Weekend Movies & Games

I was very excited on Saturday because I was going to get Namco X Capcom. I went to Mega Multimedia to get it in the afternoon, but I was too eager to try it out, so instead of going straight to AMK, I went home to play it for a couple hours first.

When it was near evening, I left for AMK to meet Himura & friends. We were going to watch Madagascar. (Incidentally, I saw the trailer for this movie last year, which is what made me want to watch it.) I followed Himura, Orchi and Jeffrey to the Taiwanese restaurant on the 2nd floor of Jubilee for dinner. Due to our bad communication, not all the movie-goers were together and DS, Amerell and Chaosmag ended up eating at Sumo House. Dinner was good; I am a 'western food' person but I found myself enjoying dinner very much.

After that, we went to catch the movie. Madagascar was unfortunately rather short. The plot seemed to be rushed and the ending was abrupt. The penguins also didn't have much screen time (silly me; they aren't the main characters). A little bit of a let-down, considering that Dreamworks made Shark Tales, too, and that had a better story.

Oh, well. I went home that night and played more Namco X Capcom. The game is great, but a little repetitive; it feels a whole lot like the Super Robot Wars series. Sadly, the game feels a little easy so far. I was expecting SRW-style hair-pulling frustration, but Namco decided to give the heroes all the flashy combos and special moves, leaving the regular enemies with very weak and uninteresting attacks. Fortunately, the bosses feel just right and are fun to fight. wee.

As for Priston Tale, I am now on a short break from it. It looks like the loss of my weapon hurt me more than I thought. I feel demoralized thinking about it. Oh, well. Brainy says he might rejoin me in PT this month. It'd be something to look forward to.

Priston Tale: R.I.P. KS Highlander

Well, nothing interesting to post. Been playing Priston Tale every day from dawn to dusk. Currently at level 71. I joined a guild at last because I thought I could use the company when training.

My near-perfect Highlander broke when I tried to age it to 6. Only a few days ago, I was telling Amerell about how my friends used to quit when their super-expensive prized weapon broke while aging. Well, I didn't quit and my weapon wasn't uber expensive. I just spent my entire fortune finding a replacement and aging it back to up the safe level. And now I am flat broke. I ended up with less money than I began with when I P2P this month. *sigh*

The funny thing was that I joined the guild on the day my Highlander broke broke. I lost all mood to party that day and up to now, I am still not very close with them. haha.

School has Reopened for Everyone Else

School has reopened for everyone that I know! It seems that I will be alone on MSN myself again until at night when everybody gets back.

I have been sick for the past two weeks so I guess this will be a good chance for me to stay home and rest. In the meantime, I can play Priston Tale until my account expires in the first week of June.

I am having a tough time sticking to my 'one blog entry every two days' because I have nothing much to write about.

Comics: The New Avengers!

A comic collector friend recently told me that he was able to download comic scans from IRC. He managed to download the latest issue of Darkstalkers and offer to show me how. Usually, I prefer to buy my own comics but I decided to try it out anyway. It took a couple hours since I rarely used IRC but I soon got the hang of it and decided to try downloading something to try out. I decided to get The New Avengers, since it was a new title (only 5 issues so far) and there has been talk about it being a very good read. I thought I'd just download one issue to preview, but I got hooked and soon got everything.

It has been several years since I last purchased a Marvel comic title. The New Avengers was nothing at all like any of the stuff I have in my comic collection. Gone are the old-style cartoonish drawings, replaced by realistically darker-themed artwork. The kind of things the character says, the things they do, and all the violence (with blood, too!) - this is not the Marvel comics I knew.


I was immediately drawn in by this new style. I am sure some of us know who the Avengers are; they are one of Marvel's most iconic superhero team headed by Captain America. Well, something happened in one of their recent sagas, and a number of their key members were killed, much to the distaste of loyal fans. The Avengers got disbanded, ending their 20+ years (maybe more?) of comic book history. (Click here for the new story intro.)

And so, the New Avengers are born. I will not go into any details/spoilers, but the first two issue was crazy. It involves a prison break, so let's say I had a fun time playing 'spot the supervillain'.

I like the cast. Somehow, it reminds me of the first 3 Marvel VS TCG expansions since it has Spiderman, Luke Cage, and Jessica Drew, in addition to veterans Captain America and Iron Man.

The story is very cool, too. I can't wait to see how it progresses.

Level 70 in Priston Tale

I finally managed to level my Knight to 70 in Priston Tale yesterday. Oh joy of joys!

