Nintendo's E3 press conference 2010 comments

*double click the videos for maximum viewage*

Okay I spent most of my afternoon getting my ass off to finally watching Nintendo's 2010 E3 press conference. Since I know that Wii MotionPlus and the 3DS is up-and-coming, I'm quite interested to know if Nintendo has more to offer.

In summary, Nintendo really nailed this year's E3. It almost looked as if Nintendo brought out all their available guns and reserves to the party AND more this year. No joke. You are seeing familiar titles like Mario, Zelda and Metroid as well as titles that are at least 5 years or more in the making like GoldenEye, Kirby and Donkey Kong.

First part of the video basically introduces the upcoming Zelda title. God this series never ever runs out of ideas don't they? Apparently, Zelda: Skyward Sword, is going to take advantage of the new Wii MotionPlus upgrade. There were some hiccups in the demonstration but I won't doubt that it will be a great game when delivered. Since when Zelda ever failed?



Part 2 began with some new Mario sports games, WiiParty (looks like Mario Party with Miis), Just Dance 2, mostly bleh stuff. Then Golden Sun: Dark Dawn flashed on the screen and you can hear the cheers. GoldenEye was announced right after that and even more cheers erupted. I missed the GoldenEye era but I know it's one of THE N64 game to play at that time.

The entire last 7 minutes were spent talking about this. Wow, it's almost a year since that blog post. Anyway, Epic Mickey looks pretty good on screen, though I'm not too sure about the gameplay idea though. I dunno, it just leaves me skeptical.


The start of part 3 sent me waves of shudders when I saw the really pink and happy Kirby on the screen. Nothing could prepare me for what Reggie was about to show on screen: Kirby's Epic Yarn. The idea was plain genius! I wish I could develop a game like that. Everything looked so darn polished to beautiful that it made me regret not having a Wii.

Before I keep ranting about how I wish I can develop a game like that, we move on. Reggie then goes ahead to talk about the sequel for Dragon Quest IX. It made me wish that I have more DS users around my area.

Of course, not forgetting Metroid: Other M, the next adventure Samus is embarking, coming in stores August 31st, but what really made everyone happy was listening to the music right after that. Nintendo ACTUALLY decided to REVIVE an age-old franchise: Donkey Kong. It was completely nostalgic. I probably haven't heard that tune since primary school. So great to see Donkey Kong in Hi-res colors. Even the sound effects remained the same!

Then 3DS starts to take the stage, with Reggie mentioning how horrible it is wearing glasses to watch 3D and buying one pair of glasses per person. Iwata then came on stage talking about how long Nintendo has been trying to achieve this (yes they had, even had some console that didn't make it).

One thing to take note that is Iwata said that the 3DS is able to play 3D movies, though there are no concrete plans yet. So far, he confirms, that we are able to watch a movie from Dreamworks (How to Train your Dragon), Warner Bros (Legend of the Guardians), and Disney (Tangled!).


Part 4 unveils Project Sora, a 'secret' project Iwata started to take full advantage of the 3DS. It is actually Kid Icarus: Uprising. If you actually know, or searched, Kid Icarus first released on NES. It's quite amazing how the main theme got preserved until now. Who would've thought?

Next we skip to Nintendogs + cats. No comments on that one since I kinda like both...well, maybe more to cats. Hey! No comments! Iwata then talks about some wireless features for 3DS, as well as introducing the third party companies who will be releasing their games on 3DS release (all the fanboys screaming for joy at SE's Kingdom Hearts and Level5). Then we were shown a clip of the third party developer's reactions to the 3DS. You gotta love Hideo Kojima's.

Well, that pretty much sum's up Nintendo's 2010 E3 press conference. Wait, why am I summarizing it again?

Remembering Everquest

Yes, Everquest. To those who have played it back then before gaming became huge, it is the most magical, immerse and fun MMO in their lives. No MMO can replicate the same magic and feel. My friend John and I searched and searched for such an MMO with no avail. For my side, I've tried World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Everquest 2, Dungeon And Dragons Online, Final Fantasy XI, Vanguard, a bit of Age of Conan, and many other p2p games. I've even tried f2p ones: Flyff, Guild Wars, Ragnarok Online, Ragnarok Online 2, Maple Story, 9 Dragons, 2 Moon, Granado Esparda, and a hell lot more I daren't count.

Search all we want, none could reproduce the same magical feel as Everquest did. I was still pretty young when I played MMOs, back then when 56K still existed within my house. I was only 13 or 14 when John first told me about Everquest. Back then, I think I was the rather daydreaming type, writing random fan-fiction, playing FF6 and other RPGs, etc. so the idea of an MMO really intrigued me.

