Is it really that bad?

Great article in Kotaku: Video Game Piracy, Another View

It’s here! After 2 years of waiting, the sequel of the much praised RPG action game – The Witcher – is finally unveiled. It won’t come too soon, however, with developers are looking into 2011 release date.

But I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait. The original game had so much content, customization, action, and multipath storyline that it was truly a satisfying gaming experience. There are other lore-heavy RPG out there (Elder’s Scrolls, Dragon Age) but few (if any) manage to find the perfect balance of it all. The combat gameplay was superbly fluid and beautiful, while the content was rich enough (even has some slight nudity in favour of going true to the original book) to have at least 5 possible endings; add to that are the gorgeous graphic and various landscapes.

The Witcher 2, however, seems to aim even higher than that… shown in the following trailer. Enjoy!

And to think they can still top that off by adding a secret message just for the faithful fans… Kotaku Article: Secret Message - just by this reason alone I would spend the money on this game to support these great developers. Kudos to CD Projekt!

Update:
Gamespot has a slightly longer trailer and an exclusive preview found here: GameSpot Watcher2 Preview
The trailer is embedded below. (Note: The trailer is rendered with ingame engine)

Text stuff of the day (and quite a few interesting ones at that) are as follows, ladies and gentlemen…

Victorinox apparently just announced that they will be launching a hacking event of hacking their latest device… an encrypted USB key in a Victorinox army knife – the Victorinox Secure Penknife. The winner will win £100,000 if they manage to crack it, and still get a free penknife if they failed anyway. The contest, unfortunately, will be limited to 24 very lucky people, but anyone is free to apply.

The penknife itself is a mixture of the true-and-told tough (and original!) Swiss Army knife, but also embed an encrypted and secure USB drive, that will require a fingerprint scan to open – which, if you failed to provide the correct fingerprint, will automatically notify the owner by email. Which, by the way, should the owner never replies back to it, will cause the deletion of the file within the drive. Never mind the contest, tell me where can I buy that thing!

Bit-Tech Article

Samsung Swipe – On other news, Samsung released an update to their Swipe-system for their mobile. For the unknown, this is a program that enables you to swipe around a touchscreen to type in your cellphone. But for more clarification, please feel free to watch the video of the device breaking a new world-record in the fastest text-message typing.

Gizmodo Article: Samsung Swipe

Real Science on Mass Effect 2. Last but certainly not least. Do you play Mass Effect 2? Do you also enjoy watching Discovery channel? Ever wondered how thin it is the separation between real science and science fiction in the game?

Well, Dr. Michio Kaku – a real nerdy (hey he pulls references to Star Trek and Star Wars, ok?) physicist who are also damn good at explaining complicated things into not-so-complicated brains – took a shot at explaining all of those. This is a seriously awesome short interview video if you’re into this stuff. Myself, for example,could not pause or stop watching this video mid-way at any point (except when the other dude is talking)

Source link: Kotaku Link

First off, how a game of counter-strike in China ended up with a knife stuck up in one of the player’s head. And how he survived it as well. Ironically, he was stabbed because he was accused of cheating in the game, while how he survives the actual knife stab was also seen as cheating (death)… haha.

Full article: Kotaku News

Going across the gulf, in Japan, apparently there is a real-size (18 meters!) Gundam statue erected in Tokyo last July. And this July they’re erecting yet another one – this one with saber sword that lights up during the night – at Shizuoka. They expect the statue to generate 40 billion yen and nearly a million visitor within its first 300 days.

Well, naturally, if such statue is erected within 24-hour driving distance from where I live, I’ll be there tomorrow. No, wait. Tonight.

Kotaku Article: Gundam

Next is Kane & Lynch. The infamous action game about 2 hard-hitting not-so-good guys (which I did thoroughly enjoyed in the past) are getting a silver screen treament. Best part of it? Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx. Oh yes.

Kotaku Article: Willis & Foxx

And to close, Penny-Arcade released another webcomic today and it was (unsurprisingly) hilarious as usual. Plus, this one felt a bit more personal…

Click the picture to go to their site

WARNING: NSFW – the picture in this post is Not Safe For Work… (well you shouldn’t be reading my blog from work to begin with anyway)

So I found this picture on the Internet regarding video gamers and I amused myself. Good picture. Funny. But nothing immediately jumps out to mind.
Until I read one of the comment posted by hismastersvoice on the Kotaku page, and I thought to myself… oh heck yes. The comment:

“The guy in red – a console gamer
The guy in yellow – a PC gamer
How can I tell?
He knows what couches are for.”

…of course, afterward I proceeded with some healthy burst out laughters… in the office.

PC Gamer FTW!

is awesome…

Ok, so there’s nothing groundbreaking with the gameplay or graphic or technology…  but Fist of The North Star!!! If you don’t know this title (Hokuto Musou!!!) then you can skip the whole post, really.

But for all of you that do know, and enjoy the comic (or even Anime, yikes!), you owe it to yourself to play this extremely over the top fighting game……… Man I love those comics.

Ken: you feel lucky, punk?
punk1: huuuuuh?
punk2: and who the **** are you, eeeeeh?
Ken: YATATATATATATATATA!!!!
*punks’ heads start to get swollen*
punk1&2: what the? thats the best you can do?? hahahah…errrk* 
*heads exploded*

It’s like a trip down memory lane… while riding on a bike, swinging spiked chains, running over evil punks, blowing their heads off with your punches.

I was never big on reading other people’s blog (so sue me… ) but the few I’ve read, they latched on me for life a long time.

