The Low Blow!

Bleach: Blade Battlers

2007-04-18T14:38:00.000+08:00

Bleach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach_anime) is a popular Japanese anime I’ve just picked up during the past couple of months.

As I am a gaming enthusiast, I went to do a search and found this PS2 Bleach game, called Bleach: Blade Battlers.

Official game site: http://www.jp.playstation.com/scej/title/bleach/blade/

*Note: Remember to enable Flash for your web-browser when viewing the site for the game!*

The game-play is pretty simple and straight forward: Pick your character, and pit him/her against other opponents (you can have up to 3 opponents per battle). Just like every other fighting game, every character has his/her unique set of combos and special-moves at his/her disposal to defeat the opponent(s).

At first sight, many people would think that this game is some skill-less button-masher. However, the game-play actually requires timing and a careful balance between offense/defense, or else you will be defeated in no time. In my opinion, the game designers did a pretty much job of balancing the power of the 23 characters in this game.

While not the newest and the most complicated of the various Bleach games out there, this game has all of the characters’ trade-marks moves that Bleach fans will certainly love.

Need a Job?

2007-04-09T23:30:00.000+08:00

Are you a fresh grad out of your college/university? Looking for a job, to challenge yourself and also to prove your worth to our competitive society?

Well, look no further, the Multimedia Design course in local Arts school “Laoya Asylum of Fucked Hearts” recently “lost” 3 of its lecturers, who left the school on an act of mass defect to another company (or so I’ve heard). These lecturers (code-named “Alien”, “Cheese” and “Godzilla”) were originally in the middle of a Degree semester, but due to their “great sense” of responsibility, they had to leave and the students were left to deal with the resulting problems themselves.

Anyway, feel free to apply for a job as Multimedia lecturer in their place! There are many attractive perks that await you:

i) You can hide in the staff office the whole day! When students appear to consult you about school-work, you can tell them that you are very busy and have no time for them. When other students appear to chat with you about where to go out for lunch, you can invite them into the office and chat with them all the way till lunch-time!

ii) If a student asks you how to use certain Multimedia tools, you can scold him and tell him to find out how to use them himself, via books in the library! After all, it is wrong of him to ask a lecturer on such things; it is not within a lecturer’s job scope to enlighten a student on subjects which are relevant to the course module.

iii) Many students will suck up to you and tell you how capable you are (even though your only capability is to award them with good grades, regardless of how fucked-up their work is, as long as they worship you), and how wonderful you look (even though the only celebrity you look like is “Ugly Betty”). Your social life will never look better!

iv) You can have little or no knowledge of the modules that you are teaching, yet you are free to give totally ridiculous and pointless (also known as un-constructive) criticisms!

There are many more perks, you only have to be creative (Design lecturers MUST be creative, ok?) to know how to use them.

So what are you waiting for?

Apply today!

Sebastian

2007-02-09T17:56:00.000+08:00

There is this female lecturer in my Multimedia Degree course, who is in charge of our thesis-writing module.

She is “supposed” to be female, but she spots short cropped hair (though that has grown slightly longer recently), always wears a shirt with a singlet inside, always wears cargo-pants, and sneaker shoes. On top of that, she blatantly favours female students over male ones. If you tell me that isn’t an obvious butch (definition of a “butch”: lesbian who takes on the male role, usually by dressing up in a masculine manner), I don’t know what that is.

Due to the fact that we all know how anal Singaporeans can be, and I would very much not want to be sued, I won’t be using her real name here (obviously), so I will be referring to her as “Sebastian”.

Sebastian is probably one of the lamest lecturers I have ever met in my whole life. She practices blatant favouritism (as mentioned earlier) on the female students that she “loves”…. For example, if some male students come to class 5 minutes late, she would give a hell of a scolding; but when those beloved female students come to class 30 minutes late, she would greet them cheerfully instead! The ironic thing is, Sebastian is always bitching (or butching, to be more precise) us about “professionalism”, but as you can see, she herself is hardly spotting any!

Like most butches that many people have encountered, she is the standard “emo-wreck” type, who is constantly going on ridiculous mood swings. She can be happily briefing the class on our thesis at one moment…. Then all of a sudden, she would get angry for no bloody reason and start raising her voice and losing her temper for fun. I get the impression that she expects everyone to be “yes-men” and always shower her with attention and everything, but for fuck’s sake, this is a design Degree we are talking about here. If she really wants students who obey her every whim and fear her authority, she should just fuck off and go teach a primary school instead!

I’ve heard that she graduated with an “Interior Design” Degree, while other sources state that she graduated with a “Fine Arts” Degree…. To this very day, no one is even sure what Degree she has obtained, so as you can see, her education background is as confusing as her sexuality!

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I am taking a Multimedia Degree course. Even though she is an insignificant thesis-module lecturer, she often demands that we (the classes) show her our work-progress constantly so that she can give us her advice. That sounds fair enough, right? I thought so too! However, the problem is, since she didn’t graduate from a Multimedia course, she has no bloody idea about many Multimedia stuffs! For example, when I showed her my work, she made some comments about some changes that she felt that I should make. I explained to her that the changes wouldn’t make sense, due to technical issues of my 3dsMax program. She obviously didn’t get what I was talking about, and insisted that something could be done, one way or another. In the end, I ignored her suggestions and she actually took offense to it. Just to let you know, I have consulted my Animation lecturer (the main guy in charge of my project), and he agree with what I have mentioned about the technical issues. So as you can see, trying to explain Multimedia issues to Sebastian is something like trying to teach a turtle how to sing.

To further prove Sebastian’s deluded mentality, here is another incident…. After hearing most of the technical problems that my classmates face, and not understanding what we were talking about, Sebastian got pissed off and asked us, “How can you all keep using technical terms to explain your works? What if the project assessor is someone who doesn’t know anything about Multimedia?” I then replied “If that assessor doesn’t know anything about Multimedia stuffs, then he shouldn’t even be there assessing our projects!” Sebastian got pissed off with my reply, and went on to throw her temper, as usual. My dear Sebastian, sorry that the truth hurts, but that is reality… There is a reason why we don’t get a building-architect to perform a surgical-operation on a hospital patient, you know!

That isn’t the end…. Sebastian also has the mentality of a sad child. She is naïve as hell, and truly thinks that those students who suck up to her really like her. She has no idea that some of her favourite students actually bad-mouthed her constantly (behind her back, of course). Apart from that, she extremely detests those students who don’t suck up to her. I have never seen someone who has such a great need to be accepted. That shows a lot about her personal well-being.

I know I know, some of you are going to tell me that the working world out there is pretty much like this, but the difference is, in the working world, you suck up + get paid… I am not going to stoop so low in school as to suck up to some useless butch, and then paying her money for that, on top of it! Where has all the integrity gone to?

I really feel sorry for Sebastian…. All her current “beloved” students will undoubtedly dump her from their social circle as soon as they graduate (cruel fate of someone who is merely a stepping stone)… And she’d probably go on to look for more love from the next batch of students. Where has all the love gone to?

I can go on and on about more tales of Sebastian, but it’ll never end, so I shall just stop here, maybe for now.

Speaking of love, since it is coming up soon, Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!

Adios! ^^

Your Upbringing

2007-01-05T01:54:00.000+08:00

I am sure that everyone has encountered people who have weird habits, or are down-right self-centered, obnoxious or [inset horrible behaviour here]….

I myself have met a fair share of such people…. For example: that arrogant no-life sergeant in the Army, that snobbish rich girl who acts like she is better than everyone etc… I am sure that many of you have your fair share of such unfortunate encounters too!

As I have a low tolerance for such behaviour, I usually get pissed off and get rather worked up. Those nice people around me would then tell me to calm down, and come up with reasons for those unruly behaviour, the most common one being “They grow up behaving like this! It’s their family upbringing! You can’t blame them!”

Oh really? So let’s take a look at this picture….

Get my point?

The accursed terrorist Osama bin Laden (I hope he is really dead!) grew up in an environment whereby he learnt to believe that acts of violence (blowing innocent people up, telling his own men to blow themselves up etc) and the abuse of the Islamic religion is the way to get things done. However, does that mean that we should forgive him, since “that’s the way he is brought up”?

Yes, I am very aware of the fact that some people are spoilt by their parents (or whoever brought them up), and they are probably so used to being pampered, that in the end, they develop the mentality that the whole world owes them something. However, the last time I check, I am not their parent (or whoever spoilt them), so why must I give in to these spoilt brats?

