Divinity 2 Short Review - 12th Oct

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis by Larian Studios is in fact not officially out yet but the German version is released and I had the oppurtunity to play the German version. With a little tweak (which I would not reveal how) converts the dialouge to English. This would enable me to understand the dialouge by reading the actual text as the spoken language is still in German. Anyhow, I've only gotten the game quite a while only ago and there wasn't much progress at this stage but several of the ideas and mechanics are already there which I think is sufficient for a small review without the scores.

So, in the game, there's only one playable character that you can customize. Although the aesthetic customization is not as extensive as Fallout 3, as most of the customization available are presets. I'm still not sure what are the effects if the gender but it is available to choose. You start with yourself being transported to somewhere without being told of your backstory and why. All you need to know is that you are undergoing a series of training to help you become a Dragon Slayer, an elite kind of Hero. At this stage, you'll be able to select your first specialization although at later stages you may even combine specializations such as having mage spells with warrior skills. There are 4 specialzaions to choose from: Warrior, Ranger, Mage, Priest and the standard Slayer skills.

In terms of graphics, I'm rather annoyed. Having a 8600gt w/1Gb VRAM (See My Computer Specs HERE doesn't even let me enjoy the graphics properly. I've disabled most items or set it to lowest, besides the resolution (anything less than the 1024 setting renders the text incomprehensible on screen) on the Graphics Menu but yet it still feels sluggish and laggy. Although with this setting, the graphics still look somewhat nice but not as expected with everything blocky or textury. There's no slider bar or anything for you to set it to lowest details or such which is not good for older systems.But, as I do not know whether is the posting of screenshots of unreleased game illegal, it shall remain on my computer for now.

In terms of gameplay, I'm not sure is it me or the game itself, but I feel lost in every quest available as I'm not sure where everyone or everything is. It feels like the world is just too large and I'm wondering why I can't afford some of the most basic weapons in the game at this moment. The combat is just umimaginative and like Diablo, it a mouse-clicking fest. The thing is with the combat is that the you have to face your enemy to actually hit it, but with the ease of camera turning, it becomes rather apparent that its hard to be a warrior, especially when you're being mobbed and surrounded by several critters. Overall, the game is quite ok, but the low framerate really puts me off, which I hope can be fixed soon. The combat also should be fixed soon to keep the player engrossed.

Crysis Review - 8th Oct

After the run-down with Far Cry 2 on the 27th Sept, which can be found HERE, I continued on to try and finish Crysis, which I did yesterday. And so, here's a small review of the game in my own experience and opinion. It took me about 10 hours plus or take to finish this and it's indeed short.

Well, the game starts with a nice note, a group of elite US Marines trying to save an archeologist who were captured by the North Korean Army. The time line is in the near future. Although its in the near future, not many things actually reminds us of this. You are a part of the elite US Marines and you play as "Nomad" although your real name / how you look like is unknown, and you wear a high-tech nanosuit with various powers such as superhuman strength, speed, cloaking and can also turn your suit into a tough regenerative armor. In the story then you will encounter alien technology which is rather unknown and not reveal a lot in detail even at the end of the game. What's known about them is that they're biological, absorbs energy and they're over thousands of years old.

Graphically, it was pretty impressive. Although my settings is where all were set to medium (on a 8600gt), it still manages to look great with the shadows and glare still breathtaking. I did, a couple of times, just stand and look at the surroundings without doing anything else. The forests themselves look pretty much realistic although you can still tell its computer graphics. Instead, the alien world, doesn't look too convincing to me and it's just bland. The cut-scenes themselves are quite good but I'm annoyed as to why Dr.Rosenthal just doesn't look like realistic, but more like a simply made model. She's one of the main NPC's of the game and essential to the story, why not make her look nicer? Other than that, I do not have much other qualms about the graphics, in short, its really great. Sometimes, people would compare this to Far Cry 2, but I would say that in comparison to Crysis, Far Cry 2 is not much of a looker as there isn't really much to see in Far Cry 2.

In terms of gameplay, it was pretty fun at the start but a couple of things put me off.  One would be the lack of weapons and second would be the lack of the ability to combo the suit powers. I mean, so as long as I'm within the confines of power consumption, combining powers should be fine? Like say, strength and cloaking. In this game, its only either powers activated at certain times. The lack of guns is apparent after a while, but maybe due to its short gameplay, it makes it not too noticeable. Another would be the satisfaction of shooting someone down is just not there. If compared to Far Cry 2, the satisfaction is there, which I'm not sure is caused by which reasons, but I was hoping something similar. Without the satisfaction, it sure would seem bland. Overall, the gameplay it just as expected from an FPS (with exception of COD), with tonnes of shooting action. Combine the nanosuit powers and the shooting action of the game, its not too much of a new experience but its sort of an extension of the current FPS out there at the moment.


