I don't curse that much. Really.
Well, after weeks of anticipation, someone finally releases First Attack, otherwise known as the EA's initial attack on Orb, which incidently killed off Shin's family.
To think that the main character of Gundam SEED Destiny is there simply because he went to pick up his sister's handphone ^^;
...is a day of fond rememberance.
...is a time where you try your very best to thank all those who have guided through your short life.
...is an occassion where we celebrate the selflessness of some of the greatest human beings on the planet.
To you, Mr. Ranjit Singh, thank you for all that you've taught me when I was 12.
To you, Ms. Chua, despite our differences, my little dream I wrote when I was 14 turned into reality.
To you, Mr. (******), for putting me down, and allowing me to prove everyone wrong that I could never make it as a serious person.
And lastly, to you, Mrs. Rosemary Fong, one of the brightest lights of my life, even with all the negative publicity that you've been facing from your collegues. Without you overshadowing you in the first 6 years of my educational life, I would never have the confidence to do whatever I wanted to do. Not now, not ever.
Thank you all, and have a Happy Teachers' Day ^_^
First off, stores in Japan have begun airing intro commercials on Original Generation 2. Naturally, the usual fans taped it down and posted the whole set up for the rest of the world to savour.
Yup, 2 days removed, I'm still suffering from a little tiredness after the fun Matsuri night. Went with Jonah, my collegue, and met tons of people there. Michael was there, Boon Long, along with most of the SGgamers crew, and Danny!
Basically it was the same old stuff, with stalls where we played some games, food stalls, and the lone goods stall. Well there was another, but that stall sold biscuits, so it wasn't much of a selection. Didn't buy anything this year since the toys stall had basic stuff you can find in the real world outside, unlike those plastic yoyos I got for my class last year.
Some of the pictures from the Matsuri -
Enjoying my Chicken Curry Rice. One of the few Main Dishes we paid an extra $4 for...
Michael's Matsuri T-shirt. XL size, the largest, was way too small for me T-T. I want that Pikachu fan >_<
Me, Michael and Boon Long
I, for one, never believe in reviews, nor do I ever believe what others tell me about any item/game/movie and stuff. Why? Simple. Personal perspective =/= others' perspective, especially when it comes to popular stuff. What works for others may be utter crap to me, and vice versa.
It was with this thought (and the tons of Rotten Tomatoes) that I went into the theatre last night for the 1-day preview of Alien vs Predator. The opening wasn't too bad I guess, introducing the various human characters, then moving on to the subject at hand. What ticked me off was the pretty large human group, and large human groups means tons of fodder.
Fodder indeed. The humans soon get into the (lame) conflict between just-hatched aliens and....3 predators, two of which get offed pretty early on too. To make it worse, the loads of humans soon fall like crushed ants in the faces of the handful of aliens and predators.
The movie then turns gives us the HUGE UNEXPECTED PLOT TWIST! By explaining the back story of this conflict. In other words, the whole story told in 5 minutes, when we wasted 1 hour of our life trying to make any sense out of the human bodies.
Which then leads to some little action, a lot of atmosphere, and once the dying stopped due to the earlier carnage, it's all nothing but cheesy running scenes and the final 1 on 1 on 1 battle. Bleh.
The sad thing about it all? I played Wangan for a couple of rounds while waiting for the movie to start. Played 5, won 2 lost 3. Sickening AI. 3rd round is hard......
Well, so I thought. Usually Saturdays are the most draining, what with work from 7am to 1+, followed by running around the island collecting stuff like magazines, games and general meeting up with guys, and of course evenings with DDR + Taikoing at Jurong Point.
Somehow or other that didn't come off that well last Saturday night. When something draws my attention (and it always is not related to work :P) I tend to follow it through, and my attention levels is always high up. Any variation of SRW always does that to me, that's why I promise myself never to play an SRW late at night during weekdays.
This time, however, it's Babylon 5. Went in the afternoon to Blue Max to buy season 2, ordered seasons 3-5 as well. After the long day and night (got home aroudn 12+), watched Boro and Newcastle draw themselves, then settled down for some B5.
And carried on watching till 8am, when my brother woke up and joined me watching it. By then I was already at disc 3, episode 10. In fact, I watched through the whole night, and through the entire morning as well. Plowed through 15 1/2 episodes before my body finally gave up on me, and it was ko all the way till 8. Yup, missed the Fireworks festival again -_-.
Basically, if you have been counting the time, my eyes have been on the TV for something in excess of 10+ hours. Not a bad feat, but definately detrimental to health. Last night was a massive blur, only thing I can coherently remember is laughing at the US version of Tales of Symphonia, where they cut out Starry Heavens and the skits were not voiced, according to my IRC friends who asked me about the Japanese version.
Let me say again: US VERSIONS SUCK!!!!!!!
Mwa.