If you grow up with a screwed-up attitude, I don’t care if it’s your parents’/guardian’s fault or whatsoever bullshit excuse….. The fact is: You are still screwed-up. Don’t expect everyone else to bow to your demands. If you cannot handle the fact that the world doesn’t revolve around you, maybe you should stay home and continue to live in your fantasy realm where you are the King of the World!

Haha!

Hello 2007

2007-01-03T04:14:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

Just caught "Death Notu 2: Da Last Notu", and I must say that I am rather impressed with the movie! The plot is very smart, the pace is good (no long boring parts where the characters go blah blah blah), and the actors are surprisingly solid.

I hope that the "Death Notu" movies would open up the gates for a new genre of movies. For too many years, our theatres have been infested with various incarnations of horror movies that were produced by the Japanese and the Koreans. Hopefully, with the success of the "Death Notu" movies, producers and scriptwriters would put more interest into investigative stories.

As I personally enjoy investigative plots (Japan: Conan the Detective, Kindaichi; US: CSI series), it would be good for me (as a movie-goer) if the more of such movies were to be released.

*Poof*

Lame Gamers

2006-12-22T02:16:00.000+08:00

The state of Singapore gaming has really gone down the drain…

Over the last couple of years, DotA (Defense of the Ancients, a Warcraft 3 mod) has become one of the mainstream games here.

When I started playing DotA back then (sometime 2003 to 2004, can’t exactly remember), DotA was rather new, and so are its gamers. I remember running around the maps, trying to hunt my opponents (and vice versa)…. Oh the memories of the adrenaline rush and the intense concentration! Be it victory or defeat, DotA gamers of that era had good, clean fun, and everyone just laughed together at the end of every game and pat one another on the backs. Ah, the good old days.

Then, DotA started gaining the attention of gamers worldwide, and an increasing number of local gamers started to pick up the game. The number of DotA gamers swelled up over the months, and old-school DotA gamers such as myself saw it as a good sign, since more gamers picking up this game would mean more hours of challenge, and more importantly, more opportunities to satisfy our gaming bloodlust.

However, things took an ugly turn for the worse. A huge number of this new generation of DotA gamers turned out to be a bunch of whiney lamers…. They whine and whine, and bitch and bitch about anything and everything.

A couple of typical examples:

Example 1: Stupid player rushes into a gang of 3 enemy heroes and dies in the process (DUH). Stupid player then types, “Omfg why didn’t my team mates help me? My team sucks!!!”, when the rest of the team are not even at the same part of the map!

Example 2: Stupid player pushes into enemy territory alone. No enemy heroes are in sight (the game allows us to see that via the mini-map). Enemy heroes suddenly ambush Stupid player. Stupid player dies, then types, “Omfg, why didn’t anyone warn me that the enemy heroes are all missing??? My team sucks!!!”. My advice for such idiots is: Use your own eyes and check the mini-map yourself, for fuck’s sake.

If such childish nonsense isn’t bad enough, stupid hackers have started releasing maphacks (that basically reveal the whole map!!) and custom-kick hacks (don’t like that player just because he is better than you? You can now kick him from the game! Yay…).

Currently, in most of the DotA games you find in Battlenet, there is a good chance of encountering some lame gamer using the aid of such hacks, and the really pathetic thing is, some of them still get defeated, and when that happens, they resort to what they do best, which is to flame and flame and talk trash.

While I feel great contempt towards these lamers, I can’t help but to feel sorry for them at the same time. Let’s look at it this way: It is only a game, yet they are soooooo afraid to lose, to the extent that they must resort to using illegal hacks to give themselves an advantage over their opponents. I really wonder how these losers would fair, if they encounter difficulties in real life. You can’t use maphack in real life (unless you have psychic powers that let you read people’s minds), nor can you kick-hack (unless you decide to take a chopper and hack them down, but here in Singapore? I DON’T THINK SO!).

In my opinion, games (and the Internet) often reveal the true nature of people, because they are given “powers” and “identities” that they don’t have in real life; and more often than not, most of them abuse this “abilities”. So remember, the next time you encounter some obnoxious gamer online who talks trash, and acts all big and mighty, and is possibly using illegal hacks, don’t take him seriously. He is probably a sad kid who gets abused by his gay uncle every night, and is suffering from some psychiatric disorder which condemns him into feeding off his online ego for a sense of survival and self-worth!

Signing off!

Sanrio Bandit!

2006-11-30T02:50:00.000+08:00

Hello Kitty.
A Japanese brand that has spilled all over the world…

Sanrio ( http://www.sanrio.com/ ), the company that created it, uses this brand to sell simple items (such as stationery and Tupperware) at cut-throat prices.

Yet, endless hordes of female (and some male) homo-sapiens flock to places where Hello Kitty products are being sold.

Why in God’s name would people want to buy these items at such high prices, when similar items of similar quality can easily be purchased cheaply anywhere else?

Sanrio are like bandits, man! Therefore, I have come up with an appropriate Hello Kitty mascot for them.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Awesome Dragonball Game

2006-11-28T19:57:00.000+08:00

There is a new Dragonball (if you don’t know what that is, try here: http://www.dragonball.com/) game out for the PS2 (the Nintendo Wii version comes out in December 2006) called “Budokai Tenkaichi 2”.

Warning: The following entry is entirely from my own perspective, and I happen to be a Dragonball fanboy. Read at your own risk hahaha….

I have played many Dragonball games, and trust me, this one is really good! The game captures all the looks and animations of each and every of the 73 (!!!!) characters spot-on….Which means, when you play the game and execute all the fast-paced combos and special moves, you’d almost swear that you are watching the anime itself!

In a number of Dragonball games, when a character transforms from one form to another (example: Frieza going from 1st Form to 2nd etc), it is purely aesthetical, and in most cases, that character gains higher attack-power/speed and a couple of new moves. However, in Budokai Tenkaichi 2, when you transform, your character gets a whole new skill list and play style!

Another thing is, when your character takes damage, his/her clothes start to get tattered, and bruises/scratches start appearing all over! How cool is that?!

I am seriously very impressed by such a display of details, and my girlfriend and I both concluded that the game designers/directors must be Dragonball fans as well, LOL….

The gameplay is basic but nonetheless pretty good… You fight 1v1 (sorry this isn’t DotA HAHAHA) against your opponent in a fairly huge 3d environmental-stage. The characters are modeled in 3d and cel-shaded to perfection. You can choose to go close-up and duke it out melee-style, or you can fly around the stage and play a projectile battle! Some stages have many destructible parts, so you get to smash parts of the environment during the battle!

However, there are a number of characters who have cheap “Rush Attack” special moves, which can be abused again and again for easy victory. However, counters for such moves have already been discovered and discussed about on various gaming forums, but the counters are quite tricky to perform. Guess I’ll have to play more to get better, don’t I? Hahaha….

So…If you know about this game, you have a PS2 and you are a Dragonball fan (Even if you aren’t, I am quite sure that you would be pleasantly surprised by how entertaining this game is!), what are you waiting for? Head down to the nearest pirated shop and get yourself a copy today!

Disclaimer: The above sentence about going to a pirated shop is purely for humour. Say NO to piracy. Always support Original stuffs. Yeah.

Over and out!

Spidey3 Screenies!

2006-11-22T15:34:00.000+08:00

There is a leaked Beta trailer of the next Spiderman movie out there on the Internet. It is different from the one you currently see in the movies, because this one features footages of Venom, one of my favourite anti-heroes!

I’ve managed to grab the trailer and I have taken Venom screenshots for all to see!

Eddie Brock at the church, wanting to commit suicide (don’t know if they changed the plot for the movie version, though)….

He sees the symbiote dripping down from the church tower….

The symbiote gets onto his hands…

And starts to spread over his body….

The symbiote totally engulfs Eddie….

Birth of Venom….

“We are Venom!!”

I can’t wait to see this scene in action!

Know Thy Limits!

2006-11-22T05:59:00.000+08:00

There is this lady in my Multimedia Design Degree course, who always sticks with the lecturers and is always bugging them with all sorts of weird shit. For that reason, I’ve code-named her as “Doggie”.

Doggie goes to school all the time, even during the holidays and such. Someone wondered if that is because she wanted to use the school PCs, but I highly doubt so, since she is known to be quite wealthy, and it is hard to imagine a wealthy person having a lousy PC. In the end, my friends and I concluded that it’s because she simply wants to visit the lecturers often.