I remember when we started off at Rodcet Nife server. The Magician was my first character. Ranger was my second I think. But I didn't get really far before we decided to shift to Innoruuk server where most Singaporeans play. There I believe I created Rhistel the Bard, which I later discovered to be one of the more fun and rather overpowered class. To cut short the chase, Rhistel fell off the world at Overthere, I couldn't play him, couldn't wait for GMs to respond for petition and stupidly deleted him.

Then I started Rhistel the Rogue, which I played till level 30 and stopped. After which I created Faylar the Bard. He was my main ever since. Much of what I remembered was post-Luclin. Most people who recalled Everquest have most of their good memories pre-Luclin, but I felt my experiences were irreplaceable like theirs.

I intended to type out a full list of the nostalgic things that I experienced in Everquest. In fact, I typed it out but I really had to stop. The stuff I remember is probably enough to create a short storybook. I couldn't do the same for current MMOs like World of Warcraft. In the MMOs nowadays, most of the stuff I remember are usually created by the community, not by the world contents.

We all know that one of the most important thing in an MMO is the classes. It's what draws people in. But seriously when you look at Everquest classes, they are severely lacking in depth compared to recent MMOs. Every fight, every raid, the warrior do the same 1 thing, Taunt. The rogue will do the same 1 thing, Backstab. The cleric will do the same 1 thing, Heal. The ranger will keep pressing the same 1 button, Range Attack.

Leveling in EQ was painful. For me it was less painful because bards are so overpowered in the soloing department. I bet it was unintentional too. I bet alot of things in EQ are unintentional. Accidents, rather. Anyway, EQ is based on groups. I think it's safe to say that at least 80% of the classes can't solo mobs that will actually give them decent exp. Even then, grouping is faster. Most people spend their time LFGing and idling, whether it's doing random tradeskills, helping out groups they are not even in, granting mass buffage for donations, and pre-POP/Luclin, granting teleport services.

It's all because they can afford to idle that there is actually a sense of community in Everquest. Yet another accident. I believe it's mostly because that there are so few things to do in combat for most classes that they can actually chat while fighting mobs. IDLE chat. Not "let's do this quest" kind nor the "pull that mob" kind. I'm talking about the "haha ya, anyway my son is coming home soon, I wonder what to get him" kind. I get alot of those conversations, mostly because people in EQ that time are easily more than 21 years old. Most are 30 I think. It's a little awkward for me, since I'm 14 at that time.

But that's what makes Everquest so great. Back then when there wasn't any social networks, when there weren't any other MMO to play, people will just hop onto EQ and play. They don't have to level, or gain exp. They just...exist in the virtual world, to chat, to explore to...have fun. It felt like a WORLD. Nowadays, with facebook and all that, it's not gonna happen anymore, not in my lifetime, or at least, not if social networking suddenly got banned in internationally (har har).

I still remember what my 2nd last guild was: Lords of Ancient Myth. Times with them were pretty awesome. I get to explore some old dungeons people don't visit anymore. Congh the Beastmaster will just go like "hey guys, I got the key to Plane of Torment, let's go next week!". I still remember Garlik the cleric I flushed my excess peridots to, Sofia his wife, and Sunna the druid. There was a rather noisy mage too, but I can't remember for the life of me his name. It's a small guild, but we had loads of fun.

Everquest is the place I dumped 2 years of my childhood into. I must say that I don't regret it. I have experience what few people have ever experienced and what further generations probably never will.

