Hey here’s a new blog feature: Video blogging by yours truly! (WEWT!?!?!)
Here’s a brief history video of what I’ve been through fixing my repeatedly-breaking Guitar Hero drum kit.
In case you haven’t noticed, Guitar Hero drum kits aren’t very durable. I’ve been fixing the snare on and off for about 7 or so times now. The left cymbal broke this week, sort of fixed it now but there’s a small chance of double hit, so I swapped with the right cymbal. The kick pedal has undergone more than 10+ sensitivity mods and fixes. One drumstick holder snapped off. There’s the usual problem of the whole kit sinking down during gameplay, which I plan on drilling a hole through the stand for, to keep it from collapsing.
But now the actual plastic thing under the rubber pad is split in half on my snare. Which is total lolz. I’m still trying to determine if it will affect gameplay or not, but the snare now sounds more hollow when you hit it, and I might be getting double hits on it rarely. Oh well.
Hey, want to ask me how many times I had to fix my Rock Band kit? Hint: its less than 1. (Kinda. I forgot that I snapped my Rock Band bass pedal and added a metal plate to reattach it. Ever since then, I’ve had zero problems, and not like this.)
Hey! Have you heard? The Playstation 3 is crap, and this is another link to prove it. But this time, an industry game publishing giant will tell you.
You might have heard of a certain company called Activision, the largest third party game publisher in the world. (They recently beat Electronic Arts from being the largest.) They publish and make some of the biggest, most popular game franchises around. You may have heard of them too: Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and Call of Duty – you know, the good stuff. Let’s also not forget, that Activision is owned by Vivendi games now. Vivendi also owns Blizzard, which you remember, makes small, casual, not million-selling PC games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft – you know, solitaire-like games. (Non-Sarcastic Version: Blizzard makes some of the most highly rated games on the PC and have sold millions of copies on any one of their franchises.)
So, we can definitely say, that whatever Mr. Activision Boss Bobby Kotick says, would hold to be a lot more credible than just regular opinionated do. Am I right? Good. Now, hear what he has to say.
I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation.
They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony…When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console – and the PSP [portable] too.
Source: Kotaku and UK Times Online.
My Quote?
BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!
This June, gaming news has been a blur. The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), also known as the largest gaming convention in the world, came and went. Among the huge stories that came about in the conference was a shocking announcement for Left 4 Dead 2 – coming this year on November 17.
We all remember Left 4 Dead 1 like it was yesterday. In fact, it was yesterday – November 18, 2008 to be exact. Left 4 Dead is an amazing cooperative multiplayer game against the Zombie horde (referred to in-game as infected, not actually zombies). Yours truly have spent many a late nights (and early mornings) playing L4D1 on my Xbox 360 with my friends, and for a short time during a free weekend, on the PC. (There is no PS3 version of most Valve games because the PS3 architecture is too complicated. Source.)
Left 4 Dead has been immensely popular to a ton of people and a huge pop culture following has shown up with interesting cosplay, shwag, fanart, and various other rabid fandom culture paraphernalia.
Which makes this announcement even more shocking. Left 4 Dead 2 seems like it will usher in a new era too soon. While everybody still holds their 4 survivors near and dear to their hearts. Valve came out trying to rip away those beloved characters from you and replace them with new ones. It does seem quite early for a sequel – And too early to stop supporting L4D1. Its highly unusual for Valve to stop supporting its games post-release though, so either they’ll support both or what gives?
Some fans have not taken kindly to the announcement and have gone petition public with their grievances. Valve has then come out with a response citing that people will understand their reasons for making a full blown sequel and possibly separating the fanbase from L4D1 players and L4D2 players. I for one, will be very sad if I see half of my friends playing L4D1 and half of them playing L4D2, both sending me invites to their game.
Based from that same response though, it seems that Valve, as the great software programmers that they are, (they brought us the last bastion of PC gaming, Steam) is trying to come up with a solution of possible inter-operability. Which is great, and reminds me of Rock Band 1 and 2.
Rock Band 1 was a great game, and Rock Band 2 was even better. The great minds at Harmonix Systems came up with a great way to import all your songs from RB1 to 2 in a quick-and-easy $5 importing process. Not only that, all the songs you’ve downloaded for both games are playable on the other. This gives tremendous amounts of replayability for the games, especially for Rock Band 2 (which gets the bulk of all your RB1 songs anyway). What this means is you only need to have the RB2 disc in to play all the songs from across all the games you have.