Doggie is always trying to act smart, but most of us know that she is totally incompetent. Her partner who did the final project for the Diploma course actually told me that she did nothing but typed reports and proposals. Why be in a Multimedia Design course when you only know how to type reports and proposals? She might as well apply for one of the Business courses, right?

Anyway, the pre-assessment presentation for my Degree final project just took place a couple of weeks back. Prior to that, my lecturers actually sent out a list of requirements for the presentation (storyboard, animatics etc). However, during the presentation day itself, Doggie totally didn’t do any of the requirements, and she simply showed video clips done by other people. What type of joker would show other people’s work during your own presentation? The lecturers got pissed with her and grilled her during the presentation, and she started to tear. No pity for her though. And no excuses, considering the fact that she is always in school looking for lecturers, so don’t give me any of those “she might not know the requirements” bullshit.

The dumbest thing is yet to come.

My school is currently organizing a committee to take charge of our Degree Graduation show. Most people shun being part of the committee, as that means that you would have additional burdens, on top of all the tedious projects to complete. However, Doggie actually sent an email to the Chairman of the committee, asking that everyone (including herself, of course) be given more roles in the committee.

Doggie ah Doggie, you are so pathetic. You can’t even handle your own project, and you are still so enthusiastic about doing these types of extra nonsense.

Some people simply don’t have the capabilities, yet they try too hard to look like they have. In the end, they bite off more than they can chew, and end up screwing themselves up. When all hell breaks lose, they do the best thing: blame everything and everyone else, except themselves. Bleh.

Know thy limits!

Just Not Meant to Be

2006-11-20T22:06:00.000+08:00

A few months ago, I was out on a shopping trip with my girlfriend at Orchard Road.

After we are done with the shopping, we headed over to Orchard MRT to take the train home. As I was walking over to the MRT barrier (you know, those metal blocks with the red-parts that open/close), this guy suddenly cut into my queue (He must be in a hurry to go home to catch his wife having an affair with another man). He then tried to flash his EZ-Link card at the barrier, but the barrier refused to let him through. He then tried again, but the barrier showed red once more. The guy then looked damn sian and he went off in another direction (probably to report the problem to the station-control staff).

The moral of the story: You can try to cut my queue or do some stupid shit, but I am a good boy and Buddhua/Jesus/Allah/Brahma will be watching out for me. Don’t try any stunts. Some things are just not meant to be… Hahaha….

Later!

2006-08-25T03:18:00.000+08:00

Hi hi all….

Little bits of sweetness come falling down like raindrops…

Bye bye all…

As I pick my scythe and move to reap my crops…

Lame People

2006-07-25T15:08:00.000+08:00

I recently encountered a lot of people, with ridiculously childish mentalities, on the Internet forums. Here is an example….

This took place in a pc forum. Nvidia (http://www.nvidia.com/page/home.html) just released a new video-driver and many people encountered serious problems with it. One guy even emailed Nvidia about the problems, and Nvidia admitted that their latest drivers are buggy and they would do something about it.

I then commented (in the forums) that it is not nice of them to release buggy-drivers, and one guy (let’s call him “Fanboy-A”) started scolding me. Fanboy-A said that he has no problems with the latest video driver at all and if I have a problem with it, it’s just me. I then pointed out that everyone else was complaining about problems too, so it wasn’t just me.

Fanboy-A then quoted one of the posts from another forum-member which said that he didn’t have problems too. I was like “What the f**k? 9 out of 10 people posted about problems with the drivers, and you have to choose that 1 guy to quote?” How lame is that right?!

I hope Fanboy-A isn’t doing some degree course now (or anytime in the future), because in such courses, we must write up on thesis based off researches and surveys. Fanboy-A is obviously incapable of coming up with logical conclusions.

Actually, I also encountered such people in real life as well. They face certain situations where the facts and numbers are so god-damn obvious, but they choose to turn a blind eye (or both their freaking eyes) from the situation and continue their stupid crusade for their naïve beliefs.

Being stubborn is one thing, but to be so obviously loop-sided when it comes to decision-making is a totally worse-off mentality problem.

Latest Pizza Hut TV-Ad

2006-05-22T01:45:00.000+08:00

I m sure most of you Singaporeans have seen the latest series of Pizza Hut adverts on TV.

It “stars” Alan Tern and Michelle Chia. In the 1st part, he delivers pizza to her. In the 2nd part, they go eat Pizza Hut together. In the 3rd part, it is revealed that they were classmates.

1st part: Pizza guy delivering pizza to girl.
Generic setting. Nothing much for me to comment on.

2nd part: They go for a date at Pizza Hut.
Wah, I though Alan’s already delivering Pizza to “Miss Chia” all the time already… Go out still eat Pizza Hut? Miss Chia, you pizza jiat buay sian (not tired of eating) or what?
On 2nd thoughts, maybe it’s because Alan works at Pizza Hut and has special discount rates for staff, so he is being a cheapo by bring her there.
On 3rd thoughts, he wouldn’t need to be so stingy with his money, as we can all see him using his HSBC Mastercard to pay for the meals, so obviously he is well-off………………
Which brings me to my 4th thoughts: Isn’t Alan working as a pizza boy? I didn’t know that pizza boys earn soooo much money to the extent that they can hold Mastercards. YEAH RIGHT.

(Disclaimer: Not trying to look down on pizza delivery men or what, but let’s face it, they don’t earn THAT much, for f**k’s sake!)

3rd part: Suddenly it’s a class gathering.
I have only 1 thing to say about this: WTF?
The 1st 2 parts of the advert made me think that they are heading towards some romantic ending or something, then they suddenly change the direction of the whole thing and ended it with corny class-gathering photoshots…
Seriously wtf lor…. It’s like telling the top 10 finalists of American Idol “Ok guys and gals, please pack up… We’ll be sending you to Ulu-Ulu Island for 30 days where you will learn to backstab one-another and also how to start fire.”…. You get my point.

Speaking of Michelle Chia, how the hell does she get into Top 10 Most Popular Female Artistes in Star Awards every damn year? No one I know likes her. No one I read in the Internet likes her. Basically, who the hell would even call in to vote for her, except for all her sponsors… Bloody kelong awards…. Pui!!!

PC Woes

2006-05-19T08:01:00.000+08:00

Holy Christ… I m finally back online after nearly 2 months of no-show!

To begin, my old comp broke down a couple of months back… Found out that the motherboard got KO’ed. I then went to SimLim Square & purchased a new PCI-express motherboard (MSI 915p Neo2).

This new motherboard is a nightmare. Kena static for no freaking reason (resulting in failure to boot up system) and restarts itself randomly (when I m using windows). I couldn’t figure what went wrong so I took it for technical support at Corbell (the hardware dealer of MSI).

To cut the long story short, a lot of bullsh*t concerning this motherboard happened after that…. And in the end, I had to wait for nearly 2 months to get a new working piece, as the Corbell staff sent my defective piece back to freaking Taiwan for repairs. It was absolute murder to me, as I have my final year project going on then. Thank god I managed to pull through… Bloody hell….

Then one fine day, Corbell contacted me to collect the “repaired” motherboard. I thought that everything would be fine after such a loooooong wait. HELL NO! The repaired piece KO’ed the instant I installed it and I brought it back to Corbell and bitched the hell out of them. They couldn’t explain what’s wrong and it definitely isn’t wrong installation, because my brother helped me to install it, and he’s a hardware guru. Besides, if the motherboard was spoilt by wrong installation, the warranty would be void, and no one voided my warranty, so it obviously isn’t my side that’s screwing up!

Corbell then gave me a new piece (AGAIN) and this model of motherboard still performed worse than an old-man without Viagra.

Finally, I gave up on this lousy motherboard and went to buy a new model (Gigabyte GA-G1975x). The Gigabyte motherboard performed sooooo much better, which explains why I m finally able to get online and blog this whole incident.

I thought I m the only suay kia, but I later found out that others who purchased MSI motherboards also kena lots of problems. The bottomline? Do NOT buy MSI motherboards (the PCI-express ones)…. Support Gigabyte all the way, man!

(Pardon my weird grammar… I m damn tired… )

My Gaming Past

2006-03-13T04:25:00.000+08:00

I’ve been playing the King of Fighters ( http://www.kof10th.com/ ) games for damn long, since the very 1st game that was released in 1994. The latest KOF was released in 2005… Wow this series has been there for more than 10 years.

