WET, bloody wet

A few days ago, I finished the game called WET. The game came out in 2009. Yes, I know it's 2011 (and it's almost over) and I am playing the game 2 years old. So? I just bought my ps3 last Christmas (awesome present for myself!) and have been looking forward to buying WET and then I saw it for $15. Seriously, why pay $60 for a game when it will be reduced eventually? But that's a different subject.

WET is a game about a woman named Rubi Malone, a hired gun, who was used by a drug lord and now wants revenge or justice. I'm not going to tell you what the game is about... you can click here instead.

It's unfortunate that the game is a bit short. However, I thought it was very entertaining but in some level a bit frustrating (damn falling down and car surfing!).

First, check who does the voices...
Eliza Dushku as Rubi Malone[9]
Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Pelham
Alan Cumming as Sorrell/Ze Kollektor

What is quite enjoyable was the soundtrack! Two songs that I think is quite awesome are:

Chinatown Hustler by Notorious MSG (Yes, MSG! As in monosodium glutamate!)


And

She's Lost Control by The Arkhams


Another cool thing is, there's an option to trigger the "film" effect. Although, there were these annoying "commercials" that appears after a level. I think they try to make it like you are watching a film and sometimes when your health is low, the film effect gets in the way but effect is cool.

Monkeys... what's up with the toy Monkey?!

I was impressed with the background though. When you are in Hong Kong, the background harbour is of the Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. However, whether it's Chinatown, San Fransisco or Hong Kong... some of the Chinese were backwards.

Another awesome part of WET... is Rage Mode. Rage Mode happens if lots of blood get splattered onto Rubi's face and the whole fight sequence is now in this red, white and black screen. I think it's funny.

Now, I was actually disappointed by the game ending... so, if you have no played don't read on!





Are you sure???




So, the ending of the game was a button minigame... instead of an actually fight boss.

But hey, in the end, Rubi kills everyone that needs to die and wins.

Some games are just lame to the max!

Last week, I was at a store and picked up a ps3 games for $15 then I saw "Invizimals" and went to check the price - $19.99 - not bad.

What I was really interested in was the camera. Since the PSP now support Skype, I wanted the camera for skype but did not want to buy it off ebay. I did ask someone to pick up the psp-300 in Hong Kong but they forgot. No problem. The reason for getting the psp-300 was because my psp was running 5.03 Prometheus 3 custome firmware (CFW) and the new psp-450x required official firmware (ofw) 6.00 and above. I was hesitant with upgrade to newer ofw since at that time (5 months ago), there weren't much support for cfw on the new ofw.

Now months later... psp ofw is 6.60... prometheus 3 obsolete... the need to use the camera... must update! I contemplated in updating to 6.60 but decided to use 6.20 instead.

Now, the price of the original Invizimals game with camera was $39.99 and the camera that comes with it is psp-450x model and it looks sleeker (even though it has lower grade pixel). I didn't care for the game so I kept putting off buying it. Now that it's $19.99... I can buy it and sell the game.

Today (about 3 hours ago), I finally got around to updating my psp and now I am running on 6.20 PRO B10 (just released this past week) and it was a simple update. You don't have to deal with any HEN!

Now with updated cfw, I tested out the camera et voila! Works! And then I thought, "why not give this invizimal a try... can't be that bad."

Oops...

First, I get the point of the game of "capturing" these invisible animals... and the concept is pretty neat. However, it must be my age and the type of game that I play, Invizimals seems to be geared towards the much younger crowd - say, children at like 5-10 years old? The kind of age that thinks everything "is so COOL!" The age where Pokemon is awesome... And this game is like Pokemon on steroids... and I never liked Pokemon to begin with.



I really tried... I spend like 30min playing it, "capturing" these invizimals. But there was a level of lame that screamed "stupid game." You know, I get it... children will like it. They have a "whole world" to discover. But I thought the video tutorials were a bit lame. You can actually tell they are acting for the 5-10 years old.

"There is this world of invisible animals we can capture."
"Oh, you found the Porcupain! He is very shy so you can't let him see you."

Hence why this is a CHILDREN'S game... Still, the lameless of the acting is just a facepalm for me.

If you have kids that is like 5-10, the game is perfect... any children older then 12 will see it as stupid.

Maybe I'm just too old for these kinds of games...

But then, people must love this game... there's a sequel...

NHL Re-Alignment, Part 3

And hopefully, this is the last time my brain does this...

So, here we go...

First, there will not be 4 Canadian teams in the same division as written by Bob McKenzie.