Being level 70 holds quite a lot of significance to me. Nearly 2 years ago, when I started playing PT on the newly-created Lunar server, the highest-level map (Sanctuary) had a level 70 requirement. Everyone on the server was indirectly at a race with one another to see who would reach level 70 first. Half a year later, a few guys got in. I was among the high-level Knights in this race and was quite pleased that I might be among the first to set foot into the map. However, I finally broke down due to the ridiculously long amounts of time spent on playing the game fifteen hours a day. I eventually gave up at level 68 since the game was about to go commercial.

During this month, I finally managed to reach level 70, albeit one year later than my original plan. The highest level area is now 90 (*shudder*), so being level 70 is no longer an earth-shaking achievement.

Sadly, all my old friends playing the game are gone. Himura and his brother are keeping me company this month playing the game, but I am unable to party them because our level difference is too great. Oh, well. At least I managed to level up, learn new skills, check out the new map and wear new equipment. I find it surprising that the monster designs in Sanctuary amazed me even though the game is so old.

My Sunday @ Suntec

Sunday was the day of another VS PCQ. Even though I do not play in it sometimes, it is a good excuse for me to go to Suntec, look around and have a good dinner with friends.

It seems that the tournament has now been permanently moved to a room that is much bigger than the old one. I find it quite comforting to see that the player base for the game is increasing. On that day, there were 20 in Sealed and 16 in Constructed. I found the number of Constructed players to be surprisingly low; I guess that there are quite a number of people like myself who dislike playing Modern Age. Oh, well. Golden Age tournaments will resume again starting from the next PCQ. I kinda feel that the Marvel Modern format is quite a waste. After today, Spider Friends and Sinister Syndicate will once again be retired to the hall of crap, whereas the four Marvel Knights teams will be able to survive another season when the Avengers set gets released. I shall keep this in mind next time when deciding what to keep or sell come DC Modern.

Anyway, Jeffrey and Kelvin Soh managed to get into the top 8 again. I kinda half-admire/half-envy their consistency in VS tournaments. I hope I can improve and be just like them.

I left the tournament room earlier, choosing not to stay for the lenghty finals. Me and Amerell were deciding where we should go for dinner. He didn't like any of the places I suggested and instead, brought me to Sizzlers. This was actually my first time at Sizzlers and it was possibly one of the best dinners I've ever had in a long time. I ordered chicken and went to the buffet table to get myself some pasta, potato, mushroom soup, and ice-cream. I was so full that I had to visit the toilet thrice after we left the restaurant (it's probably from drinking 4+ glasses of water to wash down all the food). I'll probably recommend Sizzlers to my friends the next time they want to suggest dining places.

Revisiting Priston Tale

It is that time of the year again when I check into Priston Tale again and see what has changed. I downloaded the new client, purchased the top-up card and was on my way.

The game largely remained the same. They added Tier 4 skills, new high-level maps (which doesn't concern me for now), new warps for convenient traveling, and a neat little indicator that shows your successful dodges/blocks. Once again, the economy has changed drastically; stuff that I bought during my last visit to this game are only worth 1/10 of their former value. And that was only six months ago.

Nevertheless, I shall continue to strive towards my goal of reaching lv 70, which I have put off for more than 18 months.

Breeks & Cash Converters

On Sunday, I went to Settlers Cafe because Reno told me that they were having Green Lantern draft that day. I reached there at 3 pm, only to realize that they had run out of DGL and instead, were having a Modern Age Constructed tournament. I just sat around, watched the matches and bought myself some black pepper fries to munch on.

After the constructed event was over, the organizer suggested having a Marvel Origins draft. Everyone wanted to play, but there was only enough packs left for a 4-man draft. We ended up drawing lots and I managed to get in. Anyway, I lost and everyone got crap cards (except for Reno), so it didn't matter.

Those crazy VS players were still itching to draft, so they suggested going to Chris' shop. There were 10 of us, so we all got into 2 separate cars and hitched a ride to AMK. (I didn't feel like drafting, but wanted to get a free ride to AMK anyway. hehe.)

When we arrived, everyone went for dinner, except for me since I had something to eat earlier. I met Bahamut at Chris' shop, and when Kyo came, we went for dinner at Breeks. I haven't been there for so long that I have forgotten what I liked. Then I saw the garlic mash and it was heaven all over again. The menu seemed so foreign to me. I chose to buy the chicken leg since Bahamut said it was okay.

