Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Weekend Jungle Escape!

As stated in my previous post. I was unavailable for the weekend. I actually went backpacking for Taman Negara, Pahang. You can read more about Taman Negara by clicking here. The journey was by bus and seriously, my ass was in hell after numerous potholes we went along the Jerantut village road. The trip was organized by the RSC (Royal Selangor Club) Hockey Section and since my dad was the hockey convenor, he asked me to tag along.

Day 1 (Friday, 25th July)
The bus left for Pahang from the RSC Sports Annex, Bukit Kiara around 8pm. First off, I thought the journey was to be smooth sailing. It was at first: back seat of the bus, tons of cold beer. What could go wrong I thought. Everything was fine until we hit our first pitstop for the night: Jerantut. We reached our destination at about 11.30pm and headed straight for supper (late dinner for some) at a nearby restaurant. By 1am, everyone was in their room sleeping since the RSC hockey team has a friendly match with the local Jerantut team.

Day 2 (Saturday, 26th July)
I got up at around 8am and washed up for breakfast. The dim sum I had was like heaven in this laidback town. However, not everyone was up and while I thought we'd be heading for the hockey pitch, I was wrong. Our next destination was TO BREAKFAST! Geez, if I knew that I wouldn't have had dim sum. I had my usual teh peng and opened up my novel while waiting. Hell, I swear that they dumped like half a glass of condensed milk into my tea. Either that or they're trying to kill me with sweet stuff. Soon after, we headed over to the field. To my surprise, the RSC hockey team were to be having a hockey clinic for the local school kids in the area. They had banners and everything! The clinic went on for about an hour or so. I was busy taking videos so I didn't actually kept track of the time. Soon, the game started and by that time my Sony Handycam was almost out of juice; about 20 mins left of battery life. I decided to take a break and watch the game instead. However, my trigger-happy fingers urged me to take pictures instead. So for the rest of the game, I was snapping non-stop. The final score was 6-4 if I'm not mistaken with the winner being the RSC team. After the game, we were greated to a beautiful spread of durians and mangosteens in the parking lot by the field. As usual, I had my can of 100plus and a can cold beer. I deserved it. Soon, we were off to lunch and back to our guesthouse to pack up for the trip to Taman Negara. The trip from Jerantut to Taman Negara was a lot more smoother than I thought. With a beer in hand, I dozed off to sleep until we reached our destination: Persona Village Resort. After checking in, I plugged my Sony Handycam into the wall socket into my room and I was back in the reception area waiting for the rest. Our first activity for the day was jungle trekking and cave exploring. The jetty cum floating restaurant was filled with noise the minute we set foot in it. I can say that 90% of the noises came from us. The boat ride however, which took around 2~3 mins was simply cool. The trek through the jungle to the entrance of the cave was around 1km and the guide said it would take an average of 45 mins to 1 hour to get there. Hell, we got there in record time: 36 mins and still have time for beer! The route we took was seriously the most hell I've been through. It was slippery, muddy, wet, leeches at the most unimaginable places. I've actually had one crawl up my leg. The trek back to our landing spot was actually faster than I thought. Everyone had mud on their body one way or another. Some even had leeches inside their shoes! But to my surprise, there weren't that many mosquitoes in the jungle. In fact, I've seen more mosquitoes in the city than in the jungle! By the time we made it back to the jetty cum floating restaurant, it was already past 6pm and by the time we made it back to the chalet, it was already 7pm. After bathing, we headed back to the jetty cum floating restaurant for dinner. Beer and whisky was a plenty (as we brought our own) and by the time we got back for bed, I was feeling as dead as ever.