Overall, the scores for Crysis are:-
Gameplay:- 7/10
Graphics:- 9/10
Story:- 5/10
Overall:- 8/10

I was thinking to buy Crysis Warhead, but some review says that Crysis and Crysis Warhead is almost similar and do not vary much in terms of gameplay, which puts me off buying Crysis Warhead. Anyone got any first-hand experience on this?

Singapore's Tease and Wash - 7th Oct

OMG! That's the first word said after reading this blog post by Wingz: HERE. I mean, the story is that a company in Singapore organized a car-wash session where the washers are partially in their 'birthday suits'. The thing is that, these washers were ladies / females.

Earlier on, many people were speculating that the event will be hoax with various theories and put-offs. In the end, the event was indeed a reality and I'm sure many of the 'wolfie' guys were down in Singapore, oogling at the extra 'skin' displayed. I wonder if anyone of the readers out there were actually at the event? ( Well, it's not that I'm interested to know of the details, but just kind of curious as to the experience provided ). Well, here's my take on this event:- I mean, these ladies are only showing their chests, I wonder who doesn't have chests? With Singapore resorting to this, it just goes to show that the spirit of kiasuness is still going very much strong, not wanting to lose to anyone else in ASEAN.

I sure am thinking that this one big cheap and dirty tactic employed by Singapore to attract more people to the country. Well, I'm just a Malaysian citizen, what more can I say when Geylang, the 'red light' district is a legal area in the Singapore government. But, I'm not putting up the pictures in my blog, I'm not too sure what the other ladies would think, whether offensive or not, so playing on the safe side, I'll only be posting up links to some of the pictures here for those who desperately want to get a glimpse of the event:-

WARNING: The pictures contains some form of displays of 'extra akin'.
Viewer discretion is advised.
 

- WARNING - WARNING - Picture1 Picture2 Picture3 Picture4 Picture5 Picture6 - WARNING - WARNING -

And Singapore will be organizing yet another session of the car-wash.
Well, looks like some fellas will be planning to go to Singapore pretty soon.
Heck, I wonder am I writing up this post? It's more like free publicity for Singapore.

Mid-Autumn Fest Celebration - 3rd Oct

Today is the actual day of the lantern / mooncake festival and I'm back at father's kampung (hometown village). There was a simple celebration where we had the usual foods for every festivals we had here:- fried noodles, fried vermicelli, pork cooked with black fungus, cheese cake and barbecued chicken wings. Undoubtedly the water caltropm, sweet mini yam and mooncakes were unavoidable. It was quite an  enjoyable affair with the number of people among friends of relatives came by.

This year, we had total strangers among the guests. Two girls from Holland were walking along the street where the old house is located and one of my relative invited them in to eat with us. (Sorry, I don't know their names) But anyways, we introduced them to what was happening and invited them also to eat what we were having. From their reaction, I'm sure they hadn't had a lot of Chinese food in their lives. They were going to Taman Negara (National Park) on the next day and were walking around taking pictures of the place they were at. My father's hometown is actually located near one of the main jetties to go to the Park, which I assume that the foreigners would be boarding the boat to Taman Negara the next day.

After the scrumptious feast, some continued to stay outside, while some were having a karaoke session and some were playing Mahjong. As I write thispot, I could still hear the laugther, chatter, the clacking of Mahjong tiles and also people singing karaoke.  The picture that I have here showing the karaoke session being held in the living room, one of my nieces (Name witheld to her request) is going bananas over the karaoke session. This reminds me to think, how are other people doing at the moment in this celebration of the mooncake / mid-autumn festival?

Mooncake Festival - 2sn Sept

Its already Mid-Autumn Festival  / Mooncake Festival soon! In fact, it's tomorrow. During this time of the year, I'm sure many people would be thinking of moon cakes, lanterns and the moon itself and anything associated with the festival. There are also a couple of things which are not eaten during other times of the year or in any other Chinese festivals, such as the sweet sticky Yam and also the all-time wierd food:- The Water Caltrop.

Water Caltrop? what's that? Is it a water chestnut?
Yes and No. Water Chestnuts and water caltrop actually share the same family.
The Chinese for Water Caltrop is 菱角 or "Bull's Horn" for Mooncake Festival.
Well, see for yourself this root based food:-

They sure look menancing, like a bull head used for some sort of rituals and no, no one purposely shaped the 'fruit' to be like that just for the sake of the festival. This is its original shape and looks. It tastes a little like charcoal cooked water-chestnuts and skin is thick and hard. Well, as it is a bit hard to eat, the tradition is begining to lose its appeal among the younger generation. The other item rarely eaten other items would be the mini-yams. Due to their small size which is probably due to the maturity of the tuber, its more starchy than the normal versions. I don't really like it as it is too sticky for my taste.

