At first, I was worried that it would end up a turkey. Nothing more than a graphical powerhouse and a showcase of technology. I did play the demo, it thoroughly impressed me with its technical accomplishment but the gameplay found in demo was only the tip of the iceberg. I wanted more.

And I got more. A whole lot more. Having completed the demo several times, including on Delta mode (hardest difficulty), I got cocky and thought that I could handle Hard mode throughout the game. Oh boy, I was in for bumpy ride. I got my ass kicked by Korean soldiers and some mean-looking aliens.

Sure you have the awesome Nanosuit which looks uber cool, lets you jump onto rooftops, gives you strength to punch jeeps away, lets you run faster than a speeding bullet (not really), allows you to cloak yourself and stalk people like the Predator and stops bullets with your chest. It sounds all cool. It IS cool.

But when you take into account that the Korean soldiers in the game seem to be able to absorb a few bullets too many before they would bite the dust and that they too have the Nanosuit (albeit the Petaling Street version), your own suit doesn’t seem so cool anymore. Powerful, but definitely not invincible, as I’ve been reminded so many times by the not-so-friendly soldiers. And tanks. And gunship helicopters. And screechy aliens. And freeze-ray-spouting flying-robotic-octopuses.

The flow of the game was amazing. I was constantly on the edge of my seat (sometimes out of frustration from dying too many times) and you just feel like going on and on to find out what’s going to happen next. Gameplay is based on quite standard mechanics but brilliantly executed. Not one scene or task felt repetitive and there’s always just enough of gunfights to keep things exciting, but not too many that it felt like Serious Sam. New weaponry are introduced at appropriate intervals to keep gun battles fresh with something new to try. Enemies are varied enough to not make you think that there’s a cloning farm somewhere.

The technical aspects of the game is nothing short of mind-blowing. That’s where Crysis got all the hype in the first place. Featuring the next-gen CryEngine2 which eats graphics cards and processors for breakfast, it produces almost photo-realistic graphics. If you have a machine Spartan enough to handle it, that is. To date, I suppose no practical consumer-level machines can handle it in its full glory. If you don’t have a garden, the jungle in Crysis is the next best thing you can have.

If you do, however, have a garden please go out and enjoy it once in a while. Catch some caterpillars or something.

All the technical excellence aside, I suppose the next best thing Crysis has to offer is its open-ended gameplay. Often, you’ll come across First-Person Shooters which would tell you precisely what to do, where to go, and how you going about doing it. In Crysis, the storyline remains linear, but the how you achieve the given objectives may vary greatly depending on how you prefer to do it. Asked to disable a GPS Jammer? You can either switch on your cloak mode and sneak into the enemy base, turn off the device, and sneak out. Not a single bullet fired – objective achieved. Or, you could go into with guns ablazing, mowing down everything you see, and then turn it off. Still all good. OR, you could just climb up a hill, hide in the bushes, and fire a laser-guided rocket at the device and be done with it. OR, you could switch to Speedy Gonzales mode, run into the base, hack the device, and run off leaving your enemies dumbfounded. Such a variety of ways to tackle a mission opens up for great replayability as sometimes you wouldn’t mind dying as you get to try different tactics the next time.

Overall, I’d say Crysis has met, and even exceeded all my expectations. A simply remarkable game which has definitely earned its place among the greatest games ever made.

Portal, is a puzzle game specially developed using the Source engine and was recently released as part of The Orange Box (no, I’m not kidding). I usually never bother with puzzle games because I suck at it they’re boring. Portal however, is great fun.

There’s pretty much no storyline in the game. You wake up in some science laboratory, some computer voice tells you what to do, and you run around doing it. The end. Conceptually, things can’t get any more boring. But here, each portion is executed brilliantly. The voice that tells you what to do is hilarious. It constantly lies to you. It does not hesitate to gleefully notify you that hazards in the lab can kill you. Then it taunts while completely making a fool out of itself. When I was trying to escape the lab, it said “Where are you going? You’re not even going the right way. You should have turned left” followed by a long pause, and then it timidly said “Hello?” I was laughing hard at that.

Basically the game involves you making portals. Going into portals. Coming out of portals. Going into more portals. Make even more portals. Yeah, that’s about it. Typically, the portals lets you do really funky stuff, like you know, you go into one portal one come out from the other. Like Stargate, only a lot smaller. And you can’t travel to other planets.

By now, you’d realise my review of this game is useless. I haven’t been saying anything that is worth a dime (that’s 35 sen). If you’d like to see real, professional reviews of this game, try www.gamespot.com or www.ign.com. If you’d like to read about more pointless things from someone who has a sense of humour as dry as the Strawberry Dessert Sahara Desert and makes as much sense as 15 monkeys bashing on a keyboard, try www.tzelun.com. You’ll be amazed.

P/S: I forgot to mention that Portal’s ending song might probably be the best ending song ever. Get it here and don’t miss out the lyrics.

Title: Still Alive
Artist: Ellen McLain
Composer: Jonathan Coulton

This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.
I’m not even angry.
I’m being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we’re out of beta.
We’re releasing on time.
So I’m GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive.
Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE.
HAHA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great.
It’s so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking
when there’s Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I’m not you.
I’ve experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I’m doing Science and I’m still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I’m still alive.
While you’re dying I’ll be still alive.
And when you’re dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE

If you don’t understand, congratulations.

Anyway, this was my motherboard, and still is albeit a not working one.

A few days ago, I did something to it most people wouldn’t.

Yup. I bathed it. It has served for quite some time. 4 years and 1+ month to be exact. I thought it’d be kind of sad if I let it die in such a dusty state. So I gave it its last bath. Oh, and the first too. I must admit it looks sparkly like brand new after the bath. Except it’s not a very conventional way of cleaning motherboards. Not for any electronic devices, for that matter. But I’ll actually try to start it up again later. It might miraculously work ^.^

Last night I went out with a few friends to watch Next. The movie itself didn’t get many good reviews from critics. But I kind of liked it. Don’t worry – no spoilers here. I like the story’s concept and how things unfolded in the movie. The storyline doesn’t unfold as chronologically linear as most movie, but hey, you can expect no less from a guy who can see the future! I must admit that the ending felt a bit rushed, and rather unsatisfying, but overall it’s a unique action movie that departs from run-of-the-mill action movie concept of entertaining audience with the standard stuff like mega-explosions and karate-chops. Go watch it

 

And I must say, I was thoroughly impressed by what the new CS3 managed came up with compared to the previous CS. CS3 managed to merge almost all pictures with excellent accuracy and effectively aligned and tweaked the angles of the pictures to suit the overall picture without my help. With the same sets of pictures, CS didn’t manage to do it by itself and even when I tried I couldn’t blend the pictures well.

Here are some samples I came up with:

CS

CS3

CS

CS3

CS

CS3

Even when the pictures are so small, the distortions are obvious especially in the third sample. It is without a doubt that CS3′s photomerging has been significantly improved. I’ve been doubtful of whether or not to change to CS3 for my day-to-day use. I didn’t change to CS2 because I felt that the improvements were not significant enough and at the same time it wouldn’t work with almost all of my plugins.

But in this case, it looks like I have a good reason to keep CS3 running. If I get the chance, I’d like to try out another new feature of CS3 – Smart Objects. Maybe it’d convince me even further that it’s time to change.