As I’ve been playing it for so long, I m more or less rather decent with using most of the characters. Well, not exactly pro, but decent enough to not get thrashed by scrubs.

I remember that when I was really young (Sec 1 or 2), I would go to a nearby neighborhood arcade and watch people play the early KOF games. And when there weren’t many people around, I’d throw in a token and try a game of my own. As arcade gaming was relatively new to me then, I sucked like hell and got thrashed by the 1st AI team… How embarrassing.

After playing for a few months, I started getting better and could actually make my way to the 3rd AI team. I managed to learn how to execute a few special moves or so, and I was quite pleased with my progress (hahaha what an egomaniac I m).

However, things took a turn for the worse… One fine day, this youngster (probably around 18 years old, which was a few years older than I was) appeared at the arcade I frequented. Ever since, whenever I visited the arcade, be it day or night, that guy would always be there! It’s as if he didn’t need to eat or sleep, or being the arcade’s security-guard was his occupation!

Initially, everything was pretty normal, and I continued to struggle fighting the cheapo AI opponents. That youngster pretty much left me alone.

Then one day, he suddenly approached the machine I was playing at, threw in a token, and then challenged me! I was super shocked then, being the noob and everything. Needless to say, he defeated me super easily. I was damn demoralized then, and I went off to try playing on another machine. Well, tough luck, I thought then.

Things got worse. Ever since then, whenever I stepped into the arcade and put in a token to play against the AI opponents, that youngster would appear out of nowhere and proceed to defeat me very very easily. To make matters worse, if I were to play another machine, he would abandon his game and come challenge me again! It was like, his whole aim was to bully me for fun, and not to actually play the game properly.

I was really really upset then, and finally gave up and stopped going to that arcade. Maybe I really wasn’t fated to play KOF, I thought. However, one fateful day, my elder brother bought a Sega Saturn gaming console…. And KOF was one of the games that were being ported over to the Saturn! I was overjoyed and spent good money to buy arcade gaming joysticks for the Saturn, so that I could play KOF the way it’s meant to be played. The joy of finally being able to play KOF, without some damned youngster harassing me!

A year or so passed, and due to my daily “training” at the game, I got a lot better (the opposite could be said about my academic grades in school haha…) and could actually defeat a few of my brother’s friends who I never thought I could win.

Then one day, while I was outside looking for something to buy, I passed by the arcade. THE arcade. I stepped in, and sat down in front of a KOF machine. How time has changed so many things. The feeling was damn different this time. I put in a token into the machine, and…. The youngster appeared (out of thin air)! Sometimes, I wonder if that guy was an immortal or what. He didn’t change in looks at all… And he still wore the same old clothes.

He stood there and looked at me for a while. It was like “There you are, kiddo! Where were you for the last many months?”. I must admit, despite the fact that I was a lot better in the game already, I still felt kind of nervous, due to all the thrashings he gave me a year before.

The youngster sat beside me, and put a token into the machine. He was challenging me again! He picked his fighters, and I picked mine. The next few minutes were a total joke. For those who don’t know, KOF is a 3 VS 3 team game. I used only 1 of my fighters and defeated all 3 fighters from his team. In my mind, I was like “Wow, so easy? How the hell did I lose to you long ago?”.

That youngster looked damn shocked, but he kept silent and left the arcade. I’ve never seen him since.

This whole experience left a lasting impression in my mind till this very day... which is why I will never challenge a player at the arcade when he is obviously a beginner, because I wouldn’t want to become a bully like that youngster. Besides, what fun is there bullying a person who obviously can’t fight back? Only people with serious testicular (or mammary) problems, such as that youngster of my past, would find joy in that.

SG Gamers

2006-03-10T23:47:00.000+08:00

Recently, in a gaming forum, I read bad comments about SG gamers, made by Caucasian gamers.

Initially, they stated that they hate playing online games with SG players because we don’t understand English and they couldn’t communicate with us. Many SG gamers were quite annoyed with those misinformed comments, so we clarified that we actually DO get educated in proper English.

Those Caucasian gamers then changed their stances, and proceeded to attack our English usage. Some of them commented about how we always use “la” after everything and it isn’t proper English. Wow, all of a sudden, we CAN speak English after all, just that our English isn’t “proper”.

I actually told them off, stating that many Caucasian gamers love to use L33t Sp33ch (eg “RofLMAO~~ I pWN3d u, u NiGGA, U SUXXXXORR!!!”) in their games, and that isn’t proper English too. So maybe they should take a look at themselves first before commenting about us.

This isn’t the 1st time SG gamers have been attacked regarding our language usage. I guess that because we always use Hokkien together with our English, so those Caucasians don’t understand and think we are uneducated.

The most infuriating thing is, one of the gamers (who CLAIMED he is from SG) said that he hates playing with fellow SG gamers because he “doesn’t understand” what we are saying too! He even claimed that he is one of the few who actually speaks English in SG. Most of us were like “what the f**k??”.

This guy is either:

A)Not a Singaporean, and is trying to spew rubbish to tarnish our reputation.

B)A Singaporean who moved over to *(insert name of Ang Moh country here)* when he was still a sperm in his Daddy’s balls, thus explaining why he doesn’t understand our way of speaking.

C)A bloody ah-gua who is protected by “Big-shot Elitist” Mommy and Daddy and is not allowed to mix with other fellow Singaporeans, for the fear of him being corrupted. But come to think of it, being ah-gua isn’t an excuse, because David Gan (I know he isn’t Singaporean, but Malaysian Chinese are pretty simlar) knows dialect too.

D)Try to suck up to Caucasians, aka SPB (Sarong Party Boy). I’ve seen how some jokers (eg Chee SX JX) go all the way to discredit their own countrymen, in order to gain favour with foreigners.

While I admit that we Singaporeans aren’t perfect in many ways, we certainly aren’t as bad as what some uneducated rednecks make us out to be!

Online Exposure

2006-03-01T16:43:00.000+08:00

No, this has nothing to do with Tammy, hahaha….

Anyway, back to topic...
I’ve seen/heard about this story quite a few times:
Human A (usually a female) puts photos of his/her private life on the Internet, usually via blog/Friendster.
People start making “not-so-nice” comments on the pictures.
Human A gets pissed off and takes down all his/her photos and tells people to mind their own business.

Here’s my take on the situation…. Internet is accessible by anyone and everyone. If you choose to put your private photos on the Internet, that means anyone and everyone can see it. That includes that suck-up loser from your office, or that chee-hong nerd from your ex-class.

People will always gossip, especially if the contents of the photos have "potential". For example, if a girl shows photos of she and her bf on bed hugging each other, people might gossip “Wah… Barely together for a few weeks then start f**king already ah….”… you get my point.

If you are soooooo sensitive about people’s comments, then why would you even want to put up the photos where everyone can see them? If you only want to share them with a few close friends, then you should upload them into a secure (password protected) site. If you don’t want to do that and choose to upload the photos to a public site, and yet still tell people “not to be kay poh”, then you must be a mentally confused individual.

Disclaimer: In case some of you are wondering, I m not involved in the above-mentioned real-life situations.

Dumb Class95 fm Segment

2006-01-22T19:27:00.000+08:00

While I was driving to pick my gf up the other day, I was listening to Class95 fm.

It was evening time then (around 7pm+) and DJs Jean Danker and Rod Monteiro were hosting the usual evening “Car-Tunes”.

Anyway, they were hosting this segment known as “Good service, Bad service”… Whereby Rod would dial into a company and ask ridiculous questions, while faking a retarded voice (no offense to Rod, his normal voice is nice btw). The whole purpose of this segment is to see the reaction of the person who picked up the call, and use this reaction to judge if that company provided good or bad service.

Here is a brief re-cap of what I heard that day (Not word for word, I couldn’t remember 100% of what they said, but it’s about there) …

Rod: Hi…. Is this where you do nails..??
Lady (politely): Yes? How may I help you?
Rod: I would like to order some steel nails… Those long ones for hammering the tables….
Lady (still politely): Er… Sorry I think you got the wrong number….
Rod: Hello? Is this where you do nails?
Lady (still politely): Yes… But we do manicure and padicure…
Rod: Yes, so I would like to order some steel nails for my tables…
Lady (starting to feel irritated): Sorry, you’ve got the wrong place…
Rod: Hello? But you do nails right? I want to order the steel nails…
Lady: ** HANGS UP THE PHONE**
Rod and Jean together: The lady hung up on us............ BAD SERVICE BAD SERVICE!!!!

