semester break

I'm on semester break right now and this is why I'm not online much. I've been playing video games and watching DVDs for the past six days. This clearly makes me a bum. I also recently have been playing with my aunt's LCD television to test out progressive scan. DVDs support it as well as some of my video games. The picture is enhanced with the interlace removed from the picture as the screen is refreshed all at once. This method improves picture quality in that it removes jagged edges and makes the picture look more natural and film like. With games that only support 480p, its a bit hard to notice a difference since the Ps2 does not have AA but it makes the game smoother than it would look like without it.

I beat a couple of games over the past several days. Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (I'm not finished with this game yet, I just beat the story missions).

Let me start with GTA: SA. The game is remarkable like its predecessors before it. It doesn't add much to the mission variety but it does tweak the game here and there. They added sort of like a Sims aspect to the main character. You can customize what he wears and how fat he will get. They added more stuff to do as well. You can gamble, play basketball (which I haven't done), play pool, play videogames, pimp out your ride, participate in hydraulic battles, and YES be able to jump out a plane and skydive (which is AWESOME everytime I do it).

I'll sidetrack a bit with the skydiving. There is a mission I was thrilled to do in which you get to kill everybody on board then jump off way way up in the air. What is cool about the mission is that you stay in the air for several minutes. I tried to recreate the air time in that mission but it seems like there is a limit to how far you can go up, sucks I know.

There were some frustrating missions such as the flying missions but I got used to it. Flying a jet is freaking awesome. You even get to do a casino bank heist which was cool. One of the frustrating missions is the one where you have to get Madd Dog's house back. It's frustrating not because of the shooting parts but because of the driving part. I found it difficult because I had to restart the entire mission again if I failed during the driving sequence. I got really close one time where I shot the gas tank of the enemy but the explosion caught my car as well. I tried to get out of the car but it was too late. It exploded the moment I got out. Overall the best missions I've played are the casino area missions and the Truth missions.

Rockstar even added a gangland part to the game. There are certain parts of Los Santos where your gang gets to control. These parts are hard at first because all you can afford is a submachine gun. Later on it gets easier because you can a lot of cash by then. They also added the idea of getting some of your gang to go with you on driveby shootings. They even added relationships that CJ can partake in.

The best addition to this game is gun experience. The more you use a gun, the more proficient you become. It makes sense. If CJ reaches the hitman level with a certain weapon, it takes less shots to kill someone.

Hopefully the next iteration of GTA will have an updated graphics engine. That is probably the only thing holding this game back.

The next game on my list is Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. I fucking hate this game. It puts the Goldeneye name to shame. The original Goldeneye was remarkable in every fashion. This one doesn't even come close. I'm puzzled because EA's previous Bond game Everything or Nothing was spectacular. RA is far from polished. The graphics are muddy considering this is far from a first generation title. Some of the weapons are useless and the melee combat stinks. I don't mind the AI getting harder (which never happens in this game), but I don't care for the idotic numbers of shielded enemies or hard-to-eliminate enemies. It takes so many fucking shots to kill an ememy unless you get him in the head, but with the weapons they give you, getting a headshot is almost impossible. Later in the game the pistol with unlimited rounds becomes useless as enemies start to possess a weapon that kills you in one shot, a weapon that shoots out remote contolled bombs, and this stupid fucking Venom gun that if you get hit by a bullet your movement is slowed down to snail speed. I really fucking hated that Omen laser gun. When I was far into a level, I would get shot by one of these and then I would have to restart the level or back to the checkpoint (which are very few btw). What I hated is that the enemies would never have a reload animation, but you would. When they had the Omen gun, they would shoot it like it was an assualt rifle, but when you get the gun, you can only shoot off one shot at a time.

The developers added this stupid power system. You can see through walls, useless unless you have a railgun. You can have a temporary shield which drains faster when you get hit. You have an EMP shock which disables certain weapons and electronics (useless as well). You finally have this ability to grab an enemy and throw them. All of these powers drain your energy in about 5 seconds or when you use it once as with the case with the telekinesis power. What's stupid is that it takes so long to refill. They also added the recharging life bar. If the game did not have this, I would never finish the game. Enemies do so much damage. I don't know what I would do without it.