On Monday, I went to AMK. I decided to drop by Cash Converters with a whole bunch of my N64/SNES cartridges (around 20 of them). After selling 26 PS1 titles the other time, I was excited at the prospect of getting more money for my junk. I took a queue number (16) and saw that they were currently serving number 8. I went to hang out at Chris' shop for a while, dropping in back at the Buy Room to see if it was my turn. Within 15 minutes, I saw that the queue had jumped to 14! I quickly ran in with all my stuff and waited. To my horror, the number dropped back to 11 after that. I was too lazy to go back to Chris shop, so I just decided to continue waiting.

Max & Darius dropped by soon after to accompany me in the Buy Room. We chatted for nearly half an hour and it was finally my turn. I brought my stuff to the table and the guy couldn't tell what I had. I explained to him that I was selling Nintendo 64 cartridges and even showed him a nice list I typed out to make keying in the titles easier for him. He suddenly said, "We don't take in Nintendo and Sega cartridges. Only GameBoy." I felt very pissed when I heard this and wanted to argue that my N64 carts weren't the 16-bit SNES variety, but felt lazy. All the cartridges probably seemed to the same to him anyway. I felt like yelling at Cash Converters for not printing what kind of cartridges they were buying on their poster explicitly. To show my anger, I picked up my plastic bag full of carts and tossed them at the ground in the centre of the room for everyone to see. I wanted to just strut out of the Buy Room empty-handed, but heck, I just picked everything up and left.

At this moment, I swore revenge. The next time I come to sell more of my PS1 games, I won't bother to type out a nice list for them. Let them sort out the huge pile of mess themselves. And I won't even help them when they scratch their heads over some of the Japanese names of the titles.

Anyway, after that, I had a quick dinner with Max & friends at KFC. Then it was back to Chris shop for more idling before I went home.

Can't Play Guild Wars

I borrowed Bahamut's Guild Wars to try and install on my computer. The installation was surprisingly very smooth and hassle-free; the progress bar didn't even hiccup once. I even ignored the "graphics card unsupported" message and got to the title screen. Everything seemed fine; even the character creation. But alas, when the game began, everything was so choppy that it was unplayable. I spent around 20 minutes fiddling with every configuration possible, but it was still the same. My character moved at less than 5 frames per second.

For anyone who is interested in the game, so long as your PC meets the requirements, the seamless installation is a good enough reason to get it already. I can appreciate a well thought-out installation system. After all, it's the only thing about this game that I can appreciate for now. hehe.

Lousy Video Card

I recently got interested in an online game called Guild Wars. I have always wanted to participate in a commercial MMORPG because I felt that it would be a vastly different experience from all those free-to-download games. Having gotten my Acer laptop for less than a year (I bought it to do my NUS final year project), I thought I was sufficiently equipped. Unfortunately for me, I thought wrong and realized that I could not determine the specs of a computer based on the time at which it was bought.

Even though my computer has all the processor speed and RAM needed to run Guild Wars (or other high-end PC titles, for that matter), the fatal flaw lies with the fact that my miserable laptop does not have a proper video card. It was only recently that I realized that it had nothing more than an integrated Intel graphics card, meaning that it is some thing that was just tacked together with the motherboard. And we all know what 'free stuff' like this usually means.

I visited several forums and things didn't look good for me. Poor people with integrated video cards like mine are being scoffed at by others for being cheapskates. It's not as if I wanted it this way. I learnt that it is not at all easy to upgrade a laptop. Heck, some laptop video cards cannot be upgraded at all; it depends on whether if the company manufactured custom upgrade parts for that model.

Oh, well. I guess I can only blame myself. My original intention in getting this laptop was for the sole purpose of working on my project. I didn't have the foresight to check on whether the graphics card was a good one for gaming. I just wish that my laptop can last me through at least one more era of PC-gaming before my video card becomes totally obsolete and I am forced to splurge on another computer. Hopefully, that'd be another 3-4 years.

Back From My Interview

I went to Clifford Centre at Raffles Place today for my 'appointment' with Artivision. I realized that the company was on the 26th storey. I was wondering how fast/slow the lift was. It turned out that it only goes to the 20th storey & above, so it went pretty fast (it reached the 20th storey in 3 seconds!).

I found the company and went in. I was greeted by Mr. Chew himself, who was a fairly old person. He led me into a room and told me that the head programmer himself, Bernard would come speak to me.