Day 3 (Sunday, 27th July)
I woke up around the same time as the day before. The activities that were to be done before heading home was the canopy walk and rapid shooting. We headed back to the jetty cum floating restaurant to catch our boat for the canopy walk. What we saw broke us into laughter. After yesterday's drinking ordeal, they posted up NO ALCOHOLICS signs all around the place. So we were like: "We kick the drunkards out and we can continue drinking!" and yes, the sign was actually supposed to say NO ALCOHOL. So they can't spell. Anyway, the canopy walk was seriously a sight to behold. It's a walk across a 400 meter man-made bridge, separated into 10 or so segments connected by trees. Suspended about 20 to 40 meters above the ground, sometimes even higher. It's the longest canopy walk of its kind. After the long walk, we headed back to the landing site along the riverbank to continue on our activity for the day: rapid shooting. This got everyone wet. And I do mean getting drenched over and over again. One of my dad's friend asked the guide accompanying us: "Sini ada buaya kah?" to which he replied, "Dalam sungai takda, tapi atas darat ada banyak!" to which got a whole bunch of us laughing. Hope you understand the pun here. If you don't then try asking around. Soon, we were at an orang asli village and the had demonstrations oh how to use the blowpipe and how to start a fire using their ingeniously made apparatus. By the time we headed back to the chalet, it was as good as 3pm in the evening and it was time to pack-up as we'll be heading back to Jerantut for an early dinner. By 6pm we were already on the road heading back home to the RSC Sports Annex.

The experience was fun, exciting and also hell at times. More pictures posted at my Facebook profile. As for the videos, I'll see if I have the time to do some editting. My mom already had headaches watching them last night when I hooked up my Sony Handycam to the TV as there were a lot of camera movements due to my hand shaking. Kinda like watching Cloverfield.

For those of you who have Facebook accounts and wanna have a peek at the photos, click here to access my Facebook profile. The photos I've uploaded on Facebook only covers the Taman Negara part of the trip as I'm seriously lazy to post up all the 100 odd random picture shots taken in Jerantut during the hockey match/clinic.

Anyway, enjoy as this is by far my longest post! Cheers to me! =P

Friday, July 25, 2008

Away-away-away...

As the title says, I'll be away for the weekend on holiday. Will be back Sunday night. I might consider posting photos here but heck, I might as well post them in Facebook as it'll be much easier on my end.

(Imoutou wanna see photos please sign-up for Facebook! Haha!)

Be back Sunday night. Ciao!

Monday, July 21, 2008

Ronald McDonald Insanity



Yes, I'm bored. Thank you very much.

Title of the song is U.N Owen was Her from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

Tohou players and fanatics may know this. To my darling imoutou who hates Tohou, this is dedicated to you. SMILE!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Final Fantasy XIII @ E3

This morning at Microsoft's E3 2008 press conference, Microsoft announced that Final Fantasy XIII was in development for the 360. Aside from that, the game will also be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 edition. Although with that said, Square has not actually set a release date for the game yet. As stated by Square's boss, Yoichi Wada: "We believe that releasing an Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII will allow us to provide the game to even more fans in the two regions of North America and Europe."

Aside from that, Yoichi Wada also announced that release date for Square's Unreal Engine based game, The Last Remnant. The game will ship in North America on September 2, Europe and the UK on September 5, and Japan and Asia on September 11.

All I can say is: "Congratulations to all Xbox owners. For they'll be having a chance of experiencing one of the best RPG series ever made. For you fanatical Sony fanboys out there, stop fussing as the game WILL STILL be coming out for the PlayStation 3. So I suggest you STFU or GTFO. Thank you very much."

AJ out.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

E3 Live!


E3 starts Monday and I'll be looking forward to the Big Three (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) news conference. For those of you who're eager to know more, here's the lineup.

















The above taken from Gamespot.

Stay tuned!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Welcome to China!

KOEI Japan has just released the PC Demo for Shin Sangokumusou 5 (Dynasty Warriors 6) and it's available for download! This installment varies greatly from past titles of the series. One of the key addition is the almighty Renbu System: a new way for characters to build up their attack combos. In previous installments in the series, combos were affected by the quality of weapon the character was wielding, with more powerful weapons allowing characters longer, more elaborate and often more powerful consecutive attacks. Aside from that, players are now able to climb ladders (Battle of Hu Lao Gate) to dispose of enemy ballistas on the ramparts, swim (Battle of Fan Castle) and also featuring a new guard unit. Improvements are also made to enemy AI, allowing them to travel across rivers and other bodies of water in order to attack you or allied bases.