This game is far from being finished. The game has horribly compressed videos (which makes me wonder how FFX and FFX-2's cinematics are DVD quality), bad graphics both in level design and how the game looks in general, and horrible implementation.

Horrible game. What a horrible game.

last final and still WTF

My last final is tomorrow and I can't sleep just thinking about how I'll do. It bothers me so much. I might actually go on academic probation.....a first in my entire lifetime (kindergarten doesn't count). It's a physics final. Goddamn I hate physics. It's just another math class but with motion. I hope I do well.

I'll still in that WTF mood. The video game awards was shown today on Spike TV. It was still awful like last year. That Snoop talking to Snoop skit failed miserably. The entire show failed miserably. Most of the awards were shown through a montage video. It's quite sad. I still can't believe that Half-Life 2 didn't win best first person shooter. I swear the people who voted in that category are idiots. There is no world in Halo 2, just levels. The performances was even worse with the hip-hop. I'm sorry. I'm just one of those people who can't stand hip-hop and the show was litered with it. Oh yeah, I wanted Katamari Damacy to win most addicted game but Burnout 3 won, boo :(. I will say this again. Not all people who play videogames listen to hip hop and are ridicuously stupid. There are some who enjoy the challenge that a game offers, not because of what celebrities are in it or such. That is what I do not like about video games these days. I don't want celebrities in my video games. I don't want their likeness or anything to do with celebrities. They have movies.....so stay there. I hate this idea of video game movies. I can't believe they are already done with the Alone in the Dark movie. I didn't even know that movie was even being shot. I thought it was still in the pre-production phase. That's going to be a piece of junk because I know it's going to be not even related to the game only related by title.

I think I just hate this award show because video games are more than just crap that people play with. There is a huge number of people who work on games, there is a creator who wants to put his vision on a game, and the result can be fantastic. I would rather want a video game show that was more formal like the award show they give out to special effects people. People worked hard on these games and one of the things they get is a fucked up award show with some celebrities that don't even play video games.

PSP and WTF

The Sony PSP aka Playstation Portable was recently released in Japan. I would go for the PSP than the DS because the DS just feels too gimmicky. A touch screen is cool, but I don't see it happening with every game that will be released for that system. The PSP can play MP4 movies as well as play MP3s. I know I'm not supposed to rate a system based on graphical features, but the PSP has the DS pinned down in that department. The games on the DS are N64 games that look like they were made for the Playstation. Look at some of the movies of Super Mario 64 DS. I've read several reviews that say that the graphics are much better than the N64 version. You have got to be kidding me. If the DS was built with texture filtering, then I would say, "yeah it looks better than the n64 version". But it doesn't. It really looks like a Playstation One game. The textures are sharper (duh) because there is no filtering. I'm really impressed with the visuals of the PSP. Ridge Racers looks like a PS2 game or close to it. Far from its playstation one origins.

People are starting to complain about the battery life of the PSP. It can only play for 3 hours? It's a portable. What can you do? It was made for short gaming breaks like when you are riding a bus or on a 30-min break from work. If you would buy a portable gaming system to play it for 6+ hours, why not just play a console? That is what it was made for. Stop complaining.

My conclusion is that the PSP is the winner if I ever think about buying a portable gaming system. Plus, that widescreen LCD is freaking awesome.

Oh yeah, what the fuck is this?



They clearly fucked up the dvd cover for Infernal Affairs. It makes it look like a B-movie which it clearly isn't. This movie makes some American movies look like shit. It's clear that American companies don't want the competition.

Last thing. Advent Children looks like its getting better and better. They recently released the TGS 2004 trailer as well as a short trailer from a DVD. Sweet stuff I tell you.

hofd clips/comparisons

After watching the Yahoo clips of the House of Flying Daggers, I can clearly see that the DVD is way off in the color department. The saturation is too heavy. I really can't wait to see this in theatres.

appleseed

I finally got decent subtitles for this film. Now to just download it. Finished downloading R-Point. I hope A-1 and New Police Story get done soon because it's going to be a good weekend.

