City of Heroes trial

I had been playing Warhammer Online for some time and after all that, I have reached the point where it is starting to feel more like work rather than entertainment. So I decided to stop and try something else. I had heard about City of Heroes for a long time and decided to give it a try by grabbing the trial. First off, after the installer have downloaded the necessary files, it was only 2.7 gb. A far cry to the sizes of most MMOs of today. In logging in, I was very impressed with the character creation and in fact, spent most of my time trying out making different characters. I hope this customizability stays with their next hero MMO foray called Champions Online. Sometimes, the fun is in the making of your character rather than playing your character. The pic above is what I settled for as my first character in the game and dubbed him Penjejak Neraka aka Hell Walker. I decided to create an East meets West type, hence the cowboy look and katana weapons.
The gameplay is quite slow, compared to Warhammer Online. There are no auto attacks and you have to constantly press your skill buttons to attack. Nevertheless the game has its own charm but the trial version does limit your character somewhat. Firstly, you can't whisper other players, which makes any attempt at finding a party somewhat difficult but not impossible. Saying that, I haven't tried looking for a team since I am after all, only level 4. Anyway, my trial lasts until May 18th and so we shall see what conclusion will I come up with the game.

This was the shoutcaster from Gamestah.com whom was invited for Cyber Fusion. He speaks like a motor boat and he knows his stuff! He primarily shoutcasts for DotA but the way he does it makes anyone just passing by want to look at the screen. If you want to view more vids from the Cyber Fusion event, just click on the vid and it should take you to the youtube page with more Cyber Fusion vids.

Guinness World Record Broken - I was there to witness it

April 10th to 12th would be a historical date for all Malaysian, especially Malaysian gamers as the Guinness World Record for the longest and largest LAN party ever held was finally broken! The new record, which is with a total of 257 participants in a LAN party held on for 40 hours of non-stop gaming and fun! At the end of the day, some of them were literally zombies and there were a few that felt asleep in the middle of scooping their breakfast into their mouths! I had a great laugh on that one.

However, there were a lot of technical problems but were solved on the fly by ingenuity. I had a lot of headaches on that day. But it was all worth it since we managed to break the record. Btw, I was there not as a participant but my company was one of the main sponsors of the event and I was there to help out. When nightfall came, the other company booths were empty but only ours were lit up and buzzing with activity as people tried out our games. In addition, we helped the LAN party run their mini tournaments and technical problems (with our games).

Above is me fooling around while we set up our booth on the 9th of April. Oh yeah btw, I finally managed to play Street Fighter IV (SFIV)! It was cool. Unfortunately it was on the PS3. I say unfortunately because I hate the joypad. It was hard to do moves properly since I am not used to the joypad layout. However, of all the characters I tried, for some reason Abel was the easiest to pull off combos. On my first try on that character, I managed to do a 4 string combo followed by an ULTRA which ended the match. It was awesome! Can't wait for this game to come out for the PC and I will get myself an arcade stick.

Premiere Movie: Fast & Furious

I was delivering some marketing materials after work and the person whom I was meeting with pointed me towards Cineleisure Damansara and I proceeded there. I was grumbling at this point, primarily because I was feeling lazy and this was after office hours. When I got there, I couldn't find him and I had to call him two to three times to finally get him.

Apparently his company was taking care of the premiere on that night and he surprised me by saying if I wanted to watch Fast & Furious. I heard about the movie but I didn't know it was being released on the next day. I was looking forward to the movie anyway because it marked the return of Vin Diesel to reprise his role. So, I was still thinking if he was serious or not (It was April 1st btw) when he just ushered me in and pushed me into one of his subordinates and they proceeded to find me a cinema.

Not bad for what started as a grunt delivery job. Anyway, we managed to get me some good seats, the back row sofa seats and I just enjoyed the movie. The downside was that apparently I missed 15 to 30 minutes of the start.

The movie itself was typical Fast & Furious affair. Non stop muscle cars, chics, awesome driving and action sequences. However, I felt the movie lacked something. It felt as if the movie had less budget than the previous ones. The CGI effects were less and there were no crazy camera into the hood, exiting through the exhaust sequences (except for one time). In addition to that, Paul Walker is still in it. I hate that guy, he acts the same for all his movies. Anyway, you can read about the reviews and info on the movie on this IMDB link >HERE<.

I'm wondering if my luck in getting free movie tickets will continue. We shall see ...

Video of the week: EVO 04

Video of the week is of the Street Fighter 3 (SF3) semi final match between Daigo and Justin. Definitely the best video of all time on the awesomeness of what you can achieve in a simple 2D fighting game like SF3. The fact that everyone went ape shit at the end of the vid speaks volumes of what Daigo achieved on that day. He will forever be remembered for this vid.

Street Fighter IV is out and it is revolutionary. Haven't tried it yet though because I am waiting for the PC version. I can't freaking wait. In the mean time, I have been watching non-stop SFIV vids in youtube to quench my hunger. It seems Daigo is the number one SFIV player in Japan at this moment of writing. There are rumours that Momochi might climb up to that position soon (or has he?).

First time Movie Premiere!

Holy shit I haven't updated this blog for almost forever (internet time). However, this time I gotta update it because I have participated in my first ever movie premiere!

My friend hooked me up with some free tickets for the movie Knowing for a first of many marketing events his company is planning to do. They are making a social networking website, something akin to Friendster but with more features and at this moment, more localised. So, check out ruumz and see if you feel like joining. If you are interested to join, click >HERE<. :)

Anyway, the first thing I asked him about the movie premiere was what kind of clothing can I wear. For some reason I was imagining those big gala movie premieres and was thinking that this was the same thing. Fortunately, it was relatively similar to a normal movie night out, except that we get to watch this movie before it was released on the next day. However, he told me to not wear singlets, shorts and slippers. :P

About the movie? The movie was good in the special effects department and in some ways managed to capture what it was going for. However, I dislike movies like this because it touched alot on religious issues and interpreting it into their own explanations. Without delving too much into it, I suggest everyone read the imdb link I posted above to know what is the movie about and see the movie critics review on it.

So, laters. Hopefully I update more.

Gamer's Bill of Rights

The boyos at Stardock and Gas Powered Games have proposed that all publishers adhere to their Gamer's Bill of Rights:

1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don't work with their computers for a full refund.
2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
3. Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release.
4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer.
6. Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent.
7. Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
8. Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
9. Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
10. Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

Sign me up for full support on this. All publishers must follow this but then again, who are we kidding right?

Source: Click me