EDIT: Actually I decided to just put the list in. It can really go on forever: (!WARNING, HUGE LIST!):
- I remember starting out at Kelethin (Wood Elf) and falling down just to respawn at somewhere less confusing.
- I remember many elfs randomly falling down to do the same
- I remember the 3 lifts and their unofficial names: newbie lift, PoD lift and orc lift.
- I believe I still remember the way to the bank from PoD lift. You have to pass by a forge.
- I believe I still remember the way to Rogue guild; the nearest lift is newbie lift.
- I remember drinking alcohol at Kelethin is great fun most of the time when a fall can kill you.
- I remember following the roads, and asking directions from a high elf, who actually pointed me the wrong direction.
- I remember binding 'W' to the 'Sense Direction' skill.
- I remember the glorious camping days of Crushbone. Trainer hill, slavers, outside the castle and inside.
- I remember 'an orc trainer' drops that shield that gives light
- I remember Ambassador DVinn, the stupid outleveled mob that tore apart groups in the castle.
- I remember he drops Dragoon Dirk, a +2 (i think) Dex weapon that can be equipped at ranged slot for whatever reason.
- I remember cooking the 'Dark Elf Meat' he dropped into something edible.
- I remember camping the stupid Orc Scoutsman just to get his fibula for my newbie quest.
- I remember wondering why other orcs don't have fibulas.
- I remember the chessboard at Butcherblock Mountains.
- I remember killing random ogres patrolling around Butcherblock.
- I remember the buggy ass ship that's supposed to bring me to Freeport.
- I remember camping deathfist orcs for their belts for the great exp. I also remember dying to Hill Giants, though not as much as most people do (yay bard)
- I remember people without special sight need to really turn up their monitor's gamma just to see Commonlands in the night.
- I remember the stupid rogue poison vendor hidden behind some illusion wall.
- I remember you can go from outside South Freeport to outside North Freeport via a path behind an illusion wall, because North Freeport is governed by paladins who kill evil people.
- I remember Paludal Caverns, and the stupid exp they give from level 15-25.
- I remember those stupid monsters that inflict this long lasting DoT.
- I remember how monks love to train the entrance at Paludal.
- Speaking of monks, Fungus Covered Scale Tunic :)
- I remember swimming at Paludal is deadly: there are piranas.
- I remember running down Kithicor Forest (I think), only to be harm touched by a mob.
- I remember how Kithicor Forest is unsafe during the night as high level undeads will spawn.
- I believe I still remember how to navigate around Highhold Pass. The key locations are still in my head.
- I remember always accidentally heading towards the bandits at Highhold Pass.
- I remember South Karana is a nice place to farm spider silks.
- I remember that the Karanas are really huge zones.
- I remember getting lost at Qeynos, and I went there just to get one of my songs.
- I remember killing goblins at High Keep. There are 4 camp spots. I only remember warrior room and...seer room?
- I remember an ogre can block the rooms.
- I remember Captain Borsec being the only guard that doesn't carry Fine Steel Short Sword; he was carrying some dumb Rusty Longsword.
- I remember hiding one of my friend's corpses behind an illusion wall at High Keep before logging.
- I remember Lockjaw at the desert of Ro. Can't remember north or south though.
- I remember seeing the spectre tower at Ro. It was quite intriging.
- I remember Iceclad Ocean, the wierd looking gnome ship and the invisible pumas there.
- I remember the gigantic bridge leading to Eastern Wastes which was 'guarded' by 2 giants, who are actually damn small compared to the bridge.
- I remember Ry'gorr fort and the only way to find it is to follow the smoke the fort emits.
- I remember killing those geostones at Crystal Caverns I think hoping to get money.
- I remember Thurgadin hidden behind some waterfall that lags my computer.
- I remember the ice bridge there and all the dwarfs at the side pointing crossbows at it.
- I remember falling off the bridge without dying. Had to beg for a mage to CoH me.
- I remember kiting the wyverns at Cobalt Scar.
- I remember at level 30, I was queuing up for the Mask of Deception at Lower Guk.
- I remember all the people that helped me from Lunar's Light guild. I also remember all the attempts to help me obtain it. The attempt where John and one other Singaporean did resulted in server maintenance shutdown.
- I remember Eoie the bard and Beegfoots the shadowknight at the attempt that finally gives me the mask. Eoie soloed the BBEG at Lower Guk that time and was spamming about how awesome he is in guild chat.
- I remember all that took me a couple of weeks. 2 weeks for a mask that don't even give stats. But hey, it turns me into a Dark Elf.
- I remember John camping Stormfeather for days just to get the Eyepatch of Plunder. He got it when he skipped school.
- I remember hunting frost giants in Great Divide and cooking their toes for +2 STR/STA or something.
- I remember falling off a at the side of Kael Drakkel, because seriously in first person mode, I can't tell if it's a 90 degree angle at the other end.
- I remember being very accomplished when I can survive the fall in Kelethin.
- I remember falling off the spiral stairs at SolA, ended up in lava and dying like 2 mins later while trying to swim my way out. I have to ask for necro rez.
- I remember the stupid necro rez cost me 100pp just for the coffin reagent.
- I remember Brass Instruments were a real bitch to train because they are all harmful songs.
- KEI, the most powerful mindcrack ever and all mana users love it. Why the heck doesn't it work for bards?
- I discovered /gems and was actually addicted to it since level 29, when I got my first charm spell.
- ...

Feed the boredom

Stole this from ZH's blog: http://polalion.blogspot.com

1) Where is the person you want most?
Right now? Probably working in TTSH.

2) Where will you be 2 hours from now?
Hopefully getting a nice sleep

3) Did your last kiss mean anything?
What kiss?