Do you see how dumb this whole thing is?

Whoever is in charge of putting up the segment (I hope it isn’t Jean & Rod’s idea) ought to be kicked in the freaking head. How is it considered “bad service” when some dumb retard is obviously making a prank call and you don’t want to waste your time anymore so you hang up the phone?

I wonder how it would be like if people kept calling into Class95 and pretending that they called into 93.3fm and end the dedication by saying (in Chinese on top of it) “93.3 fm is the best radio station in Singapore! Class95 cannot make it! ”.

I m sure the Class95 DJs wouldn’t even air those dedications! That’ll let Jean and Rod get a taste of how it’s like getting obviously retarded people to call in and waste their time.

Bad service bad service!!!

Tides of war

2006-01-15T10:13:00.000+08:00

Watched Narnia not too long ago…

**Spoilers Warning** (then again, most people should have watched Narnia by now)

Standard big battle scene with lots of creatures, animals and some humans duking it out.

Initially, the good guys seemed to be losing, but suddenly, reinforcements (in the form of fresh, stronger troops) appear and smashed the baddies into oblivion! Wow…..

**End of Spoilers**

Wait, didn’t I see this before?

In Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers…. The soldiers of Rohan were losing their stand at Helm’s Deep, when Gandalf arrived with superior reinforcements to turn the tides….

Also, in the Return of the King, when the human forces were getting overwhelmed at Minas Tirith, Aregon & gang arrived with their undead reinforcements….

Hollywood seems to be running out of ideas for battle scenes. The next time you watch a movie and see the good guys losing, do not worry. Help will arrive soon…

Yup!

Hello 2006!

2006-01-07T02:01:00.000+08:00

Haven’t updated my blog for AGES…..
Almost forgot about its existence until my gf mentioned about it!

Hi hi, yet another new year, what’s in store for me in 2006? I don’t make new year resolutions, because I hate lying to myself or promising things that I cannot fulfil, haha…

Read so many forums where there are sooooooo many topics about local girls getting molested by foreign workers at the street-parties. As much as I feel sorry for those ladies, let's not forget that…

1) This isn’t the 1st time such things had happened. The molesting cases had happened for every party event for the last 4,378,296,532 years, so don’t tell me the girls didn’t see it coming. If they don’t read the newspapers, or their friends didn’t tell them, or if they stay in a well, then I can only say, it’s GOD’S WILL (no, I m not a Christian!).

2) If the girls knew that this might happen, they should have brought male friends to protect them. I m sure guys would be more than happy to be macho, and also look for an excuse to f those foreign workers. However, even male escorts proved to be ineffective when everyone is going crazy with the foam sprays.

3) Please don’t tell me crap that the local police should protect the citizens. “Should” is the main word here. If you haven’t noticed, our local authorities have done nothing and allowed the party-molesters to run free every year, so what makes you think the authorities would bother to protect you this year? If you need protection, refer to point (2) above.

4) Some local blogger said that her friend’s pussy kena fingered by a foreign worker. For God’s sake, how did that even happened? That girl must be wearing a super mini-skirt, and on top of that, must either be going commando (that means, NO UNDERWEAR) or wearing a really slack G-string. In my humble opinion, it is seriously silly to wear such attires to such events, especially when it is well know that rampant molestings always occur. It’s the same logic why you shouldn’t wear winter clothes and walk around in Singapore on a normal afternoon. Wear the right clothes for the right situation.

I repeat, I do not condone the acts of these party-molesters. However, prevention is better than cure. I know that it is not that ladies’ fault and everyone just want to have a good time. However, some times are already known (refer to points 1,2,3) and they are also beyond our control.

If you choose to take the risk and step into the lion’s den just to “have fun”, then who can you blame? Just for your info, many of the party-molesters got away scot-free (just as they do every freaking year) and they WILL strike again at the next party.

Take care!

Doom Movie

2005-11-15T10:59:00.000+08:00

Went to watch the Doom movie (http://www.doommovie.com/) the other day with my gf....

Overall, the movie was rather dark (pretty much like the game), and the characters in the movie got to use flashlights together with their weapons, unlike the Doom3 game, lol...

(For those fans who want a really, really good flashlight mod for the Doom3 games, as well as its expansion RoE, look no further... Go to http://neherson.narod.ru/ now!)

It's kinda weird how the scriptwriters deviated from the "Demons from Hell" theme of the Doom plot, that all Doom fans learn to love, into yet another "Omg some bloody virus is going around infecting everyone!" (aka Resident Evil) clone. I'd rate the movie higher if they sticked to the "Demons from Hell" theme, 'cos it just better. Who cares about the whinings from those religious cocklenadens anyway?

I wished there were more monsters in the movie. So far, they only showed the zombies, imps, a Pinky-demon and Hell-Knights. There are many more interesting monsters from the Doom games that weren't shown, strangely. Maybe the producers are leaving some space for a sequel, who knows huh....

Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, looks pretty credible as a actor, imo.... I actually feel that he is the Sarge, instead of The Rock, so it's a good sign, lol. It's sad when audiences typecast you no matter what/who you act as. Just look at Leonardo DeCaprio.... No matter what, he'll always be Jack (aka The Suay Boy on the Suay Ship) in my eyes.

Hmmm, I was thinking of a nice way to end this entry, since it's the 1st time since a long long time that I've updated my blog. But then again, what the heck, this isn't 0-levels English composition writing.

That's all, folks!

Busy busy...

2005-09-25T01:12:00.000+08:00

Woah, it’s been a long long time since I updated my blog.

I’ve been damn busy with school projects of recent.
It’s been quite a ride. It’s during times like this, that the true nature of people can be seen. People crack under pressure, and say/do things you wouldn’t expect them to do.
You also see people (who always hang out together) abandoning one another in times of need.
I myself have been guilty of bad-temper and unreasonable demands/attitude, but as far as I remember, I haven’t (and don’t intend to) do anything that goes against my conscience.

My sleep cycle is completely screwed. I have reverted to my post O-levels nocturnal lifestyle… It’s so hard to do work in the day nowadays, probably because I stay up all night to do my work. Unhealthy lifestyle? Maybe… but then again, it is a lot more quiet at night.

I’ve picked up a copy of the Dragonball Budokai 3 game for PS2. It is a huge improvement over Budokai 1 (never seen/touched Budokai 2, don’t ask me why), in terms of graphics & gameplay. There is a butt-load of characters to unlock in the game. In my opinion, it is a must-have for all Dragonball fans.

http://www.dragonballz.com/

I’ll rant more when I feel like it.

My National Day 2-cents

2005-08-09T11:06:00.000+08:00

Happy 2005 National Day, SingBalls!

I m quite sure many of you have already seen the MTV this year’s National Day theme song, “Reach Out for the Skies” (or whatever the song is called la), where we have our very own SingaBall Idol, Taufik and Archar-girl Rui-En belting it out. The song is not bad, with the usual cheesy choreography and lyrics, but the overall look is fine. The singing is not bad too. So…. What’s the problem?

http://ndp.org.sg/index.jsp?page=videos.htm

I 1st saw the MTV when I was twanging around (aka slacking) with my friends at the McDonald’s at Parklane. There is this wide screen plasma TV mounted onto the wall playing the usual McDonald’s “DADADA-DADA~~ I’M LOVIN IT~” propaganda, as well as the occasional MTV or “educational” video clip.

When I 1st saw the MTV, with Taufik and Rui-En dancing around in red & white attires, I was like “Huh? National Day so soon?”. Anyway, I sat and watched the MTV while waiting for my friends to order their food. After the MTV was over, they played yet another “I’M LOVING IT~~” clip and then the MTV was played again! However, when I saw it for the 2nd time, something felt amiss….

Taufik was mysteriously “edited” out of the MTV!!! I see Rui-En, the same people from the opening dance-scene, the same people from the underpass scene, and even more Rui-En wearing some evening-gown looking happy into front of some pyrotechnics… But where is Taufik!?

Pardon me for being blur (must be too much PS2 gaming the night before), but I then realized that the 2nd MTV was actually the Chinese version!