Oh, btw, #spoon finally got their Fullmetal Alchemist ep. 41 subbed and out. Once their 42 is out as well, I can at least catch up to date, which is 44. Long wait still, but as we near the end of this series, another big one will follow up.
Yes, Gundam SEED Destiny.
I really did, well
...here are some screenies that I found:
Lacus~sama!
Assorted others
Gaia Gundam and its SEEDling pilotress
Luna's sister, aka Milly mk. II
We miss the druggies, so here are their clones/10
First off...
It'll appear at the links area after today, and it's just a bit of service I can provide for the SRW community. Check it out man, nicely updated, and with flash and music to boot!
Now, back to SSH. Found the site, and found some very interesting remixes. SRW remixes aside, he also does for many other games like Final Fantasy, Guilty Gear, Ys, along with some of his own original tracks. They're up there, free mp3s for download, nothing illegal about these, luckily. All very nice guitar riffs, most very fast, with some slow tunes to make up for them.
Where it is, you might ask? Well, either Google it, or just follow this:
So I woke up at 3am after falling asleep at the computer. Doing last-minute work seems to have that effect on me...
Had to keep awake for the rest of the morning, then went off to school. National Day observation parade, followed by yours truly being the host of the talentime competition conducted by the school for the upper primary students. Fun while it lasted, but tiring afterwards.
Tried to mark some books, fell asleep >_<. Got woken up by some ex-pupils who came back to visit. Seeing them change from little P6s to the street-wise Sec 1s feels like I'm growing older by the day. Depressing.
Handed in what I needed to hand in, went to Jurong Point to clear off the final Wangan stage. Luckily I chose JP too. Failed the first two times in the 1-on-1 with Tetsuya (that bloody fricking final turn got to be twice!), and cleared the game on the first try at the second battle. The AI helped me a lot too, as I let Tetsuya crawl back while I chased Akio, and the cars actually collided with each other, letting me pass through and coast along the final 3k straight to clear.
...I still don't know how to do the sharp turns. Managed to turn once perfectly, didn't know how exactly I did it --"
Anyway, I believe that clearing the first round is the best that I can really do in racing games. Lost the first battle in the second round, and realised that I can never match up to those little children (some no older than P4!) who can drive expertly and turn without too much problems.
$6 flew away just like that.......
Went home, ko'ed. Woken up rather forcefully by my father, saying that we had to go celebrate my mother's birthday....tired dinner really. The food was alright, but expensive...not my type definately.
Basketball coming up in a while, hopefully the day will remain clear. DDR tonight I guess? Or more Taiko? ^_^
Needed to vent a bit of anger this evening, so went on a Wangan rampage through the A+ rank rivals.
Needless to say, I really had to drive near-perfectly to have any chance of winning them.
Still no idea on how to turn sharp corners...so crashed a couple of times...lost to Reika at Stage 19 due to crashing into a car at the final bend...damned unlucky. $2 down the drain that way...
Oh well, only 1 last stage, 2 last races to go before my first round is complete. Should be trying it out tomorrow...
The next SRWs (Super Robot Wars for the uninitiated) have been revealed, thanks to Famitsu.
While I don't order the magazine, nor am I living in Japan, but the news has been spreading around like wildfire since the scans came out this afternoon.
Without further ado, here they are. Drool if you wish, sneer if you want to, but seeing these scans, plus the amount of new (a.k.a. returning) originals has left me speechless.
Enemies this time? Einst, DC stragglers (as seen from the T-Link Knuckle cut-in pic) and probably Shadow Mirror?
Let the madness begin!
Legally that is -_-"
Anyway, like any rabid Doomie out there since it came out on shareware, I rushed straight after work to purchase the long-awaited 5th (6th?) sequel of the game, which promised (or delivered?) better graphics, great lighting, and fun gameplay.
Well, hell began for me.
Hell, Level 1 - Realised that the jewel case that came along with the game was pretty badly packed. The "teeth" of the CD case that holds the discs together were broken, leaving me with loose discs. Dangerous, but I had my PS2 casings to help relieve that headaches.
Hell, Level 2 - After the installation, I was faced with crap on the screen. Anyone with a half-decent mind would instantly realise what was wrong, but I had to scrutinise through the Helpme file for around 10 minutes before realising that I had to update by graphics card driver. And so I did.
Hell, Level 3 - I have a 14" monitor. The main menu was perfect. Loaded the game, was faced with the world's best case of choppy screen. Figured that I had turned video quality a bit too low, so switch to highest quality, screen size 800x600 I did.
Hell, Level 4 - Thus the Shadows came. Near-total darkness, even with the gamma rating up to max. At first I really went "WTF?!", but upon further messing around with the graphic settings, realised that what was causing the lighting differences was the fact that a bigger screen size encompassed more colours, hence the darker screen. My poor 14" isn't LCD, thus it wasn't able to take in everything. (Note to self: Time to buy a 17" LCD within next 2 months...). Switched back to 640 I did.