4) Does your ex miss you?
What ex.

5) Does anyone love you?
I bet you do <3

6) What are you doing tomorrow?
Try to make time move slower...again.

7) Are you easily confused?
At a great many things, yes.

8) Do you think you would make a good boyfriend/girlfriend?
I'll probably be a really good one when games really start to suck.

9) Where were you at 9am this morning?
Sleep :p

10) Do you fall for people easily?
Too easily than I could handle.

11) Everything happens for a reason?
Correction: Good things happen for a reason.

12) What does your last text message read?
"Hahahahaha"

13) What are you listening to right now?
MAZINKAISER ~Shitou! Ankoku Daishogun~ IN - Majin Kenzan!!

14) How was the week so far?
Awesome, but if will eventually end =/

15) Is there something you wish you could tell someone but can't?
Like 100 ways of describing how much life sucks?

16) Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?
Again with kisses.

17) Do you sleep with the TV on?
Never.

18) Are you too forgiving?
You are making me hate myself again.

19) Have you ever wanted to be a fire fighter?
That would be cool.

20) Who do you miss?
Mostly my younger self.

21) What was the last thing you put in your mouth?
Lotus Soup.

22) What are you stressed out about?
National Service.

23) Do you have anything in your pockets right now?
No.//

24) What do you do mostly in your free time?
Just thinking about it makes me stressed.

25) In the past week have you gotten sick?
Hahaha yeah man =D

26)Who was your last call from?
Missed call = Heber
Received call = my coy's armskoteman

27) What can't you wait for?
To down PES.

28) On a scale of 1-10 How good is life?
As long as I cannot decide what to do in the future, probably a 3. Could be alot worse.

29) Are you a high-maintenance?
After comparing with some people, I would say no...

30) Are you happy with the way life is?
No. And there are too many reasons why.

Shanghai tour summary

Day 1:
This will probably be the longest day of the Shanghai vacation. We took this 'Baruda Inodesia' flight towards our detination. Not much to say here other than the 5 hours flight and the slight delay in the departure. Food is pretty much like all economy class food, only slightly worse because...well...not being racist but it's 'Indonesia'. The music thingy built into our seats are playing extremely old 5 year old songs. The rest of the channels I can't understand the language. Ride was bumpy and almost unsleepable like all airplane flights. At 0845 we landed in Shanghai.

The weather isn't really cold in the morning due to the sun. Even in the night, when the temperature took a nosedive, it wasn't so bad. Then again, when I was in korea I was only equipped with my BHSS pants and my cloth long sleeve shirt, a jacket, a beanie and a thick leather(?) glove. But the wind didn't eat my face like the last time. In korea's -20 it practically destroyed my lips, my nose, my ears just when I step out into the open. Shanghai isn't so bad compared to that.

We first sat the bullet train all the way to this town called 'Wujian'. It travelled damn fast (like it should), like 421km/h, which is about...7 times our MRT speed? Anyway, Hanzhou is goddamn messy. Zebra crossings are useless, persistant beggers are everywhere, babies are sold, clothes are hanged in the open for drying, everything is just chaotic. Of course, not the mention the retarded amounts of conmen roaming the streets selling fake branded watches. We all just ignored them and went ahead for our lunch. But seriously Hanzhou is very messy and very...uncouth? I've seen the retardedness of korean, thai, HK and malaysia traffic but this one is so messy there are roads with no lines.

Lunch and dinner were pretty 'chinese'. You know, spinny glass table thingy with food on it. We had that for lunch and dinner. Only cool thing in Hanzhou is that incredible...er...street?...that sells all sorts of great food and a 18RMB bottle of water.

After lunch we headed to Suzhou, a place where, according to my tourist guide, says that chiobu's with beautiful white skin etc etc come from. God I remember when I entered the airport, I already saw one chio policewoman and every young lady in Suzhou is more or less 'passable' as a girlfriend as far as looks go. Suzhou, I find, is also more organized that Hanzhou, which sort of gave me a sigh of relief that maybe this vacation isn't as bad after all. Their traffic lights are huge and has a timer for every single fucking thing. Like the time left for the red light and the green light, the bus number is digitally...er...visuallized via LED lights but mostly I find the traffic light a bit overdone. It's like they have red and green arrows pointing at different directions at the same time with a green timer ticking down, I mean, wtf does that mean?

After visiting some random 'attractions', temples and the works, we finally booked into our hotel...which seats right beside a 5 star hotel. That's where I am now typing away. It's some wierd hotel called "Scholar's Inn" with nice looking but badly designed architechure. Bed's reaaaal comfy though. oh well. That's about it for Day One.