I don’t want to sound too racist here, but initially, I thought that it’s ok since Taufik is a Malay and he probably doesn’t know how to sing Chinese songs. But then…. Our SingaBall National Anthem is in Malay and our Chinese population seemed to have no complaints/problems singing it! Not to mention that all the freaking marching-commands that we guys have to learn in NS (National Service) are in Malay too!! There are many more examples of non-Malay people learning how to say/sing Malay.

My point is, if Taufik is THE SingaBall Idol, that means he is the icon of our singing talent, right? If normal people of all races (such as the National Day Parade choir) have no problem belting out Malay and Tamil songs to the nation, what’s holding Taufik back from singing a Chinese song?

If you readers think I m sounding racist, I m telling you, my stand is against racism! To make it clear:

Racist: I m a Malay, and I don’t understand Chinese, so I can’t be bothered learning a Chinese song for the National Day! Screw the Chinese!

Non-Racist: I m a Malay, and I don’t understand Chinese, but I don’t mind learning a Chinese song for the National Day! I won’t isolate the song just because it’s a different language from my own!

Get my point? The thing is, whoever is the one who gave the approval that it’s ok for Taufik to skip the Chinese version of the song should be taken out & shot. Our country had endured years of racial dissension in the past, and we have come a long way to our current state of racial harmony. To exclude a guy from singing a Chinese song just because he isn’t Chinese reeks of sick racism. It’s also like an insult to the Malays, since many Malay friends I know have no problem speaking fluent Chinese and even Hokkien!

I seriously hope it isn’t Taufik’s idea to skip the Chinese version, though… Because if it is, what kind of Idol is that, huh?

Ta ta….

Similar Spirals

2005-08-04T17:15:00.000+08:00

Check out the logo of the Mediacorp Channel 8 TV drama “Portrait of Home” (Tong Xing Yuan), http://ch8.mediacorptv.com/shows/drama/view/600/1/.html

Then check out the logo of the Singapore Children’s Cancer Foundation (CCF),
http://www.ccf.org.sg/

See the similarities? Either the “spiral-logo” is the current fad in logo-design, or our local designers are really running out of ideas. Or maybe it’s really a damn coincidence!

Also, the new TV serial of Channel 5, called “Full Circle” (one of those docu-drama types depicting the real-life stories of people who experienced hardships blah blah blah) spots a similar logo in the TV trailer.
However, when I went to the Channel 5 site to check it out, the show seemed to be spotting a new logo.
http://ch5.mediacorptv.com/shows/drama/view/1003/1/.html
Maybe someone pointed out to the producers that the “spiral-logo” is already being used by other well-known parties?

Whatever it is, if people ever ask me to design a logo for them, I’ll take note *never* to do a “spiral-logo”, in case I get accused of being yet another copy-cat!

**Update** I just found a screenshot of the spiral-styled logo from the TV trailer of the Full Circle show. You can see it at http://ch5.mediacorptv.com/fullcircle/img/trailer_1a.jpg

Jedi Dueling in Games

2005-07-16T01:41:00.000+08:00

Was thinking of giving my 2 cents about the whole NKF fiasco, but then again, I m sure everyone had read the related articles like siao already, so I’ll just rant about other stuffs.

Time for more Star Wars talk!

I mentioned in an earlier entry about Star Wars games and how they allow you to role-play as the Jedi. The 3 main games I mentioned are the “Jedi Knight” series, the “KotoR” series and the official “Ep 3 RotS” game.

How do these 3 games stack up against one another when it comes to portraying a Jedi? I’ll give my mini review of these games, in no particular order.

Jedi-Knight
Excellent graphics, because since it is a PC game, you are able to jack up the resolution til everything looks super sharp and crystal clear, provided that your PC can handle it.

A good variety of Force powers to use, and the Force-pool (aka mana pool) isn’t too big, so you can’t spam your Force powers skillessly, which is a nice touch. After all, you don’t see the Jedi in the Star Wars movies using Force powers non-stop, right?

Lightsaber combat is not bad, but somehow, I personally feel that it is a bit too “random”. Since the “Jedi Knight” series is supposed to belong to the FPS genre, it is kind of weird to “aim” the lightsaber properly when you are in 1st person view. Even though players have the option to toggle to 3rd-person view (aka Tomb Raider view), it doesn’t improve the experience by much, since you only see the back of your Jedi. That means that most of the lightsaber action would be blocked from your view…. Damn!

Since the player cannot really see what’s happening, he’d probably resort to random clicks of the mouse to swing the lightsaber about randomly, hoping for a lucky hit. Now that isn’t what lightsaber combat is all about!

The other thing is, the Jedi in this game doesn’t defend properly. The lightsaber-defense doesn’t cover enough areas in the front & at the sides. The rear of your Jedi has not defense at all! As a result, most of the times, if your opponent were to just aim down and strafe around you skillessly, while clicking away for the lucky hit, there is a good chance you will be hit. Therefore, even if you were to try a defensive tactic, your opponent could still rely on sheer luck and random strikes to take you down.

The game offers a few lightsaber stances for the player to switch-between. The stances basically affects the speed of your lightsaber attack. Faster attacks deal lesser damage and vice-versa. Other than that, the stances offer little differences.

The lightsaber damage is rather high. A direct hit from a strong lightsaber swipe would wipe off almost all your life. I’d consider it realistic enough. However, due to the unstable duel system I’ve mentioned above, that would make the duels somewhat frustrating when you keep dying to random, skilless swipes.
Players can go online and challenge other players with this game. I don’t mind the 1v1 duels, but I don’t really like those maps where we have 20 players running around and swinging their lightsabers randomly like madmen. It really kills the epic duel mood, in my opinion!

Knights of the Old Republic (KotoR)
Excellent graphics, because since it is a PC game, you are able to jack up the resolution til everything looks super sharp and crystal clear, provided that your PC can handle it.

An insane variety of Force powers to learn! Massive numbers of neutral powers, Lightside powers and Darkside powers awaits to be seen! Since this is a RPG, players can develop their Jedi to have a huge supply of Force powers. As a result, from mid/late game onwards, players are able to spam their Force powers like it’s free of charge! This makes the Jedi in this game a bit unrealistic, since we don’t see the Jedi using the Force that effortlessly in the movies. However, players who like to focus on Force Powers instead of lightsaber combat are strongly recommended to play this game for this reason.

Lightsaber combat is poor, in my opinion. Basically, you pick your favorite/best attack-skill and use it repeatedly. The horrible thing is, there is only 1 (or maybe 2) animation(s) per attack-skill. So if you choose to use a certain attack-skill for the whole battle, your Jedi would then perform the same attack-actions throughout the whole battle! Omg….

The other bad thing about the duel-system is that the battle isn’t real time. It is “turn-by-turn”, meaning that you hit your enemy once, then your enemy hits you once, then you hit the enemy once… You get the picture.

Also, there is absolutely no feeling of an actual duel. If you hit the opponent, the opponent just stands there, acting like nothing had happened. He doesn’t even stagger or cry out in pain or anything… Only red numbers (indicating the damage he has taken) appear above his head. If your attack missed, or if the opponent blocks, there is no special animation or whatsoever. The opponent just stands there, acting like nothing had happened… Only red/green words (indicating missed, blocked, resisted etc) appear above his head. Not very interesting huh?

Players can choose from a good variety of lightsaber stances. The stances play a huge role in how good your offense/defenses are. This is a nice touch to the gameplay, as the player would need to choose the optimal stance for different situations.

Lightsaber damage is decent. Small-fry enemies in the game die to 1 or 2 swipes, while bosses of the game can absorb an insane number of hits!! Now, if only Anakin Skywalker were as tough as the bosses of this game, he wouldn’t lose the duel to Obi-Wan (in Ep3) over 1 swipe of the lightsaber! LOL!

While the lightsaber dueling isn’t exactly something I would call exciting, I must also stress that KotoR is an RPG, so its specialty is focused on its story-telling and role-playing. If only they fine tuned the lightsaber dueling system…There is no multiplayer for this game. You only fight AI opponents.

Episode 3 : Revenge of the Sith (RotS)
Decent graphics, though it nonetheless looked pretty good on my PS2 with S-Video cable. Limited graphical capabilities as it’s a console game, so the graphical details and quality is pretty-much fixed.

Very few Force powers to use, and each Force power uses up a lot of Force from the Jedi’s humble pool of Force power. Obviously, the designers aimed to make the game as close to the movies as possible, placing emphasis on lightsaber dueling instead of Force powers.

