Trillanes and company were lucky

Senator Inmate Trillanes is a fan of hyperbole:

“now we see just how far this government is willing to go to stay in power”

Well thank god, if that’s all they’re willing to do. I mean really, as much as I hate to admit it, the government was pretty efficient in handling this particular crisis (course they had practice a few years ago with the same bunch of guys, so that must help some). They managed a show of force without any casualties whatsoever. Of course one might call their show of force overkill since Trillanes and his buddies didn’t have the balls to fight back anyway, but I assure you that had this happened in Russia (hello Chechen separatists) or Pakistan we’d be reading about a Magdalo massacre right now.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is pretty

This game is gorgeous.  I’m still impressed with how it looks now, so I can imagine how gamers’ jaws would have dropped when they first saw EFBB (escape from Butcher Bay)’s back in 2004.  This is probably a byproduct of the fact that I have yet to see what a full on HD game looks like, but moviong up to EFBB after KOTOR is like having a date with anne curtis after dating mahal.  KOTOR looks like shit compared to this game, and I spent the first thirty minutes just looking at the gorgeous detail on the backgrounds and characters.  The voice acting in this game is also incredible, with actors like Vin Diesel, Ron Perlman, Dwight Shultz(Captain “Howling Mad” Murdock from the A-Team!), Cole Hauser, Xzibit and Michael Rooker lending their voices to the game.  The voice acting is so good I actually turned the subtitles off so I could enjoy listening to the dialogue.

EFBB presents a few interesting gameplay mechanics that don’t always pan out, like Riddick’s ability to hide and see in the dark.  It’s not as useful as you’d think, since the guards in the prison have flashlights, and once they gt a bead on you it’s incredibly hard to sneak back into the dark.  And if you’ve got nightvision on and they flash that light straight at you, the whole screen becomes white and for basically blinded until you turn nightvision off.  The screen also becomes a shade of blue when you’re “hidden” but it’s really not as obvious as I’d like it to be.

But my main issue with EFBB is the fact that you can’t save wherever you want.  It’s almost ludicrous that a PC game in this day and age doesn’t allow you to save wherever and whenever you want.  This might be a legacy of its Xbox console roots, but it’s rally frustrating how the game automatically saves at certain checkpoints WITHOUT making it clear to the player where these checkpoints are.  So sometimes you go back to the game after a day and you find that you’re not as far in the game as you thought you wre because your progress hadn’t been saved up to that point.  Sections of the game can be pretty hard, so this can be really, really frustrating.

After reading gamespot’s review on the game, I found out that there actually IS a quicksave and load feature in the game.  The game doesn’t let you in on this though, and it can be frustrating to someone who doesn’t realize this from the outset.

Swedish developer Starbreeze studios have put together a winner here, and by most accounts have followed up their success with their most recent game, the Darkness.  Considering I got this game at the bargain basement price of 300 pesos, This has gotta be one of the greatest buys I’ve ever made.   If you’re an FPS fan you owe it to yourself to upgrade your pc with some now affordable graphic cards and play this game, it’s really that good.

My Etrian Odyssey Episode 1 : Firing Troubadours

Etrian Odyssey is a DS game by Atlus that promises to last much longer than an average game, so I thought I’d chronicle my adventures in it just for kicks. Essentially you’re a party of aventurers that travels down into a big hole to seek fame, fortune, and mugwort.

This will be sort of a crossover with Intendo, since I wanna try to keep contributing there as well. So clickety click in the link to enjoy My Etrian Odyssey Episode 1, in which the party is felled by treerats and a troubadour is fired.

I’m back for real now.

So that was a long dry spell wasn’t it? But I’m back now, and I no longer have a purpose. I originally intended this blog to be a resource for cool things to get geeky over, and I think I managed that for a little while, but eventually it just tired me out. Professional blogging is definitely not my cup of tea, as I’ve learned over the past year vainly trying to write for my own gaming blog and contributing to intendo. Alas, the written word is only my second love, and frankly I’m at the stage of my life where I’d rather be doing things than writing about them. Plus you have no idea how hard it is to be articulate about sharing something that you want other people to experience in the same way you did.

But that is the past, and now we look towards the future. Or at least a few steps ahead. I created another blog, which will remain nameless, for my more personal posts and I’ve been using that as my primary blog recently. Not that I’ve been posting much mind you, but there you have it. I’ve decided to move back to geekofalltrades, and call my personal blog my “emo” blog, where I’ll let out any personal frustrations I’ve been feeling that I think might not be suitable for geekofalltrade’s audience.

So what can you, dear reader, expect from this revitalized blog? Some more music and game and movie and gadget reviews as usual, plus a special sneak peek into the life of a work at home game artist. Tales of crusty underwear, forgetting to take showers, and eyestrain from being in front of the PC await!

*crickets*

KOTOR 2 is a fucking timesink.

Seriously, I had to forcibly stop myself from playing to get a little work done.  I wasn’t bored or anything, I just knew that I had to stop playing or I’d use up the rest of the evening just playing the damn game.    It brings back memories of going to makati over the weekends just to play the original KOTOR because my wimpy computer couldn’t handle it.  I mean I would seriously drive all the way from antipolo to makati just to spend the afternoon playing the game, not to mention all the lunch hours spent happily slicing and dicing opponents with dual lightsabers.

My new toy!

Got my first paycheck from the new job, but in true budget geek fashion, I logged on to tipidpc and found this gem of a videocard, the 7600gt for only 2,900 pesos!  It’s used, but at the going rate of a little less than 5k brand new, this baby’s a bargain, and it even comes with a free Spellforce 2 game!  I can play KOTOR2 and Chronicles of Riddick now!!!!!

If I ever find the time, that is…

Gilbert Arenas wins celebrity blogger award

It’s a curious state of affairs when the blogging superstar of the internets is also an NBA All-Star.  Apparently Gil, Agent zero, the hibachi, whatever you wanna call him, won the Best Celebrity Blogger award Thursday at the 2007 Weblog awards.  Check it out on number 2 of the daily dime.  It’s a sad day for nerds and geeks cause it looks like the jocks have taken over again.  But at least this jock’s got a sense of humor, because when he found out he beat Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame to be the best celebrity blogger he had this to say:

“When you start beating the Star Trek people, you know you’re somebody.”

Did you know? featuring Adam Baldwin

Been on a Firefly kick lately, looking for memorabilia online and checking to see if there are any established Firefly nerdclubs in my neck of the woods.  No such luck, but remembering what someone said in a podcast about Adam Baldwin aka Jayne of Firefly fame being a voice actor in a video game, I decided to check his credentials in IMDB.  So, did you know:

• He was the voice of Superman/Clark Kent in the animated version of the Superman/Doomsday plotline
• He was the voice of Hal Jordan in the Justice League animated series
• He was the voice of Archer in the P2 game Kill.Switch (and according to the podcast people, he was the voice of random NPCs in the game, and it was funny because every character was just his voice in different pitches)
• He’s in a new series called Chuck, which I haven’t had the chance to catch yet but have heard is borderline good

I love how the internet is a repository of all the information you never even knew you wanted to know.