I'm still amazed with New Police Story's transfer. Its so clear and crisp. Why can't the Philippines develop pictures like that? Instead they make films like "Lumpia" - The Ultimate Home Movie. I say crap. I can't believe they have a dvd AND an official soundtrack for that movie. omg the world is going to end starting there. Why is the Philippines so far behind? They have digital cameras now.....jesus...can't they use that? I could make a movie with no money and it will look like it was shot for millions of dollars ESPECIALLY with a digital camera.

south park clip

Hilarious Wall-Mart clip

hl2dm

Deathmatch was released for Half-Life 2 and its fucking awesome. Go gravity gun!

back and bored

Just came back from a sweet one week break. I miss my ps2 so much. I left it there so that it will help me not get distracted. It will take me a while to get used to it because I used to play for an hour or two when it was here.

I'm back to my downloading habits. I'm getting Taegukgi, Three Extremes, and R-Point.

I was about to download A-1, Bushinsaba, and Appleseed but there were no sources for them.....A-1 isn't on the network yet. I heard some good things about this movie too. Damn.

**Yea. I finally got A-1 and New Police Story......on emule. Damn this is going to take a while. I hoped to find it working on BT but it doesn't (fucking school connection).

all things must come to an end

I just finished Half Life 2. I extremely enjoyed the gunfights even though some of them were frustrating. Battling those striders was freakin' awesome. I would shudder if I had only half my life and hear the loud booming steps of the strider. There are a couple of things I did not like. First of all, the ending. Ouch. Second, respawing enemies. Third, where the hell is the story? They could have explained who are the combine, what the hell is going on. I sort of lost track when during the last part of the game. Other than that, I loved every second of it. One of the main contributions the sequel gave is the gravity gun. Awesome.

Now to play it on a system that will let me play at 30-40 fps.

more goodness

Half Life 2's battles are amazing. It's so fast paced that you literally need to think where the enemy is coming from especially in this one scene. I had to think what weapons I needed to use and what positions I needed to look for. Sweet stuff. It kinda sucks though that I'm playing on my crappy integrated video card. I crave for some DX9 effects.

I got an email for a free digital subscription to EGM or Computer Gaming World. Of course, I chose EGM. It's cool to read an issue on my comp. Funny at the same time because they still have those ads for other magazines, you know those paper inserts. At least, I don't need to change the subscription address.

half life 2 goodness and why steam sucks

I played about 3 hours of Half Life 2 and shit it is amazing. The physics, the graphics, the music (sounds like Ethan Eves.....but that's cool since this is a videogame), the atmosphere, its very very awesome. My heart was racing in certain sequences.

I'm still amazed that this game could play on my laptop. My video card can barely play Call of Duty.....yet it can play this? Weird stuff.

Okay, STEAM sucks horse shit. They knew there would be thousands of players trying to log in and yet they don't have the bandwidth for people to do so. It's a good thing I got to play for a while because there are some gamers that haven't had the chance to play yet. "Get to play as soon as it is released." Bullshit. I can't log in anymore. I uploaded HL2 on my roommate's laptop so that I can see the graphics on his comp but he couldn't log in. I was playing offline at the moment but decided to go online. Bad mistake. So now I can't log in. Which means that after I finish homework for today, I might not be able to play the game at all because I can't even log in to Steam. It's crap.

waiting

It is 1:30am and its 30 minutes to go before Half Life 2 is unlocked and ready to play. I'm feeling this intense emotion of anticipation. A feeling that I haven't felt since Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

These Pimp my Ride episodes are quite good especially the most recent one since the girl was pretty. What's cool is that her car got amazing upgrades: a kickass stereo system and an xbox with Halo 2. Uber sweetness.