Lightsaber dueling in the game is very close to that of the movies. The player can choose to go on the offense and perform different attack combos to pressure the opponent, or to block most of the time and wait for the right moment to strike. Defensive players also have to option to turn the tables by using lightsaber parries or shunts. Advanced combat moves like dodge attacks and grapples are also included. This is the only game to have saber-locking!

There is no option to choose lightsaber stances in this game. However, players get to choose characters from the movie, and each character uses his/her own unique stance, so each character plays quite differently. It is therefore up to the player to see which stance suits his style the most.

Lightsaber damage is very poor. A few swipes from the lightsaber merely removes l0% of your total life! Using combo attacks will deal good damage though. My guess is that the gameplay designers made the lightsabers weak so that players can engage in longer lightsaber battles. My feeling is that they should have included an option to adjust the damage of the lightsabers, so that purists can “enjoy” the 1-hit kills, lol!

There is a 1v1 duel mode in this game, so players get to pit themselves against each other for a good old lightsaber duel.

For players who want to focus on lightsaber dueling and a bit of Force powers to spice up the fun, the RotS game is strongly recommended.

War of the Worlds

2005-07-11T19:11:00.000+08:00

I watched “War of the Worlds” yesterday with my gf.

Overall, it’s a pretty OK movie.

While it has its fair share of weird parts and plot holes, they are not really noticeable and don’t really spoil the overall story-telling.

My main gripes of the movie are 3 parts….

**SPOILER ALERT**

1)Tom Cruise & family escaped from the aliens’ attack on the ship at night. Soon after, Tom Cruise’s son suddenly became siao-siao and decided to run up the slope to join the US troops (or to see what the aliens are doing, whatever). Moments later, the US military vehicles were totally annihilated and we see giant explosions fill the whole slope. Tom Cruise & daughter barely escaped from the scene (via the help of some weird man hiding under a basement).

At the end of the movie, when Tom Cruise reached Boston, his son appeared and greeted him! That means, his son actually managed to escape the insane explosions at the hill slope, then evade the alien attacks/capture, and then finally make it to Boston even faster than his Dad!

Someone give the boy a medal (I don’t think it’s legal to give him a Tiger beer… After all, he is too young for a driving license)!

2)It’s the Boston part again. When Tom Cruise arrived at Boston, we could see the signboard “Welcome to Boston” looking badly burnt (which is a sign of the alien attacks). Then in the same scene, if you look further into the background, you can see Boston smoking away like crazy and all the buildings look very bad (which gives the viewer the impression that Boston probably kena the same fate as the other cities).

1 minute later, we see Tom Cruise walking down a perfectly fine and beautiful looking street to his wife’s home. Everything looked sooo warm and surreal then, that I could almost imagine Korean lovers making out in the background, with the cheesy Korean songs playing away.

I know… Maybe it’s part of the story, that the area where Tom Cruise’s wife is staying hadn’t been attacked yet. However, if you refer to what I’ve written 2 paragraphs up, the far shot of Boston showed the whole city looking devastated and smoking. If the director really, really wanted to give the audiences the idea that parts of Boston hadn’t been attacked yet, he should make it in such a way that only parts of Boston were burning. In my humble opinion (after all, it’s Spielberg we’re talking about here), it’d probably make the story/scene-transition flow better.

3)We all know that the aliens got infected by the germs & viruses of Earth, and that resulted in their eventual demise. However, it sure is damn strange, when you see the alien-contolled "tripods" (aka walking destroyers) suddenly lose their deflector shields, just because the aliens controlling these tripods are sick???

It's damn funny when Tom Cruise pointed out to the soldiers that the alien tripods had no shields and everything, just right after he discovered that the "alien fungus" are starting to die. What brand of electronics is the aliens using? I didn't know that germs and viruses can cause technology to malfunction!

Or maybe :

"Oh noooooo I m infected with Earth's viruses & germs and since I have no immunities, I m probably going to die. BY THE WAY, I SHALL SWITCH OFF ALL THE DEFLECTOR SHIELDS OF MY MACHINES SO THAT THE HUMAN SOLDIERS CAN BLAST US DOWN MORE EASILY."

Lol...

That’s all, folks!

Wanna be a Jedi?

2005-07-06T02:46:00.000+08:00

Yup, I m a Star Wars fan, so anything I m going to say about Star Wars is extremely biased.

http://www.starwars.com

You have been warned.

Star Wars has captivated its fans for decades with their amazing display of technology and special effects. It has a very griping storyline (about destiny and fulfilling it), and also one of the best lines in movie history “No…. I AM YOUR FATHER!”. Of course, one of the most magical thing about Star Wars is the Jedi Knights and their mastery of the Force.

For years, fans have been doing and buying all sorts of stuffs to role-play the once-glorious guardians of the galaxy. Lightsaber-replicas/toys are hot favorites.

http://www.firebox.com/?dir=firebox&action=product&pid=995

Anyway, then came the era of Video/PC gaming. Unlike buying lightsaber toys (and swinging it around like a joker lol) & pretending to use the Jedi Mind Trick on “weak-minded fools”, these games allow us to actually do “serious” (LOL) stuffs like using the lightsabers & Force in actual combat.

http://www.lucasarts.com

I’ll be talking about the games that appealed more to myself…

Excluding the ancient “Super Star Wars” series platform game on the Super Nintendo (I might have recalled the wrong console), one of the better modern game that allows the player to wield the lightsaber and the Force is “Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight” for the PC. The “Jedi Knight” game was a major hit went on to have 2 more sequels, “Jedi OutCast” and “Jedi Academy”. The “Jedi Knight” series is basically a FPS (First-Person Shooter aka CounterStrike style). Players have the option to toggle to 3rd-person view (aka Tomb-Raider style).

Then came the release of the super famous “Knights of the Old Republic” (aka KotoR) for the Xbox/PC, and its sequel “KotoR 2 : The Sith Lords”. The KotoR series is RPG (Role-Playing Games aka Dungeons & Dragons style) based. Bascially, you fight enemies as you explore the galaxy, do quests for rewards, level-up…. You get the picture.

Along with the release of “Episode 3 : Revenge of the Sith” (aka RotS) movie, Lucasarts couldn’t resist releasing an official RotS game, for the PS2/Xbox. The game is quite the “Double-Dragon” (basically you walk around and kill anything you see, something like Super Mario Bro lol) style, while following the plot of the movie closely (duh). It also includes a great VS Mode for the good old Saber-duels.

I strongly recommend the above-mentioned games to anyone who wants to play as Jedi in Star Wars games. Please note that the KotoR series does not include multiplayer, but it shouldn’t be much of a problem when it comes to replay-value, considering the fact that the storyline is very complex and you can choose to play very differently each time you start a new game.

I’ll talk more about these games and their different ways of Jedi portrayal in the near future.

Batman Begins

2005-06-24T10:11:00.000+08:00

Caught Batman begins with my gf and her family yesterday night.

It’s a really good movie, except for the fact that the screen is tooooo wide (don’t know if this is the special wide-screen edition or what). My eyes felt like they must go in separate directions if I want to see the whole screen.

Overall, the storyline & the mood of the movie is very good. I realize that the standard of comic-based movies is improving a lot recently. I think the Spiderman movies set the bar very high up, so other movies must try to follow up, or else they risk looking stupid and cheesy.

**SPOILER ALERT**

I like it how the movie focuses on Bruce Wayne for once. In previous Batman movies, the focuses were always more on the villains. You might as well call the 1st Batman movie “The Joker”, or the 2nd movie “Catwoman & The Penguin”, you get my point heheh…

Christian Bale looks damn spot on a Bruce Wayne / Batman. Previous Batmans rely on the fake “muscles” that were molded onto the armour to look strong. However, from a few scenes of the movies where Bale is topless, we could see that he is super-built and damn fit. That, in my opinion, injects realism into the fact that Batman is physically superior and therefore, it’s logical that he can kick most people’s ass when it comes to combat.

Thank god the script writers didn’t make the enemies god-like in the movie. I like it how they potrayed the ScareCrow as a low-level opponent to Batman (even though he presented some serious threats initially). After all, the ScareCrown isn’t a major player, compared to baddies like the Joker, Two-Face etc.