In the demo, you will be playing as Lu Xun in the stage Xu Du Invasion. The Japanese PC version will be released on the 11th of July and the English PC version will be coming some time late this year. Take note that in order to be able to play this demo, you will have to update your DirectX9 to the newest version, which is 9.23.1350. The file size for the installer is around 330MB.

Page Link: http://www.gamecity.ne.jp/smusou5/trial/

File Download Link: http://download2.gamecity.ne.jp/contents/ShinSangokumusou5Trial.exe

DirectX9 June 2008 Update
@ Mircosoft (Requires genuine Mircosoft Windows validation!)


As some may already know, Shin Sangokumusou 5 will be receiving a PlayStation 2 port and will be renamed to Shin Sangokumusou 5 Special. It will be released on the 25th of September this year. Not much is currently known about the game. However, based on magazine scans, Ling Tong, Ma Chao and Cao Pi will be receiving new weapons as well as new movesets. Below are the comparisons between Ling Tong, Ma Chao and Cao Pi from Shin Sangokumusou 5 (on the right) and Shin Sangokumusou 5 Special (on the left) respectively.





Saturday, July 5, 2008

E3 2008: First Impressions


Yup, E3 is coming yet again! Here's what's expected to be unveiled at E3 this year. Let's take a look at some of the most anticipated games.


After the completion of the Sands of Times trilogy, Ubisoft Montreal decides to bring the Prince of Persia franchise to the next-gen consoles this time. Set for a PC, PlayStation 3 and 360 release, this title sees a new cel-shaded style of design following other game titles such as X-men Legends, Viewtiful Joe and Zelda: The Wind Waker. The developers chose to call this style of design as illustrative as it contains more details than most cel-shaded games.

The game is to use a heavily modified version of the Scimitar game engine that was used for Assassin's Creed (another Ubisoft game). Some time during May, Ubisoft released two speed art videos of the Prince and Elika, the female lead. Soon after, the official trailer was released:



Putting the game aside, some of you may already know of a Prince of Persia movie in the making. The film is being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Mark Newell. Currently, it's set for a June 2009 release. We'll just wait and see if that's true. Check out Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time at IMDB.com.

Pandemic Studios brought us Star Wars: Battlefront. Now, they'll be bringing Middle-earth. The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is an upcoming game developed by Pandemic Studios and will be published by EA. The gameplay will be somewhat like Star Wars: Battlefront. The game will be released some time late this year and will be released for the PC, PlayStation 3, 360 and the DS. A trailer has already been released:




Until next time!

Friday, July 4, 2008

Diablo III: Of Asshats and Complains

June 28th this year marked the day Blizzard Entertainment unveiled Diablo III at the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France. It's been seven years since the release of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction and for finally giving us a sequel, what do some people decided to do? They start to complain about the game's art direction. They criticized the game's apparent resemblance to Blizzard's World of Warcraft series. The lack of the light radius from the previous games and what they termed colorful and cartoon-like visuals. Heck they even created an online petition to protest and draw attention on the current art direction/design.

Quoting from Kotaku.com:
Petitioners feel that the graphics we've seen so far depict a world that is far too bright and cartoony for their liking, citing World of Warcraft as one of the influences ruining their dark and macabre series.

As some of you may be asking: "So why did Blizzard chose to use an art style that would piss the hell out of fans?"

Just to let you know, Diablo III's lead designer is Jay Wilson, a former Relic Entertainment (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes) designer while the lead world designer is Leonard Boyarsky, one of the six co-creators of Fallout.

Diablo III's lead producer Keith Lee has stated:
"One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for ‘Diablo III’ is the fact that color is your friend. We feel that color actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast. A great analogy is like in ‘Lord of the Rings’ — not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesn’t allow you to have a lot of contrast."

I know that some of you are dying to know what ridiculous nonsense were written in that so-called petition. So here's the link: Renewed artistic direction for Diablo 3 Petition

Read the petition, inhale and laugh your asses out.