So, this is the current division.

East
Northeast
Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic
New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins

Southeast
Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightnings, Washington Capitals, Winnipeg Jets

West
Central
Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues

Pacific
Anaheim Ducks, Dallas Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks

Northwest
Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wilds, Vancouver Canucks


So, the first possible solution (as previously stated) is to move the Winnipeg Jets to the Central division and swap places with Nashville Predators. Because this is the only possible solution that helps team cut down travel cost. However, since Detroit stays in the Western Conference, I think then Detroit should have a say in their game's start time. For example, all weekend games that Detroit plays in the Pacific time zone will start at 4pm OST, 4:30pm PST or 5pm PST at the latest and all weekday games will start by 6pm PST.


Solution 2
The "geographically correct" divisions (because Vancouver is really on the Pacific coast and Dallas is nowhere close to Pacific Ocean)

East
Northeast
Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic
New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins

Southeast
Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightnings, Washington Capitals

West
Central
Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Dallas Stars, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues

Pacific
Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks, Vancouver Canucks

Midwest
Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wilds, Winnipeg Jets

This moves Columbus to the Southeast division and Detroit stays. So, Detroit will again have a say in their game's start time.

Solution 3
The "Detroit in the East" Solution

East
Northeast
Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic
Boston Bruins, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers

Southeast
Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Tampa Bay Lightnings, Washington Capitals

West
Central
Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues

Pacific
Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks, Vancouver Canucks

Midwest
Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wilds, Winnipeg Jets

The only problem is I had to break up Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

I think the most simple and less headache is to swap Winnipeg and Nashville and give Detroit the autonomy on game start time.

I am done with the realignment issue...

Kingdom Hearts

Specifically, "Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep" for the PSP.

I was introduced to the game on PS2 and played through Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II.

I understand that sometimes companies like to make a prequel to current titles (ie. God of War for PSP). It makes playing the game and understand the story fun. However, I have a slight issue with Kingdom Hearts. While the story shouldn't be that confusing, it is the release of the games that annoys me.

So, according to the Kingdom Hearts wikipedia, this is the order of the games...

Birth by Sleep (PSP)
Kingdom Hearts (PS2)
Chain of Memories (GBA, re-released on PS2)
358/2 Days (NDS)
Kingdom Hearts II (PS2)
coded (mobile phone)
Dream Drop Distance (future title)
Kingdom Hearts III (future title)

Here's the issue... they released games on other platform that some fans may own. They did re-release some on PS2 but some titles were only available in Japan. I don't think I would spend money on a console for just ONE game.

I thought Birth by Sleep was pretty fun in game play. The fact that you need to play ALL three characters to understand the whole story makes the game that much more re-playable. Although, each character's game play is only about 8-10 hours depends on if you are the treasure loving person. And if you collect all of them, you there is a "Final Episode" that concludes all three storylines.

Which brings me to my issue... what the heck happened? Birth by Sleep (BbS) is suppose to be the prequel to Kingdom Hearts (KH) but after finishing BbS, I am having trouble connecting the stories. How does the 3 characters link to the KH main characters? What's gonna happen to the girl who sacrificed herself to save her friends?

Gameplay wise, it's just like the original KH but I find that sometimes the buttons would not respond to what I do and I get killed... one thing I did learn from this game is how the "block" is quite handy in beating bosses. You could literally stand there, smash the block key and counter attack and win.

I think I need to replay KH and KH2...

Hercules and Xena - The Animated Movie: The Battle for Mount Olympus

That's a mouthful title, isn't it?

So where do I begin? First... THIS because it's easier for you to click on IMDB's webpage and read about it.

Then watch this:


Earlier this year I lost 300GB of stuff on my hard drive. I still haven't been able to access it without paying way too much money for those data recovery service. In the past few days (or week), I have been redownloading everything that I had... or at least, that I can remember. I had photos, movies, musics, ebooks, comics and tv shows. This was not a part of the lost data. However, I'd figure it is better to have a digital copy then to go and dig out my VHS tape. Yes, you read that right... VHS tape!

This movie was released in 1997 (and I was still in high school) and I remember seeing the VHS being sold in my weekly flyer at a store called "Bi-Way." It is an early 90s version of an upscale dollar store, sorta speak. And this VHS was advertised for $14.99CAD and I think I cut the ad down and saved it in some box somewhere in my house.

Being a fan of Hercules and Xena TV Show, I really wanted this. It was direct to home video. I may eventually go and find the DVD copy (for the extras) but the downloaded version will have to do.