Day 2:
I'm not going to deny that when I first thought of going to Shanghai for a tour, I thought I would only understand 50% of whatever the tour guide said. That's already being nice. I didn't really think I would really understand 90% of his talk, not counting jargons here and there which I don't even know what it is in English. Our tour guide(s) didn't speak in some thick accent; he spoke in perfectly understandable chinese, although sometimes because I suck at chinese I occasionally find it hard to keep up.

When we left our hotel, we encountered the fog. It's pretty thick, maybe it's normal; I can't tell since I haven't encountered that many fogs in my life. The air was so cold that when I breathed out, by the time I run out of breath I can still see the part of the breath that came out of my mouth first, as if I was really smoking. It wasn't too cold however. Then again, today I was doubly equipped compared to the day before. We ate in some...place, I dunno how to describe it but it was basically a buffet with half-western half-chinese food, with more to the chinese side...that wouldn't make it half, would it..?

Now I have to say that I really enjoy visiting factories because I love to see processes, that's why I love my course alot. I love to see processes done espacially those I have absolutely no clue of, and today we went to Suzhou's reowned silk mill. It's really amazing to watch all the workers working, it's even better because the whole process is probably only 20% machine. The silk manufactured there was really heavenly, soft and smooth. On a touch it makes me want to jump on it or something. Mum bought a few pillows and such there for a really cheap price for a silk product.

After we left Suzhou, we took an hour or two worth of bus ride to the riverside town of 'Zucheng'. It's a really quiet place compared to the previous two cities (esp Zujian). Outside the actual town was a whole goddamn row of resturants (which specialize in lamb meat) and car washing services, slot in a couple of tacky little marts. The actual town was really really cool to look at. All the old buildings with old people still living inside. The amazing thing is that it actually looks clean and when I took a closer look, it's not really as old as we thought. I mean wtf man those old ah ma's are living in a dark old room with a plasma TV and microwave in it. Old my ass. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them owned a PS3.

Again I say I love to watch processes being done, and this time it's the damn old and traditional method of making cloth. It's so old, the 'machines' look almost unstable. The damn zai ah ma that skilfully show us how to use one of them. We also visited the winery where they make white wine ('san bai jiu' or direct translation: Three White Wine) and tasted it. God that thing is fucking powerful. It's almost like drinking pure alcohol with a damn powerful fragrant enough to knock the very weak unconscious. When I drank it, my chest is on fire (that's fine) and my brain seemed to have experienced some major nuklear leakage. You can just feel the alcohol going into your chest, up to your skull and leaking out of your ears. That strong.

Afterwards, we took a 2 hour ride to our tour guide's hometown of Hangzhou. When I first entered that town, it looked strangely like Singapore. The roads are organized, zebra crossings are working, the road is exceptionally clean and I swear the place we dropped off is Orchard Road. No wonder they say living here is the best in one of their sayings. Furthermore, the tour guide told us that this place hardly have any overweight people because they hardly eat too much meat and love drinking green tea and talk cock alot. Then of course there are those 'lengendary' food he mentioned. Heck our Suzhou tour guide told us hundreds of ways to keep beautiful and live long. Also, Hanzhou is famous for its 3 love stories that happened in its old times like the 'Liang San Zhang ying Zhu Yin Tai' (my hanyu may be wrong). And no the Cowherd and Weaver Girl doesn't come from here. Seriously though, this place does resemble singapore quite abit, just a lot more chinese words.

During dinner, we tried the 'luoye' wine (Falling leaves, there's a pretty funny reason behind its origin) we tried during dinner afterwards was very nice; warm, not too strong and not too sour. I can't believe no one is drinking it other than me. Wtf is up man, that thing is expensive, in front of us and tastes great!

After dinner, we went to watch a performance. I tell you the cultural performances we see in Singapore are like 4th rate compared to this. The Wushu guys are so serious they break their poles and I know it wasn't intentional because only on pole broke with dust coming out of it and it was flinged in some really random direction. The...what I like to call...circus performers are really really good, save a couple of them who probably didn't practice enough. It's not only the people and the performance, it's also the way they layout and organise the whole show. It's not about one person's act, its about the whole stage. Even the dance, the part of chinese cultural performance I don't really appreciate in singapore was beautiful. And yes, the chinese girls are really hawt. Maybe that's why I can stand their act not singapore's. Also the lighting effects were top notch. If our singapore chinese performers can come up with such a performance I don't mind paying to watch.