Bernard was a very nice person. It turned out that he also graduated from NUS, only 6 months before me and he was 1 year older (an indication that he was an Honours student). At first, he looked through my 'resume' (a miserable profile about myself that I typed out) followed by the list of my modules taken.

He proceeded to talk about their job scope. They were hiring C+ programmers to do GUI for their programs, but he found nothing related on my modules list (strike one for me). He added that he wanted thinking programmers who could churn out a program that is highly optimal, cost-effective and uses as little system resources as possible (strike two for me). He asked me if I was one who constantly upgraded myself by reading up during all this time I did not work, to which I sheepishly replied 'no' (strike three, I'm out!).

Despite that, Bernard was a very helpful person. He started talking to me about other careers I could pursue, such as IT support or a technical writer (which is a good enough hint already that I am not wanted). I found the talk with him to be very insightful and enlightening. I thought that usually when you bombed from an interview, they would immediately show you the door. Instead, this guy was telling me of other alternatives that I could look into.

Anyway, when everything was said and done, I shook his hand, thanked him for his time and left.

My First 'Job Interview'... Sorta

Wednesday is the day for my 'job interview'. I am not even sure if I can call it that. For the past few days, I have been wondering how I got myself into this mess and wishing that I got out of it earlier.

The story began last week on Friday when my father told me to call my Uncle cos' he says he might have a job recommendation for me. Being the obedient person I was, I just called my Uncle without questions. He redirected me to a Mr. Chew. I still had no idea what was going on. Finally, I realized that Mr. Chew was hiring programmers.

At the mention of that dastardly 'p' word, I tried to worm my way out of it. I frankly told him that I was a fresh graduate with zero knowledge of the field; therefore, I lacked any sort of experience to partake in his most generous offer. I even added that I only knew Java, whereas he specifically said he wanted C+ programmers.

I thought that after that, I could get on with my life and go surf the net or something. To my surprise, Mr. Chew was not the least bit turned off and scheduled me for a 'appointment' on Wednesday (which is like today). He told me to bring my 'results' and left me with their company address before hanging up.

Wow, that was pretty insistent. I logged on the net and realized that the company, Artivision, was a rather large corporation that specialized in security programs. Now why would they need a guy like me? I already gave him sufficient reasons NOT to pick me and he still wanted to meet me. Are they expecting me to program some sort of security software for the CCTVs?

Oh, well. It's now pretty late to complain. I still have no idea what to bring for this 'appointment' (is it even a job interview?). I don't even have a proper resume ready and NUS has not issued me my results transcript yet. If it's a formal interview, I am gonna be so screwed appearing with just a slip of paper with some stuff I typed out within 30 minutes the night before. I just hope I don't make a fool out of myself.

And I still don't know how or why I am in this mess.

Green Lantern Sneak Preview

Sunday was the day of the VS TCG Green Lantern Sneak Preview. I was rather excited by it since this was actually the first time that Upperdeck was organizing a pre-release event in Singapore.

I was planning to reach there at around 10 am to join at least two flights to get goodies, but I only slept at 8 am at day, woke up at 10 am, then reached Suntec City at 11 am. Orchi, JokerZ, Himura and the CCK bunch were all already in Flight number 3. I decided to walk around and clarify with the staff what the event was all about. It turned out that the boss from Settlers Cafe, Colin, was manning the table. He explained to me that each Flight consists of 16 participants playing a 4-round Swiss. Each participant would receive a Guy Gardner EA and 2 packs, but if they had 3 or 4 wins at the end of the Flight, they would get 2 and 4 more boosters respectively plus a Hal Jordan EA. In addition, participants may trade half of their booster prizes for either a GL Playmant, deck case or a shirt.

I ended up signing up for Flight 4 which begins at 12:30 pm. In the meantime, I walked around and scouted the scene. I saw that Orchi's deck had 2 Oa locations in it; so lucky. Aaron was playing against a little kid who didn't know the rules and kept peeking at his next draw. I felt like calling the Judge to award the kid an immediate game loss, but Aaron just carried on. Reno was at his table, shouting excitedly that "Hal Jordan is waiting for me!" since he already had 2 wins and needed just 1 more to get the EA. (Note: Incidentally, he lost and didn't get Hal.)