Hell, Level 5 - Brighter, but choppier. Everything's chopslack. A simple turn required 4 seconds for the system to register, and then more chopla. Finally gave up on these choppins and exited the game for good today.
Hell, Level 6 - It dosen't end there. Apparently the game takes some time to remove itself from my system, and the whole PC was running like a 486 for around 3-4 minutes before everything turned back to normal.
For now.
Hell on Earth?
Nope, Hell, in Redhill. BLARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
Just finished watching Episode 20 of Season 1. That was a great reminder of how it drew me into the series totally. I missed most of Season 1, followed through some of Season 2, and sat through the entire Season 3 (when it was shown on TV of course ^^;). The buildup to the Shadow War was the longest ever, yet every episode had its own meaning, plus the immense drawback to the first season on 2 episodes.
Sadly, I missed the war in its entirety due to National Service commitments, and that royally sucked. The only consolation I got was watching the final episode of the entire series (thus, getting to know the ending ^^;) while I was on duty.
B5 was a different type of series. Granted, it was generally more opera than sci-fi adventure, but the reason I was tuned in to it was the fact that they hinted of the main storyline little by little, while building up the characters, their daily problems, and forceful solutions brought about by themselves. Every major character goes through a major change in their lives in their 5 years on (or off, for one very important person) the station.
After watching through most of season 1 on the DVD collection, I realised how nice the series, using a sci-fi concept, ties in with current affairs. The major cultures, the internal inter-racial conflicts, even dock worker strikes that reflect what some countries are facing.
But that's just the way I think of things. Not many people will agree to that, but not many people really care either -_-". After all, making money to survive is already a problem for some, why burden themselves more with the problem of others?
Finally got the call that my Rockman X Command Mission arrived. 10 days late. Not much trust in Singapore importers anymore, can't really seem to get ANYTHING these days.
Realise this.
NO Gradius V
NO Paper Mario RPG
worst of all, NO Final Fantasy I.II Advance
And Gensou Suikoden IV is coming along in 2 weeks' time. Chances of getting it on time is as usual since this year started: Slim to none -_-"
Morning was a revelation. I had literally slept for the past 14 hours (I think I woke up some time in the night), with my Xbox on all the while. Was attempting to watch an episode of Babylon 5, guess it didn't work out at all with my totally tired body. The short nap on 198 from Clementi West to Jurong Point wasn't a good nap probably. But that's yesterday...
Got the game, detoured to Kino Liang Court to get this month's Dengeki PS2, went home, started the game. The playing feel is pretty good on the onset, twisting standard side scrolling into a singular 3D path works better than I anticipated. The RPG feel isn't really there, even with the levelling and stuff. Blasting enemies turn by turn is fun until you get to bosses ^^;
Rockman X8 demo is also included in the game. Required me to get a key item to actually unlock it, but no biggies there, since it appears very early on. Basically, IT SUCKS. The characters take up at least 1/5 of the whole screen, which leaves very little space for enemies to appear. X is basically X, no change, Axl's shots are angled at only 8 directions (the intro stage is side-scrolling), Zero is slow as ever. A new feature is Double Attack, where you can have 2 characters attack at the same time (something like a super attack) destroying all in sight.
Problem is, you can only activate it when there are 3 enemies or more around.
I went WTF when Elis asked me to defeat the boss using Double Attack, but I wasn't able to activate it at all...
Game Over screen has Sigma at the back. Duh.
Switched off the game in frustration, loaded the Dengeki disc. Now I was treated to power.
Snake Eater demo. Never watched previous ones before, so this was probably the first since E3. Long demo, showed Snake's (Big Boss?) fated meeting with Revolver and a female I don't recognise. Dosen't matter though. This game is so going to be sold in Japan and everywhere else in the world.
Then I tried the Gensou Suikoden IV demo. Pretty short, but Konami has definately redeemed themsevles after the travesty of III, which had the world's crappiest battle system and music. They used back the old instant fighting system, reduced to 4 from 6, probably due to space. The demo caps us to Lv 20, and gives characters that don't really exist so early on. Not much of the game is really shown, but the camera view in battles isn't really excellent. Well, I won't expect them to work around that, since it's probably all packed and ready to send...but buy it I will.
Finally proceeded to have some fun with GT3. Got enough credits to splurge on an Evo VII, then raced it, upgraded it, turboed it, and wasted around 30+ races (losing some of them to that blasted Evo VI Rally car at the turns), but finally tuned it enough to last the Super Speedway endurance.
Split the race into parts actually. Everytime I went to the pits (once every 20-odd turns) I paused and watched an episode of Babylon 5 instead. Resting my thumb and waking my brain certainly worked, for I got the F1 car on the first try, 8 laps ahead of the second car. Saved, and here I am...
...with 6 hours of beauty sleep left. Still can't find a way to sleep early unless I'm totally exhausted...