If you recall the year 1997, Power Rangers was in its 3rd spin-off as "Power Rangers Turbo." Fox Kids was literally at its height. You have cartoons like Spiderman, X-Men, and there were some Batman cartoon. So, it was some good times.

When I popped in the VHS into the VCR (google them if you have no clue what a VHS and VCR is), I was very confused! And almost 15 years later, I am still confused. Watch the trailer again...

What I found really strange was the quality of the animation. It was done in a very 1950s era cartoon like Bugs Bunny or even 1960s Spiderman. I am not sure if they wanted to keep the budget low or done in an artistic way. Some of the scene's background are a very nice looking painting...

Another thing about the animation is... all the character's were left handed. I can never figure out if this was because the animators (all Koreans as seen at the end credits) were drawing a mirror image of themselves or they were all left handed. Some scenes were showing them as right handed but it was only 10% and it is these minor things that bugs me.

Now that I rewatched again, boy did the script not live up to its live action show. There were no depth. It seems to be one of those "ok, height of the TV shows... let's milk it for what it's worth." There were some humours in the animation but it certainly missed the "Oomph" of the TV show.

The highlight, of course, is hearing Kevin Sorbo (Hercules), Lucy Lawless (Xena), Michael Hurst (Iolaus), Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle), and the late Kevin Smith (Ares) reprise the role for the animation. Also as a treat, fans of the show get to hear Lucy Lawless sing! (It's about half way through the movie)

As a fan of the show, I still love it even with the cheese factor to the max. Although, I am really not sure where the VHS is...

There are other Hercules and Xena related media out there. However, I have actually been disappointed with most of them.

Hercules: The Legendary Journey comics released by Topps
Xena: Warrior Princess comics released by three different companies: Topps, Dark Horse and Dynamite
A Hercules: The Legendary Journey Game Boy Color game...
A very poor Xena: Warrior Princess Game Boy Color game
A Hercules: The Legendary Journey N64 game
A Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate N64 game that is a fighting game
A pretty decent Xena: Warrior Princess Playstation (PS1) game
A horrifically TERRIBLE Xena: Warrior Princess Playstation 2 game that's only available in UK PAL (and I downloaded this... it's VERY boring. I'm not even sure if it's worth buying for collection)

Some fans are still waiting for this Xena movie... I think most fans would be happy if they made a game with the show's writer and gave the game a God of War like treatment. I will post my idea in another post...

JP Arencibia Autograph Rookie Card

So, last week on twitter, Toronto Blue Jays' rookie catcher JP Arencibia tweeted a contest that Topps, the trading card company, was giving away an autograph rookie card signed by JP himself.

I saw that on my blackberry and though "hey, why not?" and followed Topps... 2 days later, I received a mention from Topps that said I won...

My first thought was, "seriously? I won? Really? Of the 7000+ followers that Topps have, I won?" then I just laughed and replied "Omg... I just won a @jparencibia9 autograph card!! Thank you @toppscards how do I get it now?? Lol"

Well, no joke. I send them my address and today... I saw a package on my door step.


Yes, it was a bit dirty. But that's ok, it's what inside that counts...


Package within a package? UPS? How dare they just leave it at the door step... what if someone just took it?? Topps didn't use the signature required option which would cost an extra $5? But I got it, that's all that matters...


Woah! Talk about a package within a package within a package! Now THAT'S security!


We're finally here!! One autographed JP Arencibia rookie card!

What's really nice about this is that the picture on the card was his first game and his curtain call!

This was his line for the game:

4-5 (2HR, 2B, 1B, 3RBI)

Now, I have a piece of JP... at least, his autograph.

Why can't today's video game be like what it used to be?

Last week, I finished playing Red Dead Redemption (RDR). It was $20 from Wal-Mart... watched some gameplay video on youtube and thought it might be a fun game to play. It was... but (and you know there's always a but!) why is there no "ending?"

I went and played online a bit. It was ok. However, I think I really missed the good 'ol multiplayer online days (I used to play Quake II) but that is besides the point.

I am almost done playing Ratchet and Clank: Crack in Time. I love the series: great humour, awesome weapons and a lovable Lombax.

I think I'm going off topic...

So, remember the good old days of console gaming? I mean, even I would consider the Playstation 2 a "good old days."

My problems with current games and consoles...

