Halo Legends Anime

Halo is getting an anime! I was like really happyface when the news was first announced. Now there is a trailer for it as well.



The series will consist of 7 shorts produced by several Japanese studios: The BONES, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio 4°C, and Toei Animation.

Halo has such a rich universe and backstory with tons of interesting characters. That's a lot of source material right there to base an anime on. Despite the fact that they are standalone shorts (and possibly not heavy on plot), I am still excited at how the anime will turn out.

The action sequences in the trailer reminded me of Gundam. Even more strangely, the characters in this screenshot look like they were taken out of an episode of Gundam SEED (ZAFT uniform lol).


Excuse me, you've got your Gundam in my Halo.

Cracking Open my Box of M10

For the first time ever in a TCG, I actually felt like I got my money's worth from opening a booster box.

Rares from my box of M10 + 1 booster from White Starter deck
Total: 38 rares (36 rares + 1 foil rare and 1 extra)


Ball Lightning x3 (OMGWTFBBQ)
Drowned Catacombs x2 (B/U land)
Rootbound Crag (R/G land)
Glacial Fortress (B/W land)
Elvish Archdruid
Baneslayer Angel
Birds of Paradise
Pithing Needle
Great Sable Stag
Twincast
Darksteel Colossus
Royal Assassin
Gargoyle Castle
Howling Mine
Ant Queen (foil)
Hypnotic Specter
Protean Hydra
Mind Shatter
Guardian Seraph
Traumatize
Clone
Coat of Arms
Earthquake
Might of Oaks
Chandra Nalaar
Djinn of Wishes
Open the Vaults
Warp World
Lurking Predators
Mind Spring x2
Underworld Dreams
Nightmare
Shivan Dragon
Mirror of Fate

---------------------------------------------------------
A good mix of good rares and crap rares. haha.

BlazBlue - Calamity Trigger -

Music: -Ao- iconoclast by KOTOKO
(Though I somehow prefer the simpler Arcade opening. haha)

BlazBlue is awesome. I never expected it to be this good. Currently maining Ragna and he plays like Sol Badguy.

Th 2D high-definition graphics are gorgeous. Daisuke Ishiwatari's rock/metal music still kicks ass. The game has a small cast of 12 characters but each is extremely diverse and play very differently. The gameplay system/mechanics is highly reminicent of GG-XX but it's just so much better.

What makes BlazBlue stand out is its great netcode and robust online multiplayer features. Arc System Works really went all out here and it really shows. There is stat-tracking, leaderboards, 6-player lobbies (winner stays, loser rotates) and even the ability to save/download replays.

Despite all that, there is one thing that annoys me: balance. You'd think that, with a small cast, Arc Systems would have realized during testing that v-13 (Nu) is overpowered and playing against her is an exercise in frustration. I think they based Nu-13 on Amuro Ray's Nu-Gundam (heck, her alternate DLC color is proof of this) . "Ike, Fin Funnel!" *pewpewpew*

I am keeping my fingers for a balance patch. Or BlazBlue XX #Reload Slash Accent Core. Then maybe we'll get a Robo-Jin as well (lol).

Somehow, I am beginning to miss this as well.

It's classic!

Magic the Gathering: M10 Pre-Release

I attended the M:TG Core Set 2010 (aka M10) pre-release at Suntec yesterday. I managed to contact Kelvin Soh who met me at the event itself. Saw a lot of familiar faces such as the old AMK MTG guys (most notably Reno!) and even some old VS System players.

I realized that this is actually the first sanctioned M:TG event I have ever attended! haha.

After opening my six packs, I went with a Black-Red deck because I got some pretty good commons/uncommons and these two:


For my four matches, I went like:
1-2 L , 1-2 L , 2-0 W , 1-2 L
At least I played decently and did not get 2-0'ed. Such close matches. Meh.

I was most delighted to pull an Honor of the Pure from the one pack I won.

White Weenie for the win.