 

Hopefully someday, the younger generation would look back to this post and revive this again when the tradition was long forgotten. I wonder how many of the younger generation actually remember any of these foods?

Making Money with Online Surveys - 1st Oct

I'm sure many of the netizens out there have heard of making money online through surveys. It is said that you can make money by just answering some questions posed to you on either a product, or a service, or  anything else where the customer's opinion matters. The concept is fairly simple, a retail / services company contacts the survey company which you've joined and asks them to do a survey where the retail company will pay the survey company for doing so, and in turn, the survey company will pay their users a small amount for participating in the survey. No doubt, the survey company acts as the middleman and takes most of the profit. Sounds like a good deal? It sure does to me.

I don't know what about in the United States or any other countries, but making money out of taking surveys here in Malaysia is utter nonsensical, in my experience. Many people here, I've seen, promoting on e-books which claims to teach you about this and help you to find places where you can get money taking surveys. The thing that we've never thought about is that these guys probably scooped up the information somewhere and with a little word-processing magic, produced another so called 'guide'. Heck, it may happen that they were conned to part their money for a similar book and therefore now looking to scam other people with their supposedly 'valuable' information. I'm guessing that they haven't actually tried making money from taking surveys and are trying to market their e-books of their alleged experience.

In my case, I've been into at least 4-5 survey sites that claims to help you make lots of extra cash to spend. So far, all this has just been dreams of heavan. It never happened. Why? you ask. Well, I'm not sure about other people, but it seems that I'm constantly not elligible for the surveys that they get and sent to me to participate in. After answering several questions, the survey itself found that I'm not elligible for the survey. I wouldn't midn missing out on some surveys if the surveys are aplenty but the thing is the surveys that they ask me to participate in is so scarce to the point that I get a survey invitation like only once every 2 months? I mean, if you're looking to make money out of surveys, yes you can, but don't depend on it too much, it won't put food on the table. The things is that you'll have to wait until you have earned a certain amount before you can cash out and with surveys once every 2 months and each survey is approximately $1-$2, I think you probably can buy that item you've wanted for so long, only after it has stopped production.

Well, I can't say the same for people from other countries, but in this country, you might as well set-up a stall by the roadside selling tidbits, it much easier than making money with surveys. I wonder if anyone has a good experience with making online money by just taking surveys?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Perks - 30th Sept

MODERN WARFARE 2 OUT NOW! HERE

Well, here's a new video for Call of Duty 6 which reveals the perks available. The video also shows some of the new functions compared to Modern Warfare (COD4) which I think would lead to a more varied gameplay. This I think would be the first game that I plan to buy original!





And for Cod:Modern Warfare 2 (COD6) fans out there, here are a couple of gameplay videos to whet your appetite before the arrival of the game! Enjoy and leave some comments! The videos in my opinion is really great, showing the actual gameplay and thank God I'm not being rick-rolled here!

Favela Map - CTF



Afghan Map -TDM


Highrise - TDM (SNIPER)

 

FLAC vs Mp3 quality - 29th Sept

Recently, I've got audio files of the System of A Down: Mesmerize album in FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format which suppposedly is of higher quality than the common Mp3 format. I've also got the same album in the Mp3 format. In which, I compare a couple of songs alternatively, meaning that, after listening to the mp3 version, I would then listen to the FLAC version to compare the quality of both versions. In terms of bitrate, the FLAC version has undoubtedly higher value, and the file size is approximately double of the mp3 version. After several listening sessions, my verdict:- I couldn't hear even slightest difference?

Conditions:-
Platform = Desktop Win XP, Winamp 5.50
Headphones = Philips (Don't remember the model)
Songs:- Questions, Lost in Hollywood,
Soldier Side (Intro), Radio / Video

And I thought, maybe there are a couple of factors leading to this:-
1> I don't have trained hearing or that my hearing isn't that sensitive.
2> The audio port isn't plugged in directly into the back of the computer but to the mini-compo which is connected to the desktop audio out.
3> Winamp is not a good player for audio playing?
4> The platform used is not suitable to test audio files.
5> The headphone isn't that high quality.

I wonder if any of these factors have caused me to have not detect much difference? With the smaller file size and if my ears cant detect the difference, I would say that I might as well use the mp3 format for the music. Furthermore, mp3 is more universally accepted while not all players / phones support the FLAC format. Perhaps someone else has other opinions on this on how to improve my music listening experience?