1) The games "never ends." Great examples? Assassin's Creed series and Red Dead Redemption (because I own and played them). You finished the story but you can still continue to play the game without REALLY finishing the game. The only point to continue is to collect things which doesn't do much for the storyline. Sure, it's great to unlock the "unicorn" or the "golden gun" but ask yourself this, "does it help with gameplay?" NO! Now that you've got the most powerful item in the game... there is no one to terrorize! And once you're done collecting, now what? Yes, you can play the side stories but isn't it more entertaining to play them WHILE playing the story and not after the fact? There is no more big bad boss to fight... no ridiculous impossible side mission (maybe there is but I usually finish most side missions within the game)... and don't go picking on NPC (Non-Playing Character), they just run like headless chicken!

2) Developers make a decent game but with a half-ass job. You KNOW what I'm talking about? If you don't, let me use Assassin's Creed II (AC2) as an example. Yes? Understand now? No? I shall explain it in details.

Assassin's Creed II... such a nice conspiracy story and you just finished "Sequence 11" and it just jumps to "Sequence 14." What the fuck?! How can there be 2 sequence missing? The game character says, they "can't access corrupted memory." And THEN you realized that it's not "missing," they just want you to pay to complete the story! But if you bought the PC version, all the memories are there. THAT is such a rip-off. Not only did you just pay $40 for a game, you now have you shell out another $10-$15 so you can complete the whole friggin' story!

There is a difference between adding more content to enhance a game (like expansion Undead Nightmare for RDR or map packs for Call of Duty, etc - and you know what? People used to do this for free as a mod) and making section of games missing.

This image best illustrate the problem/issue:


Why can't they just make a game that has an ending and when you're done, you're done? Ratchet and Clank and God of War has done it right... finish the game, try your luck on harder level or with cheats! Or do what inFamous has done, 2 different endings (which I've only finished the Good side...).

3) Collecting things... Yes, it's cool to collect things that unlock things to enhance gameplay... but do you have to make some achievement ridiculously difficult? Or maybe I just suck sometimes. I don't have time or the patients to try to achieve some ridonculous "skills."

4) While we're on the topic of collecting things... trophies, trophies, trophies. Playstaion 3, I am looking at YOU! All the games have a notorious "platinum" trophy which I like to dub "Have no life except to try to collect everything" trophy. I really have nothing against collecting trophies. I actually think it is a cool thing when you hear "ding!" and you see you've unlocked a trophy. But seriously, to collect all the trophies to get the grand fromage trophy is excessive, don't you think?

I don't play much multiplayer with my console (for games like Call of Duty, I will always be a keyboard and mouse gal!) and some games (Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (ACB), RDR, Little Big Planet) contain trophies that can only be achieved through multiplayer. What's more, if you buy a game that was released a few years ago and a sequel was then released, the chance of you getting that "community" trophy is almost impossible if everyone have moved onto playing the new version.

5) I should get a 5th point in... it doesn't bug me as much but it's still an important point. $60 for games newly released... They eventually drop in prices to $30. I know they have to pay their programmers, testers, graphic designers and voice over people. But why would I spend $60 on a game that will eventually drop in price? Assassin's Creed games drops almost 50% within 6 months... I got ACB for $20 (Wal-mart had priced it for $20 and Futureshop still had it for $60... price matched and $18 for the game). True that some games may be sold out and probably worth the $50-$60 price tag (Remember Dance Dance Revolution? It was a revolution alright... impossible to find. I luckily got a copy of Dance Dance Revolution Disney mix for $25 off ebay, I think it still sells for $70-$100 off ebay - just search "dance revolution disney mix, NTSC-US version $70!)

No, I'm not done with money... Another thing that annoys me is now they release "Collector's Edition" which I don't know how "collectible" they are. I suppose if you buy and keep it sealed yes. But who will actually go and spend $200 to buy TWO copies (they cost $100 each)? And what you get is trinkets... AS2 has its Ezio statue, inFamous2 has its usable pouch/bag (which I saw someone use at Fan Expo in Toronto), God of War III has its plastic box.

I do have some of these collectibles because I grew up playing them on TurboGrafx-16... the Ys games for PSP that was release in North America by Xseed... the "Premium Edition" has a music CD while another one had this cloth map, and it only cost $40.

When Street Fighter 2: 15th Anniversary came out for PS2, I did buy it and it came with an Akuma plastic bust... It was free. Hey, I'm not going to complain!



If I really like the series and if the collectible is cool, I think I will buy it... but not at the price of $100.

And just to end off this blog, I post a picture from RDR:

I do find this funny because it's a Chinese laundromat in the "mid-west" where racism is probably a common thing. The Chinese writing? "Welcome."