Here’s a good example. A mathmetician’s blog with puzzles: http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/

On another news, I’m still waiting for a chance to stop by EBgames to get a copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I was a huge BF2 maniac (and a wee bit of BF2142) and been missing a solid online FPS frag fest (no, Call of Duty is not one of them – solid Single Player, sure… but kiddies MP). Hopefully this game can finally cure it. Well the following video helped….

Sure, us gamers on the east side of the Pacific Ocean can get excited over Yakuza 3 game. But over across the pond, them Japs are getting ready for Yakuza 4.

Check out the link for the super-awesome game trailer LOL

http://kotaku.com/5476999/yakuza-4-will-pick-up-a-scooter-and-smash-you-in-the-face

Funny how both CTRLALTDEL and PennyArcade had similar comic today… maybe I missed some big announcement…. hmmm…

Happy Weekend!

Gaming post today! (yeah, didn’t see that one coming from the title, eh?)

I just read Ars Technica’s most wanted games for 2010 list, and although I’m generally not impressed (weird games, missing games), I found a little gem called APB.

But before that, let’s start with what I’m personally waiting for: Aliens Versus Predator. This is simply one of the easiest pick for me. Although I don’t buy alot of game (actually, very very selected few), I tried a lot of them. And, given enough time, I would love to try even more. But only a selected few I can call a “good game” and worthy of my dollars. AvP is one of them. I’ve been waiting for a good, solid, game for over a year now after I dropped LOTRO, and judging from its predecessor and previews, this is one game with a solid story, exciting gameplay, and intense multiplayer.

So, onto All Post Bulletin. After trying out a few different MMO (and wasted a good few hundred/thousand hours on them) in the past, I’m now looking into another one. Afterall, if I’m to summarize the kind of games I played, it’ll be mostly MMO and multiplayer-heavy FPS. The thing with MMO, since most of them comes with a monthly fee, the quality standard is even higher for me. LOTRO, for example, has excellent storyline and great gameplay and immersive world. Coupled with good community, it’s easy to rank it my #2 MMO of all time (#1 is old Star Wars Galaxy before the NGE).  Then comes Star Trek Online (lame actions), StarWars Old Republic (nice voice, crappy graphic?), and an onslaught of others (no, I won’t touch WoW). But nothing really hits the spot (I even spend over 6 months on Eve, and I had to let that one go too) that could push me over to pay a monthly bills.

Until I saw this trailer.

Here’s the link to the site and more videos/screens/info: APB.com

Guess it’s time to start saving…

First off, Happy Holiday! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Now that I’m back (for abit) I like to post one cute news… and words just escaped me to explain this… so just watch the video.

Article: EndGadGet

No, seriously. Cat brain. Apparently IBM has managed to reverse-engineered and simulate the complexity of a feline’s brain. The team also mentioned that it’s a very huge step towards opening the pandora box of Artifical Inteligence: the human brain. And the scariest part? According to one of the scientest, Darmendhra Modha, following the advancement of processing power, they will have enough firepower to simulate our brain by 2019. That’s, uh… barely 10 years from now.  Ten, short years. Better rewatch my Terminators DVD collection…
Read more: Popular Mechanics, MercuryNews, Gizmodo

On less scarier news, Square-Trade – an after-trade warranties company – released the analysis of their research of the most robust brand of laptop, based on the frequency of their warranty-claimed over 3 years and 30,000 laptops. If you think Apple is top-spot, then think again.
Read the full article: InfoWorld

Last but not least, Nvidia’s latest offering to the gaming industry, the Geforce100 – codename Fermi – is getting ready to be released. There’s only speculation and rumours so far, but apparently one of the staff twitted (I really should have a twitter)(no I don’t) a picture of a running card. Dx11 capable? Oh yes please. Picture below.
Read here: Endgadget

And here’s something to cap everything off: new Mario games for Wii. Man, now I really wish I have a Wii. Old school FTW!! This game is sooo full of win
Wired Article

O yeah, here we go… I haven’t done this in a while….. Music post!!

Coz Borderlands [PC Game] is so darn cool…

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Soundtrack music lovers? Check this out:

http://soundtracks-mp3.blogspot.com/

Rawr. Awesome site.

To begin with, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is out on PC. It’s one of the most anticipated FPS of the year, with the prequel (Modern Warfare 1) scoring multitude of awards last year, massing thousands of twitchy-finger addict gamers blasting each other through the net…. myself included. The single-player content was worthy of the awards alone, but the multiplayer was the pinnacle of the game. No, the whole Call Of Duty series. And thus, continuing its legacy, MW2′s multiplayer was one of the most anticipated fragfest of the year.

Or was it? With Infinity Ward removing a dedicated server altogether, many players are actually boycotting the game (yes, again, myself included), since it takes away the capabilities to schedule matches and playing favourites on certain servers. That being said, early reports been saying MW2 copies are flying off the shelves… they flew so fast that certain “sites” already made it available online. Anybody willing to download over 11Gb of illegal content in order to save $60CAD and missing the multiplayer altogether? I know I won’t.

Moving on from MW2, I still can’t get enough time to grab myself a copy of it since I’m still stuck enjoying Borderland thoroughly. I posted some videos a couple days ago, and it *IS* as fun as the trailer. For full review, click here.

The last game that definitely grab my attention is Shattered Horizon. If you’re a true PC gamer, than you would’ve heard the name Futuremark; the company that created the famous 3dMark benchmark series. Well, it’s the same company.

So is it just another FPS? Actually, yes. With one glaringly obvious unique touch: zero-gravity. For more info, check out the trailer below, or read here for a review. Yummy.

So Turbine (developer of the MMORPG game, LordOfTheRingsOnline) threw a LOTRO-themed pumpkin carving contest. Read on the link to see the full gallery… but darn, those are some nice carvings!

Gallery Link