Soon after, we checked into our hotel, the Carry Centre Hotel (maybe that's why they help us carry our luggage up? The previous noob one didn't). It's a lot more of a hotel compared to the last one we were in. Bed is less comfy but place is overall much better than the less. Next stop: Nanjing.

Day 3:
Before making our way to Nanjing, we stopped by another of Hangzhou's many love-parks (where couples hold hands and cross the bridge yadayada) and went to a tea...farm? Dunno if that's the correct word. We watched the master 'fry' Hangzhou's famous 'longjing' tea (Dragon-Well for direct translation). It's exceptionally fragrant. We were explained (in Chinese) how these 'longjing' tea leaves are healthy to the body and the reason why Hangzhou people are very very rarely fat (still haven't seen a fat person). Even though the explanation was in Madarin, it was like...infinite times more interesting than the past two e3 PS3 Sony conferences combined. Note that I am a tea drinker (I hate pure coffee) so naturally I would find this interesting. They sell all kinds of tea shit here. Tea sweets, tea biscuits, tea cake, tea-shirts and tea-shoes. Excuse the pun on the last two tea products, I was just kidding. But they DO sell shirts and flip-flops there. And the shirts are decorated with tea leaves...I think. My mum bought a fuckload of tea stuff.

Lunch was pretty godly, probably thanks to our tour guide since this is his hometown. The chicken and duck was fantastic, and I forget to mention yesterday's dinner's chicken-in-lotus-leaf (and plastic bag) is also pretty godly. Then we took a 4-5 hour trip to Nanjing.

Upon arriving Nanjing, it was getting dark. We were told of Nanjing's specialty dish: some cold salted duck, can't remember the chinese name but it's somewhere along that line. Yes we tasted the cold salted duck, and the wet salted gravy duck, and the warm dry salted duck and if I'm not mistaken, the rice is abit salted too. It's salt heaven, I like :).

Overall, Nanjing is a bigger, more commercial, more vibrant, more modern and busier as compared to Hangzhou. I mean, here I sighted for the first time during this trip: a LAN shop. I think if you take Nanjing and Hangzhou together you get a really big Singapore...more or less. We went shopping at this junction much like the market area between Sim Lim and Bugis Village, abeit bigger and more chinese. I saw this array of very nice necklaces and was about to buy the one with a scorpion symbol for Brenden but that only comes tied to a short elastic band (choke) or in black beads. Beads are fucking uncool...can't imagine Brenden wearing it. If it comes tied in a lose chain + dog tag I would've bought it immediately for 18RMB.

Fastfood is pretty warpped. MacDonalds sell chestnuts, KFCs sell prawn and KFCs do not sell the oh-so-godly cheese fries.

We checked into our Nanjing hotel and in all seriousness, THIS is a decent hotel. Room is large, place is beautiful, hey it's like our hotels are getting better and better. Bed is the same as the last though, but the room is really cosy. Also it seems that the hotels we are staying is getting more and more modern. Suzhou's have 0 internet connection. Hangzhou has the cable but apparently no server. Nanjing has a cable, and have to pay 30RMB per day. Of course we're not paying because we're heading off tomorrow already and it's 1030 when I started typing this.

Day 4:
Nothing much to mention about our Nanjing tour 'cus I'm not really a sightseeing guy. The stories behind the city of Nanjing is insanely old and plentiful and so are the attractions we visited. Lakes, gates, bridges, a master artist, lots of kyrptonite and Green Latern rings. Sightseeing = 10 seconds. And yes, we have cold duck for lunch again. It's worth mentioning though that Nanjing's cold weather is a lot colder, almost feels like korea's -20 degrees I experienced, just that it's more humid. Apparently, today was only near 0 degrees, but due to the humidity, it feels alot colder than that.

Our next stop was Wujing. The industrious/residential area feels dead and old. The shopping area is damn alike to singapore's. It is definately more modern than the other cities I've visited. Heck it actually has a proper electronics shop that sells mp4s and other modern applications. Food here was really great too. It suits very nicely to most singaporean's tastes. And finally, we ate a proper fish. Other cities' fish dish was extremely bony and has a strong 'fishy' smell. This one was pretty fresh and not to mention their 'paigu' is really delicious. They sold this traditionally warmed (charcoal) "xian tiao qiang" (er...the famous 'Buddha jump over the wall').

We went shopping after dinner but its mostly ladies stuff. I tried to find a shop to my liking but couldn't. And KFC's prawn tastes like a pepper-heavy popcorn chicken. Packaged the same way too.

Hotel is almost the same as the last, maybe a bit smaller and comes with a bathtub. Wujing's a really active town with 24 hour shops near us. Too bad we are staying for only one day.