Just watched on CNN about Anna Nicole Smith on the AMAs. Damn she was trashed. She went from fat, to "Trimspa Baby!", to trashed like a college student. Can't she make a good impression? It doesn't look like it.

It looks like I'm going to pull off another average semester. Fuck I suck. Too much internet I guess. There must be a way to pull myself away from it. The internet is like everything you love times 100.

Oh yeah, Simpsons. God damn they should stop making episodes. The lastest one was so freakin' stupid. I watched another episode I haven't seen before tonight and man it was horrible. For some reason, Milhouse moves somewhere so Bart becomes best friends with Lisa. Lame.

20 more minutes. Damn this is killing me. I did nothing but read tons and tons of forum posts. Fuck IM lame.

sweetness

I got Jak 3 and Viewtiful Joe to work on the hard drive. Sweet stuff. Thank god for forums.

grudge (remake), grudge 2: the curse, chronicles of riddick

Just watched the remake of The Grudge. It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't new either. It just took the movies and tv versions and put them together. It did scare me a few times. The ts stopped before the ending so I don't know what happens at the end. It was cool to see the guy from Audition and Suicide Club. I recommend the tv versions over this. Watch those instead. This just fills it with cliched stuff like the music increasing to cue that something is going to happen.

The Grudge 2: The Curse is just as bad, because it basically the same as the first movie only with the Ring: Rasen twist.

Chronicles of Riddick. This deserves a bad review. It's so disjointed and confusing. What the fuck is an elemental or the underverse? Nobody seemed to look over the horrible script. There was a lengthy part of the movie (the jail scene) that didn't seem to fit with the story. It didn't add anything at all except action scenes. No story, no background, no nothing.

Killzone

Just finished this game a couple of hours ago. While critics thought this was an average game, I thought it was better than they said. They reported disastrous frame rates, but I have not encountered any drops because I was so engrossed with the game. It's your standard fps but I enjoyed taking on the Helgast. There were many, but I stood my ground with four selectable characters.

The player gets to choose between Templar, an all around player, Lugar, a female assassin, Hahka, a Helgast spy, and Rico, a foul mouth one man tank. In the beginning, I got to only choose Templar, but the other characters started to unlock as I progressed through the levels. After a while though, I started to lean towards Rico because he carried quite possibly the best weapon in the game, a rapid fire/accurate machine gun. Nothing can compare to this gun, it would wipe out 5-6 Helgast in seconds. Lugar and Hahka are totally worthless. The only cool thing about them is that they carry a knife which leads to some really satisfying melee attacks.

Yes, melee attacks. I enjoyed doing these because the animation that followed was a treat. You would get a weapon and smack the opponent to death. The knife animations were the best. Sometimes you see the character throw the knife at the enemy, rush up to them and pull it out. Other times you would see them rush up to the guy then cut his throat.

The weapons in this game are okay. There is a downside to a couple of weapons. One being is that some of them are useless. I rarely used the pistols found in this game. You need have two assault rifles, three kinds of grenade launchers, two machine guns, a shotgun, and a laser bomb device. The other downside to weapons are the reloading animations. There was be a couple of situations where I found myself reloading even though I didn't need it which lead me to my death. Reloading also takes too long for these weapons. They should have cut down the animations by a half second or so. Another thing is that one kill headshots are not to be found here. I would should a guy in the head and see him still standing. It takes several shots to the head to bring them down and even harder as you progress through the game. Towards the end, you start to think if these guys wear a total body armor suit, head to toe.

The graphics in this game are astounding. There are some nice bloom effects to be found here and there. The particle effects, explosions, etc were spectacular. Whenever a grenade shot off near me, a huge cloud of smoke would surround me and stay there for a couple of seconds before slowly disappearing. I enjoyed how the enemies died after killing them because body physics were involved. But body physics were only used a second after they died. After that, I could not shoot their bodies anymore as it would just go through them. It was still cool to see their bodies mangled, arm dangling on a rail, body slumped against a wall after a grendade went off or after I tore them up with a machine gun.