Sunday was supposed to be rest day but I somehow got dragged by Raccon to play some more M10 sealed in Pasir Ris. Meh!

Some People Change...

A friend asked me out for dinner today. It has been many months since we last spoke so I was rather delighted. He told me that he had left his job. It kinda made me think that he chose to have dinner near Geylang because... well, maybe he wanted some drinks and some *ahem* interaction with the opposite sex.

So I met him after work and we settled down at a nearby coffee shop.

And then he tried to pull some MLM shit on me.

Turns out that his office was in the vicinity.

I refused as politely as I could but he tried to psycho me for an hour. He pulled the "don't you trust me? I'm your friend!" schtick but I was completely immune. Such things don't work on me.

He was rather persistant despite me dropping a lot of hints that he was crossing well over my comfort zone. Last thing I remembered doing was getting up, cursing out loud, banging my fist on the table and leaving.

The night was ruined. What was supposed to be a night of fun and catching-up turned into nothing but business and sales pitches. I was very, very disappointed.

Weather Forecast: Boring Weeks Ahead

I have been feeling very tired of working life lately. Even the weekends don't seem long enough to be fun anymore.

Oh, well. I got my Hong Kong trip at the end of the month to look forward to. I am excited and a little nervous at the same time. Excited at the fact that it will be a fun & refreshing escape from my routine work life. Nervous at the fact that I have not taken a plane in a long, long time and there is also the global H1N1 scare.

Whatever the case, I just hope the end of the month comes soon so I can spend a couple days away from work.

I started getting back into Magic: The Gathering again. I spent the past two weekends drafting and hunting for cards. I can't believe I am spending $10++ on pieces of cardboard again. I just feel somewhat disappointed that I can only play cards on weekends. Gone are the days when I have free time to play cards on late weekday nights and cab home.

When I am not thinking about card games, I'm playing BlazBlue on the Xbox 360. The game is awesome and far exceeded my expectations. And I didn't even put any tokens into it in the arcades. It's truly a well-designed and polished fighting game. I'll probably blog more about it when I've spent more time with it.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Watched Transformers 2 on Saturday night with Darrell and Chaosmag at Toa Payoh. There seems to be a lot of mixed opinions about the movie online. Overall, I thought it was pretty okay and enjoyable. The action scenes were a little confusing for me and the epic battle dragged on for waaaay too long.

The show was a more light-hearted than I expected with lots of funny moments. The crude humor (hogs humping, Wheelie humping, Devastator...) was a little overdone, though. And yes, Megan Fox is hot.

Soon after I came back, I started browsing forums and came across this totally hilarious video review about the movie from the Nostalgic Critic. It is simply too crazy to describe. The guy is a genius. Great stuff!

Nostalgic Critic's Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Review
*Warning: Full Plot Spoilers*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNge0wMA6xU

Check out his other videos as well at:
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/

Duels of the Planeswalkers

Last week was rather exciting for me with the new Magic the Gathering game, Duels of the Planeswalkers being released on Xbox Live.

Being an Arcade title, the whole game is actually very basic. There are only 8 pre-con decks in the game with very limited 'customisation' (if you can even call it that). You can only add cards but not remove, meaning your deck will go over the optimal 60 cards. It feels kinda like playing a draft/sealed with all the overcosted, vanilla creatures and weak spells. It seems to be more geared towards newcomers which can also a good thing.

Despite all its shortcomings, it somehow manages to get quite a number of people hooked. I found myself totally addicted to the game, playing online ranked matches to the wee hours of the morning.

There are people saying that the entire game is one big advertisement to promote the actual card game. If so, it's really working cos' I found myself interested in picking up M:TG again.

I was trying to dig through my collection for my old cards in vain. It was only until I decided to run a search on my own blog when I realized that I sold all my damn cards years ago!!! AAAAH!!!

I still have my (incomplete) Ghost Council deck from Ravnica block, though. I think I'll wait for the new Core Set 2010 (aka M10) before I see if I want to play the game back.