Day 5:
Touring in Wujing was pretty nice. We went to some big acting prop area used to shoot shows of the olden days (ie "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"). We met a few stars which I don't recognize...maybe I've seen them in shows but I don't really take note. Saw a few kungfu people here and there, and saw a re-enactment of the "Lui Bei, Zhangfei and Guanyu vs Lu Bu" on horseback.

Next we went to some clay teapot-making shop and was introduced to the beauty of claypots, which I am not going to elaborate here.

Next was a 2 hour ride to Shanghai (finally). Shanghai is incredibly huge, goddamn crowded, and looks insanely twisted. AS the tour guide said: in air there is the (damn twisting) highways, on land there is the normal roads, underground there is a subway. Even though there are so many roads to help with traffic conjestion, traffic everywhere is still a clusterfuck. We took a walk along Nanjing road and that place is solely just to 'admire the population' or something. Buying and queuing is almost impossible here and things is also more expensive than usual (ie, close to the price of things back home). We ate at some Dragon Boat place and continued to sightsee along the river and on a damn tall tower.

Meh, I'm getting tired and am looking forward to go home. I doubt the next few days will be anything interesting.

Last 2 days:
The tour in Shanghai was horrible. We went to see a park, some fengshui place and a "ladies-wear" shop that sells only female winter clothes. That place is pretty fucked up, I don't know what the hell they even thought to bring us here. Not only it's a department store dedicated to female wear, it only sells winter clothing. It's not only this shop, the other shops near it also only sells winter clothes, male or female. The only good thing about today is the dinner and that dinner is just as good as any other dinner I had the previous days.

I spent most of the last day sleeping and I'm a little glad I did. At 1700, I went to take a walk around outside. Hailing a cab is a nightmare on top of their hellish traffic. Their traffic is conjested like fuck. It takes years to reach a nearby area.

We went to the nearest "electronics shop", and I was hoping to see something alike to Sim Lim. It's incredibly disappointing. It makes you want to tear you hairs out of your scalp. The long cab travel time, the tolerating of the horns, all for nought. The most updated game store has !@#$ Heroes 5 as their latest game (from what I can see). The closest thing to Half Life was CS 1.6.

The hotel we stayed in was less technologically advanced as compared to our Wuxi one. At least the dinner we ate was better than what we experienced the past few days.

A Story In Everquest #1

Hello Kids! Today I'm going to tell you all about a story called "The KS'er and the Giant". Once upon a time, in the great plains of West Commonlands, a party of people were grouping together near an orc camp to slayer all orcs for the good of all mankind (or ogre/trollkind). After many failures in their crusade to Befallen, the party decided to hunt a simple foe: Orcs.


After killing a few orcs, a KS'er by the name of "Raradornn" came to 'steal' our kills, imploding and exploding them to crisps while we were fighting them and claiming that the kills are his own and giving no credit to us. (In game terms, that faggot stole our exp by outnuking us. We are lacking in dps but exp is flowing well).

So, our brave leader of the troupe, a hearty Ogre by the name of "Bubbah" got so mad that he came out with a plan: He's going to lure Hill Giants to kill the mage. (see the little human with white hair? That's Rara)


Hill Giants were a feared being in the West Commonlands. They roam and every place possible and despite their size, they are able to sneak up behind groups without the members noticing and destroy them. We had our share of angry hill giants before we came and we developed a phobia for them (I'm serious here, a REAL phobia). But Bubbah be brave and decided to sacrafice himself to destroy the mage:


And he was successful in eliminating the mage, but he died in the process;

Everyone cheered as the giant walked away:


As you can see here, the mage was obviously not happy and decide to do the same to us.


A closer look at his corpse ^_^ ->

I thought this was Rara's first attempt at destroying us, but it so happens to be a spawn of HG that was scripted to move across the orc camp. You should know why we are scared of them now.



Rara's first attempt at destroying us; the giant chased the shaman who had "Spirit of Wolf" on so the shaman manage to escape due to his speed and everyone wasn't affected.

From this screenshot to the next, Rara decided to log off and everything was fine for awhile. Babbuh left and we invited and kicked a few more members as they come and go. An hour later (in real life) Raradornn came back and started to KS us again. This happened for 30 mins and several /tells to him to "get the f* off" which was replied with "stfu". I took the best screenshot in my life after that 30 mins:


In case you didn't know, in the bottom screenshot, Rara was not aware of the Hill Giant yet. He wasn't running away as this screenshot looked like he was doing. See that' orc in front of him? He's gonna loot it.