Niam Leeson stars as Ducard (or the new Ra’s Al Ghul, whatever kind of name that is), the martial arts expert who taught Bruce Wayne how to fight. With all due respect to Mr Leeson, while I think his acting is good and everything, I cannot help but to think of his role as Qui-Gon Jinn (from Star Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace). Qui-Gon’s character also involves teaching people about life and sprouting other zen-related stuffs. Whenever Niam Leeson (as Ducard in the Batman movie) tells Bruce Wayne about some philosophies, I almost expected Leeson to finish the sentence with “remember that, my young Padawan”, hahahah!!

Oh, what's up with all the constand mentioning of SINGAPORE, when they talk about smuggling stuffs? The bad guys smuggle stuffs from Singapore, Alfred orders Batman stuffs from Singapore... OMG. We have such a hard time trying to smuggle pirated games/VCD/DVD across the causeway already, and the movie makes it seem like you can smuggle a nuclear warhead from Singapore like a snap of the finger. Hahahaha!!

Overall, while Batman Begins is a comic-based movie, it manages to stay realistic enough and it doesn’t have any major plot holes. Batman takes out his opponents in believable ways (definitely not standing in the middle of a shopping mall and firing away at armed-assailants surrounding him LOL) and the bad guys did not overshadow the hero.

I’d strongly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to catch something these weeks.

S'pore & the Sphere of Influence

2005-06-23T02:58:00.000+08:00

*Due to some unforeseen errors, this entry is lost... Haha...*

Happy Father's Day!

2005-06-19T10:29:00.000+08:00

To my dad, the greatest man in my life.

Thank you for being such a great dad to me, knowing when to be nice and when to be strict, that's why I m such a good boy now lol!

Know your role

2005-06-17T03:42:00.000+08:00

Okie, I've decided to comment on something I've observed from all the time I'd spent playing DotA (if you don’t know what DotA is, please refer to a few entries earlier).

DotA is a team game. The max number of players in a game is 10 (5 vs 5). Basically, players run all around the map, trying to kill players from the other team, and to also destroy all the buildings of the opponents’ team.

Very often, 1 unlucky player (who would wonder around on his own, with no team mates nearby) would encounter 2 (or more) of his opponents. Presuming that all the players are of equal skill-levels, the 1 unlucky player will most likely die.

The very, very, very irritating thing is, when that 1 unlucky player dies, he would say awfully stupid things like “WAH! GANGBANG! 3 vs 1! WTF MAN! YOU ALL SUCK!”

Let’s examine the situation here:-

1) DotA is a *team* game. There is a reason why it’s 5 v 5 and not 1 solo hero.
2) You shouldn’t be running around by yourself if you ain’t strong enough.
3) There is no rule in DotA saying that it is inappropriate for your opponents to run around in groups.
4) If you think that your opponents are being unfair and are ganging up to bully you, let’s not forget that *you have your own freakin’ team mates too!!*. Which brings us to…
5) It’s *not* your opponents’ fault that they practise team-work and your team doesn’t.

If a DotA player cannot comprehend the above 5 points, he might as well quit playing DotA and go play Pac Man… Oh wait, you are outnumbered by ghosts in Pac Man too, and you’ve got no team mates… Bleh.

The Majority does not win!

2005-06-15T09:12:00.000+08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtrooper_effect

The above link explains the reason why Mr & Mrs Smith were able to survive the incredibly overwhelming number of assailants in the final gun-fire scene of the movie.

It is based off the Star Wars movies, but the explanation works well for every damn movie where the heroes are outnumbered in a ratio of 98,473 to 1 and still manage to escaped more or less unscathed.

Now we know the truth, heheheh...

Michael Jackson & Plastic Surgeries

2005-06-14T05:33:00.000+08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/entertainment/michael_jackson

MJ has been found NOT guilty by a 12-member jury.

I've read countless debates on the Internet about this whole bizarre incident. I don’t really know who to trust, so I’ve been sitting on the fence so far. MJ is weird, so he *might* have done it. On the other hand, immoral people would stop at nothing to bend the truth so that they could get their share of wealth.

Regardless, MJ’s infamous transformation (thanks to countless plastic surgeries) does leave me with a feeling of disgust. What kind of person would want to deform himself sooooooo much? I understand if you are unhappy with your nose/eyes, and opt to go for a surgery to fix it for a better appearance (as done by lots of Japanese & Koreans), but whatever MJ did to himself does not count as “better appearance”. Why couldn’t he be contented with the way he looked originally (the MJ we see on the cover of the album “Thriller”)? I think that he looks rather ok then. Why fix something that isn’t broken? It must be some compulsive disorder found only in people who are super rich and famous!

Speaking of Japanese & Koreans, I’ve read everywhere (newspapers, Internet) that plastic surgery is a very common thing to them. It’s like, at least 5 out of 10 have gone under the knife before! That brings us to the point, that whenever you see a photo of a good-looking Japanese/Korean, how would you know that the look is natural? There is a high chance that his/her perfect facial features ain’t real, you know? That good-looking celebrity could possibly have used to look like the monkey you saw at the zoo when you were 10 yrs old!

La la la…

About DotA AllStars

2005-06-13T03:46:00.000+08:00

DotA stands for Defense of the Ancients. It's a mod for the game Warcraft3 http://www.blizzard.com/worlds-warcraft.shtml .

DotA is made by some really really enthusiastic gamers. You can find out more about this wonderful game at http://dota-allstars.com/ .

Even though it isn't an official Blizzard (the company that produced WC3) product, DotA is still being supported in Blizzard's Battlenet servers. Gamers from all over the world play this game. On weekend nights, you can see lots & lots of S'porean gamers playing DotA games in the servers! In local LAN shops, one can often see DotA being played too!

The latest version of the game at this point of time is 6.09b. I have been playing since version 5.54c. Maybe a year or so? I m fairly ok in this game, but I can't say that I m a pro. Basically, I know my way around most heroes and I try my best not to get killed... LOL!

I used to play DotA with my older bro, but he started working and became busy. I currently play DotA with JC. I 1st knew JC after my O-levels, but it was because of KOF, another great game… I’ll rant about KOF another day hehe. I “psychoed” JC into getting WC3 to play DotA with me, and he is becoming a rather good player himself! More about our encounters in the future.

The makers of DotA really really went thru lots of hard work to fine tune the game. There are now over 50 heroes for players to choose from. However, it is unavoidable that some of the heroes are most overpowered, while some are sadly weaker. Like other games, players tend to favour the overpowered heroes most of the time. Who would want to pick a weaker hero?

Basically, who likes to lose?

My favorite hero of DotA is Leoric, the Skeleton King. I have his mug shot as the picture of my profile hehehe. And yes, I admit that Leoric is widely considered to be one of the better heroes of the game. Maybe that’s why I like him… Hahahaha!

About the Smiths

2005-06-12T22:26:00.000+08:00

Went to watch Mr & Mrs Smith at Lido last night...

Overall quite action-packed and funny, though there are many really far-fetched parts!

My major gripes about the movie...

**SPOILER ALERT**

How the heck did Mrs Smith survive being smashed into walls, kitchen tables, grandfather-clocks, and being kicked non-stop by Mr Smith. I almost thought that I was watching scenes from the movies Terminator 2 & 3 (when the 2 Terminators fight each other)!

And the Final Battle... Wah liao eh... Even more over-the-top, man. We see a whole battalion of "professional assassins from 2 organizations" flank and fire at Mr & Mrs Smith. Either they miss miserably or something, because Mr & Mrs Smith totally surivived the whole attack (except for a minor graze on Mr Smith's left arm). Wtf? Professional assassins missing so badly? Did they even pass their range during BMT?

People might point out to me, "But the Smiths are wearing Kevlar-vests, so that protects them from all sorts of firepower". Wrong! Kevlar-vests only stop/weaken light-firearms (ie pistols), but the weapons that the "professional assassins" used are top-of-the-line assault-riles and SMG lor. These weapons would pierce through the Kevlar-vests like hot-knife through cheese!

And it's so funny seeing the "professional assassins" attack the Smiths in waves of 4 (2 for Mr Smith to shoot, 2 for his wife). What were the rest doing, waiting for their comrades to fall before they form another group of 4 to charge? What is this? Bollywood movie ah?

Do not misunderstand me. I do not hate the movie or what. Actually, I enjoyed the movie thoroughly and I would agree that it'd have sucked if the Smiths were to die at the end of the movie if the director decided to take a nod in the "realistic" direction.

After all, who doesn't like Happy Endings?

Hahahahaha!!

2005-06-12T06:18:00.000+08:00

My gf is never gonna believe that I have started my own blog!

Hahahahaha!!!!