front of you while you try to go about your business, especially when you about to stab someone in the neck. While the horse riding is quite easy to maneuver, it is rather boring when you have to make the horse 'Walk' to avoid alert all the guards. I still have not been able to find how to turn on the subtitle, which lead me to believe there is none. Plus you cannot skip *Any* cutscene, no matter which button you press. There is also no manual save function, only an obscured automatic one which give you no clue as to when it happen. This annoy me quite a lot when combine with the random crash which lead me to keep slaying the target again with no time saving to skip the cutscene.

All in all, it is a fun game to play, and I am looking forward to finishing it soon.

Back into the Galaxtic Fight

I recently acquired a new Space-Theme RTS game 'Sins of a Solar Empire'. My experience of playing this game has been quite unsettling so far.

The gameplay reminded me a lot of the old classic 'Master of Orion' with quite a number of differences of cause. Basically both are the same kind of game. You start out on your own planet, then began to amass a fleet and colonized empty or occupied planets. Then continue doing so until you concured the entire map.

I first try this game out at 'Normal' level and I was soon being outnumbered, especially by the pirate group who will raid your colonies every 10 minutes or so on a countdown. The pace of this game, while slow in not quite accurate though quite close, is being drag out... In comparison to MoO, Sin take quite a lot longer to finish the map, even in the small size map with 12-14 stars to take.

I restart a new map last night with 'Easy researcher' AI opponent... and I progress along nicely. I had put in about 4 hours or so for this small map with 14 stars and I managed to colonize 6-7 stars so far.

Graphically the game is beautiful. Although, just like most RTS game, you will not zoom in that close that often to take in beauty. As for battle, Sins requires little to no tactic to win the battle, only numbers and varieties of the fleets. I guess the game focuz is different than Homeworld, this game even exclude the Z axis.

Overall it is an enjoyable experience. It will sooth my game withdrawal nicely and help quell the urge to buy DS Lite. However, the game will be quite time consuming to finish each map and that will not be good for my sleep time :p.

Comedic Game Review

Recently, I have became a fan of Zero Punctuation: An animated Game Review video by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw the maker of a famous indie adventure game '5 Days a Stranger'

I came across his review video while browsing on Kotaku.com. I have to stop myself from laughting out loud since I was in my office at the time :p

The reviews are very funny and cleverly pierce through the flaw and boring part of the game, peppered with harsh language and funny visual que.

Eventhough most of you readers are probably not a gamer, it might worth a looksie :)

Hellgate: London and Viva Pinata

So... I know I have been slacking off on blogging a bit. My reasons are these two games.

Hellgate: London

I am glad to had upgraded my graphic card (along with my computer as a whole) otherwise I would have motion sickness playing this. For me, this game is simply on a so so level... I think mainly because I am not that into FPS style of game anymore. It also employ the random item generator, just like Diablo. I do not really like this method because it make really good stuff hard to come by. Even when I use trainer to get lots of money to upgrade my gears. Graphically it is to be expected of new game, also with my choice of class, Summoner, it means I do not go upclose to the monster. The weirdest part of this game are the speech. The NPCs all have only greeting lines but not for the dialogs. I find this slightly odd but maybe because it is meant to play MMORPG as well. Personally I just play it when I want a bit of from Viva Pinata or a change of pace.

Viva Pinata

The process of *acquiring* this game was quite stressful for me. It look me a fair few days to get it. I am glad that I finally got to install and play it on Monday morning before I went to work. I was a bit anxious about playing the game because quite a few people post on gamespot.com forum that they experience crash and glitch. Luckily, that never happens to me.

So, what I can say about this game? It bright, vibrant, colorful, cute, fun, and a breath of fresh air that have not really been gracing the PC world since... maybe ever. The game shows a vibrant green garden, colorful and stylish designs in all the visual aspect of the game. While this game excel in both visual and audio it fail quite miserably in control. With the game being directly ported from Xbox360, therefore game's control is quite clunky and inconvenient. The zoom function work in short distant, no mini map to help track your garden, to sell things in your garden required a few odd select and click process. Overall I agreed that they should have do a better job of making patch and bug cleaning before releasing the game. So far I found a couple of glitch namely stuck camera and missing menu bar (which actually stop you from doing things in the game).

The final verdict? This one game that Worth playing regardless. It is fun to play even just to observe your garden grow and thriving.

Welcoming The Witcher

I have been waiting for this game ever since I have read about it on the web. It was suppose to be something different from the other Action-RPG.

The Witcher, is an Action-RPG game, in the style of... I guess the closet game to it is Fable: The Lost Chapter. I am slowly making progress in the game, part of the problem is that it take a rather long time to save/load and map loading. At first I thought it was just my computer, but I have check on some game webboard and found out that it is just the way Aurora engine behave... I think it would work better on 3Ghz single core compare to dual core 2Ghz...

The game is. however, looks very good, thanks to my upgrade. The voice acting is quite suitable, the main character, Geralt, sounds handsome yet emotionless, as expected of his profession I presume. There were several weapons to choose from but the most effective ones would be your steel and silver sword to be use with the Witcher fighting style. You cannot, however, stockpiling weapons either... It will goes into it designated slot and if you want to replace it, you have to throw the old one out before getting the new one...

The unique thing of this game is that the main protagonist, Geralt, is a ladies man. You can seduce certain female NPCs in each act and unlock their nude, Yes Nude, collectible cards :p I am glad I get the European released one :P