This game was pronounced as a "Halo killer" but it is way off. First, it tries to have a cinematic approach to the game. Sometimes it succeeds, but most of the time it doesn't. There was this one instance where the game could have truly shined, but it was just blah. The cutscenes were good, but it would have been better if the cinematics of the cutscenes were occur during gameplay.

I enjoyed this game because it was a fps. I rarely see fps on consoles. I can't wait to play Goldeneye: Rogue Agent or Call of Duty: Finest Hour.

Oh yeah, the online mode. Cool stuff. You will see me as gamer812. The online mode is still a bit buggy even after all the comments I made from the beta.

stupid halo 2 fanboys

http://www.solidblur.com/video/inlinewithhalo.wmv

Hilarious stuff

I'm not a fanboy or anything, but I really want to play Halo 2, but seriously these guys are idiots.

not so sweet

I found this other site. Sweet stuff. It's a much small version of suprnova.....but what I like is that the tracker works.

*I got banned from the site. Dammit. That was a great site. They banned me because I had a low ratio. But I just signed up yesterday. I hope they understand when I email them.

**Son of a bitch. They gave a statement on their website that they deleted accounts due to their low ratio. Shit. They should at least look at the sign up dates. I did not even last a day.

wow

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith looks pretty good and this coming from the teaser. At the same time though, I think they are showing way too much.

Every time I see Halo 2 it makes me blow up inside for buying FFXI and a used PS2. I could have bought a new xbox with the collector's edition of Halo 2. I do have hope though because I know that in the future I will make enough money for a new computer with the best motherboard, processor, and videocard(s). Halo 2 will no doubt be released for the PC. The question is will it be developed by Bungie or by Gearbox?

regret

I regret selling my xbox. I regret very very badly. That was such a stupid decision. Fuck I should have bought an xbox instead of ffxi. Halo 2 looks so sweet.......that multiplayer is to die for.

Three Extremes.......Dumplings

This is the only movie where I wanted to vomit. It is one of the most gruesome movies I have ever watched in my life. Fuck Battle Royale getting banned......this will be banned for sure. It's horrifying.

Face

Face was your standard horror flick, but it still delivered. The movie placed so many scary scenes in the beginning that they seem to forget that they still had one hour left. Those jump scenes.......shit one of them made my spine tingle for a couple of minutes. It's been a while since I've been scared like that. Gotta love the ending. It put me in awe.

g.a.p.

Yay. I'm part of the Gamers Advisory Panel. :)

wtf is this?

Feng Shui...an actual filipino horror cliche flim?

casshern

Awesome movie. I enjoyed the way the movie was shot, the cg, the story, everything. In my opinion, without the drama, this movie would just be your standard popcorn superhero flick. Thank God it wasn't.

The movie starts with Dr. Azuma presenting his theory on his "Neo-Cell" project. The military is interested in his idea that they intend to fund him. Dr. Azuma's son, Tetsuya, is going to war to spite him. A year passes and Tetsuya dies in the war. His body is sent back to be buried, but at the same time, a bolt of lightning strikes Dr. Azuma's lab. This catalyst brings the spare parts together to form the Neo-Sapiens. The Neo-Sapiens declare war against the humans, so that in the end, they will create a new world without violence. This pretty much sums up the plot of movie. There is an anti-war message going on in the movie which I am in favor of.

The action sequences are elaborately done. I've read an early review stating that the sword fight was poorly done. It wasn't. It was better than I expected. The soundtrack to this movie is awesome. I wish I could listen to the score to this movie.

Casshern screencaps

Overall: **** stars

gta: san andreas

This game got sweet scores: 9.6 from Gamespot, 9.9 from IGN. The game does deserve that score. There are dozens of things to do now. Dozens.

*Why even ask?

house of flying daggers screencaps

Here are a couple of screencaps that displays some of the differences between the two rips.

1,3,5,7 are from the retail R3 DVD, and 2,4,6,8 are from the DVD released earlier this year.

House of Flying Daggers screencaps