If you noticed the last emote from last screenshot, our troll shaman waved at him, supposedly to distract him. He was looking and I was disappointed that I didn't manage to take a screenshot when he was in looting position, because he died way too fast:
We cheered. Again. YAY!


And yep, the KS'er didn't return.
End of story.
I would like to thank Rara for being an idiot,
my guild mates,
my group mates,
my playlist,
and of course, the Hill Giants

for making this group fun, happening and...yeah just pure fun.

Bonus screenshot for reading all this crap: The Befallen Fallens;

Story by:
--- Ellune ---
12th Order of the Tunarean Clerics

--- Faylar Ubertune ---
65th Troubadour of the Tunarean Tranquilsong Bards (deceased)

Have a nice night everyone!

Woot! 6 more games! Bah... =/

6 new PS2 games, I've hardly continued on any. Let's go through them:

1) Resident Evil 4 --> It's a damn nice game I admit, but I'm kinda stuck at the start because you run out of bullets so easily that I end up knifing everything to death lol. I might play it in future though, it looks interesting.


2) Kingdom Hearts 2 ---> Unfortunately, the cover page lied to me saying that it is the english version. No, it's the jap version. Voice acting is fine, I can understand but I don't understand hiragana so, meh, kinda pointless to play on. The opening is VERY VERY nice. So nice it makes me wanna play Kingdom Hearts 1 again, which is exactly what I'm doing right now. Release date for the US version is around Spring 2006 (March) , so I think I'm gonna get KH: Chains of Memories. Heard it's a card-game thingy...wonder if it's nice.

3) Need for Speed: Most Wanted ---> Nice game, fast paced, but I'm not into driving games I guess. I totally SUCK at this game lol.

4) Suikoden Tactics ---> I was anticipating this since I first saw it 2 months back in gamespot.com. I mean, you see suikoden 1,2,3 and...well maybe 4 and their strategy battles. Not so bad. That why I'm going to try it.

The results are...subpar. The game is pretty slipshod compared to great tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance, Tactic Ogre, Hundred Swords, the digisonline.com game, and of course not forgetting La Pucelle: Tactics.

Suikoden Tactics has a very pathetic story revolving around Rune Canons. Yep, that's right, Rune Canons. Rune Canons = Suikoden 4 = Worst Suikoden in history. Nevermind, SRPGs are not about storylines mainly...so...him, gameplay? Let's see what new things they have for the SRPG genre. Oh yeah, the good ole Suikoden abilities and their ranks. What else...? What's this? Terrain element? Sounds good. No actually it's bad.

Maybe it's because Konami thought "oh noes, what if this terrain element thing don't appeal to gamers because they are too insignificent? Let's make them significent and make it useful in battle!" A bit too useful if you ask me, for either side of the fight. Every character has an element. If that character steps into a terrain that is the same as his, he'll get this uber crazy regen per round, uber leet defense and uber powerful attacks. For those standing in elemental terrains against his elemental type, he'll get crap defense, crap attacks and worst of all...DEGENERATION. wtf?! That's crazy, one get's super powerful and the opposite gets super sucky. So the only strategy to this game is to stretegically place your terrain elements...meh it's easy. Other than that, it is basically the same as any other SRPGs.

Sound is good. Animation is pretty nicely done. Unfortunately, the animation is wasted on their suckly models. It's terrible, it's made of fucking blocks or as john said 'Legos'. There is no cell shading, no outlines...or any lines for that matter. When you place the legs together it looks like one lump of...Lego. Snowe looks fucking hilarious. It's like he's Lion King now rofl, only with grey hair. Hell, I think the gummi ship sequences in Kingdom Hearts looked better.

5) Soul Caliber 3 ---> So far I've explored, nothing change in this game compared to SC2...

6) NeoGeo Battle Coliseum ---> Meh, just another SNK game =/

BF2 screens!!! C4 fun =D

Today I had tons of fun playing BF2 as a special forces unit. God I'm becoming the next Andy -.-


Well, this screen was kinda stupid. I planted the bombs and for some reason it didn't went off. I got killed instead T_T



I was hiding at their base running around until I heard some helicopter's engine starting. I was out of breath and moved slowly towards the helicopter...seemed that I over estimated helicopter's take off speed...


And yeah, that's what happened.
This happened like 100 times. I tried to get the best screenshot but everything happened too fast lol.
This was a helicopter explosion just like the one above. Same thing happened, I heard the helicopter, I ran, I planted and I blew it off. The helicopter had two guys I think, there was one guy who wasn't inside the helicopter but got killed by the explosion anyways. I thought I had the screenshot somewhere of the helicopter exploding to bits and that one guy flying in the air. oh well =/