Raccon was nice enough to sell me one of the new Alara block cards to add to my good old cat cards collection. Meow.

New Furniture

Finally got time to put up photos of my new shelf and TV bench. Both are from Ikea.


No more putting my soundbar and Xbox on the floor. And my action figures finally have their own space. haha.

Here are photos of the old ones so that I'll remember them.

I just realized I went from brown to white.

I am still in the midst of re-arranging my stuff so my room is actually still quite messy with things all over the floor. The new table will be ready tomorrow.

Mobilization: Saturday Burnt!

I got mobilized on Saturday! I really did not see this coming since the last time they actually mobilized us was in October 2009.

I was even playing Prototype on my Xbox 360 (which I bought from the PC Show) all the way through Friday night and only slept at 5 am. When I received the automated notification on my handphone at around 2+ pm, I was cursing. I quickly got everything ready and the nice Uncle (my guardian) gave me a lift to Tanjong Gul camp. I was quite hungry as I totally missed breakfast and lunch.

I arrived at the camp at around 3:30 pm. It was then my phone rang and the Detachment I/C told me I was activated to which I replied rather irritatedly, "Yes, I am there already."

I was quite surprised when they gave me the M+1 tag. I felt somewhat happy at the notion that I may be released early. So I sat down and waited. And waited. The new CO of our company was walking around and chatting with everyone. He asked me what I did for a living. He seemed like a nice guy.

But then... hours passed. The M+2 and M+3 people were all coming in but I was still not allowed to go. Looks like they are not releasing us in batches like the last time. I happened to meet a familiar face from the my first ICT years ago and we chatted a bit. It turned out that he was a job recruiter with Adecco; maybe I can look him up in future. Our next ICT together is coming up in November.

At around 5:30 pm, the M+1 batch were finally allowed to go. There goes my Saturday. haha.

(Not So) Home Alone

My mother left for her overseas business trip on Monday. She will be gone for a whole year as she is travelling to various countries (USA, Hong Kong, etc) and going back to Indonesia for some time.

She made arrangements for the family before she left so life will go on as for normal. She had an old friend of hers move in with us as an acting guardian. He'll take care of all the bills and stuff. With all the basic necessities being taken care of, I'm actually more worried about her safety. I think it's dangerous to be traveling alone in foreign lands.

I wanted to take leave today to see her off at the airport but she told me it was not needed. We said we will keep in touch by phone/SMS. Maybe I could pay her a visit in Indonesia or whatever country she is in during the holiday seasons.

March of the Penguins

I went to Ikea at Tampines to shop with my mother on Saturday. I was going to pick a new shelf and a desk for my room.

This was my first time at Ikea and the place was huge. I didn't know the place had only one floor for display, and if you wanted to buy something, you had to copy down the item number and go collect it yourself from their stores area. Everything would come unassembled and it was all DIY.

We spent over two hours there but I managed to pick some simple designs that I liked. We wanted to have lunch at the cafeteria (it looked real nice; had some Swedish theme going on or something) but it was overcrowded so we went home.

The rest of Saturday went on for normal with me playing video games. That was until one particular commercial on TV caught my eye; March of the Penguins! And it would be shown at night on Okto.



I heard it was one of the few movie-documentaries that was popular last time. I remembered one of the reasons I didn't watch it was because it would contain 'violent' scenes (as are most documentaries). Now, I am fine with violent movies, but in documentaries, everything that happens is real so it makes me feel uncomfortable.

That was years ago so now I felt like giving it a try. The show was in French with English subtitles. The story was narrated as if spoken by the penguins themselves. It basically touches on the Emperor Penguin's breeding/mating habits and the hardships that they faced. The show was very heartwarming and there were many scenes that touched my heart (and I am not saying this just because I am biased towards penguins).

There were some 'violent' bits that were somewhat cruel and made me uncomfortable and sad. I guess they were essential to evoke emotions from the viewers.

The March of the Penguins really left an impression on me. After watching it, I realized that penguins are really amazing creatures.