I also saw a VS player from AMK but I didn't know his name. I asked him why didn't he join and he said he paid for his little brother to join so that he could receive the "Under 16 Mystery Prize" which turned out to be 2 Marvel Knight and 2 Man of Steel boosters in addition to the 2 Green Lantern you get from participating. In fact, I saw a lot of kids from CCK joining to get the Mystery Prize. I also saw a 'botak' kid. He seemed to know me and it took me for a while to figure out who he is. I guess he was "Kira" from my forum. I guess he was there to learn the game.

When it was 12:30 pm, my Flight started. I cracked open my 5 packs and didn't get anything interesting. I passed them away and in return, I didn't get any interesting rares again. I formed my deck which contained Green Lantern, Anti-Matter, and Manhunter characters. I also didn't feel like thinking and loaded it with plenty of offensive pumps (didn't realize they had so many ways to give +2 ATK in this expansion).

Then the matches began. I managed to win my first match. On my 2nd match, I was too lazy to calculate the damage on my opponent's life and neglected to use all my offensive pumps to end the game, giving him an additional turn to kill me. On my 3rd match, I mis-read one of my opponent's Ongoing Plot Twist, thinking that it worked on his 'attackers' only. I attacked him and he activated it on his defender, saying, "That's gonna cost you." I told him that I mis-read the effect and he replied, "Nah, even if you didn't misread it, I would've blahblahblah, then I could blahblahblah and win." Gah, I didn't even listen to what he was saying. I just left the table, chose to drop out and collected my prizes. I traded my boosters for a Playmat and joined Flight number 6.

I had some extra time, so I walked around. I saw that there was long queue in front of a table with a guy and lady. They were buying crap rares at 50 cents to 1 dollar each. A lot of people were emptying out their collections, including Reno and his friends. I didn't have time to queue since I had a Flight coming up. My upcoming Flight was interesting as it included Jeffrey and several of the players from Midpoint Orchard. At around 3 pm, one of the judges said that he would be giving out a free GL booster to everyone who was wearing a VS shirt that day. Everyone rushed to get theirs. The judge also added, "Next time, wear your VS shirt to all VS events, including PCQs, PCs and so on. You might have a surprise." I wonder if he was hinting that he might pull off a similar thing at the May PCQ.

Eventually, my Flight began. I drafted an okay deck this time, again filling it with all sorts of pumps (I was too lazy to read anything long). My first match opponent complained that he would probably lose since he got very lousy cards. I managed to win with Sinestro's victory condition and walked around to have a look.

I realized that Amerell had also queued up to sell his crap rares to the aforementioned traders. I immediately passed him a stack of my crap rares, hoping that he could manage to sell them off and I'd be a very happy man.

Incidentally, I learnt that the money rare of the set might be "Breaking Ground", the new 'Have-A-Blast'.

They were also accepting registrations for the final Flight. I already have the Playmat and was going to get the Deck Case for my current Flight. Since I needed the shirt to complete my collection, I paid Orchi to join the last Flight for me.

My 2nd match began. It was En Lai from Midpoint. We both hit our curves, but I felt that I drew all my offensive pumps at the right time. By turn 7, I had 5 characters versus his 2 characters on the field. My Sinestro attacked his Two-Face, playing a Battle of Wills to avoid a stun-back. He was very surprised. At the end of the turn, Sinestro's victory condition kicked in again to help me win the game.

I was very excited when my 3rd match came. I only needed 1 more win to get Hal Jordan. I played a very close match with my opponent that lasted all the way to turn 9. He played a boosted Ch'pp, giving an insane defensive pump to his whole field. I couldn't attack his characters without team-attacking. The judges had to call for time and he won me by life gaining-effects. We both thanked each other for such a close and excited game.

My last match was against Jeffrey. I couldn't remember much except that we rushed each other with lots of pumps. By turn 7, we both had very low life, but it was my initiative, so I had the upper hand. I was very delighted that I had managed to win the Hal Jordan EA but also a little disappointed to realize that they ran out of deck cases. I settled for a Green Lantern shirt.

I proceeded to watch the last Flight at 5 pm since Orchi, Amerell, Reno and the others were in it. Reno managed to win his Hal Jordan at last. Orchi also managed to win the Hal Jordan, so I let him keep it since all I wanted were the boosters and the goodies. Even though they had no more deck cases, they allowed Orchi to trade the packs for a different shirt, so I got a replacement Superman shirt for the one that my maid threw away.

Amerell helped me to sell $75 worth of crap rares, so we all had dinner at Pastamania with Reno & friends. It was very late already after we were done so we all decided to go home. It was a very fun and worthwhile day.