My idea for Left 4 Dead 2 is almost similar. What if L4D2 allow you to import L4D1 and allow you to play against owners of both games without needing to switch games? Assuming you own both games, switching between them would be a hassle nobody would ever want to go through. If L4D2 allowed you to play on both games at once, (provided you prove ownership of both games) then both L4D1 players and L4D2 players won’t lose their respective coop friends. The only real limitation here would be that the owners of L4D1 wouldn’t be able to play L4D2 unless they buy it, which is pretty much assumed. The great part here is that the L4D2 community wouldn’t be split from the L4D1 community – and that would make us all a lot more zombie-ready when the real apocalypse happens in 2014.
Here’s a funny 3-part link-chain that’s pretty damn awesome, if you happen to like Team Fortress 2, and more importantly, Horatio Caine one-liners. YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa!!
First, watch Team Fortress 2’s “Meet the Spy”.
Then, check out this little picture. If it doesn’t make sense, watch part 3.
(Pictures/Comedy stolen from Kotaku commenter: BubbleF**kingBuddy)
Finally, if you still don’t get it, watch this:
Ok, seriously.
Someone needs to take that Spy video…
*puts on sunglasses*
then record and edit the dialouge in.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!1111
Remember Jose Rizal? Ogie Alcasid Says He Got Shot Because He And His Blue Eagle Ilk Are Douchebags.
…and apparently not because he was trying to free the country from 333 years of Spanish rule.
And I thought La Sallistas were classier than this:
And the original Ogie and friends rendition can be found here.
I was about to leave this alone as another childish college flame war video/song, but the comment on Rizal is seriously just wrong. You can burn all the college students all you want, don’t diss on heroes. They shit you for breakfast mofo. You diss college students, they fight back. You diss heroes, they’re dead. They’ve died. They died so you can make make crappy videos on the internet dissing them in your pathetic life of freedom.
Rizal? O ya?! Someone busted his cap. Probably cause he was an Atenista, not because he was doing anything else, like taking a bullet for your sorry ass.
College flame wars is already retarded on its own. In fact, college flame wars is like the special olympics, win or lose, you’re still retarded. But unlike the amazing respect I have for special olympians, you get none at all. If you’re going to go at it, at least have a little class and leave the national heroes out of it.
At this point, my dear La Salle friends, I’d rather be Blue than be you.
Word.
While talking to a friend today, after all the Mother’s day festivities, (Mom doesn’t like big mom day shenanigans, so I said I was hungry and so we drove off and took home some MickeyD’s for the family. It was her special day so I made sure we got Coke Zero, instead of the usual sugar for us, Zero for her and dad.) we got into the discussion of how he could best sell his cars from the Mitsubishi dealer he works for. (Mikko Ambrosio, Mitsu sales)
So I got to talking about network building, (to increase the amount of professional and personal contacts that you have) and the topic soon turned into my Mom’s amazing social network skills:
My mom is big on this stuff. When I was a kid she’d bring me along to her network building stuff, and obviously I didn’t really understand it. I was a kid, I get bored. Why am I here spending 5 hours waiting for my mom to stop talking to missus number 93?
But yeah, these days. I do the same to some extent. It helps with small details and maybe information gathering. Sometimes if you’re friendly, and spend some time with people, they’ll give you information. Like people they also know that they can refer you to.
My mom built her network on that. And when she was done, she’d have all kinds of professionals in her list so if we ever need anything from an experienced carpenter to the best brain surgeon in town, she’d have already talked to them to an extent and know them and/or their families.
Did you know the doctor who did my knee surgery, is the husband of the sister of the husband(?) of my cousin in Pampanga? Got the price down so low from that. More than halved the price of the surgery. All thanks to Mom’s super network skill.
Yup. Mom’s crazy.
Happy Mothers Day!
Everyday it seems, we get news of how Sony’s Playstation 3 manages to completely suck despite its amazing amount of arrogant PR from its executives. Today we’ll talk about Lost Planet 2. But before that, a history:
You may remember Lost Planet 1 as something of a near-Xbox 360 launch title back in January 2007. It garnered some great reviews from the gaming press, and brought the masses into the next generation (of Capcom third person shooters). Not only that, Capcom’s risky foray into Western-style next-gen development paid off big with Lost Planet and their (Xbox 360 exclusive) zombie-survival game Dead Rising as they have both gone off to sell millions.
13 months after the release of the original Xbox 360 Lost Planet, Lost Planet PS3 came out (Feb 2008). And it was crap. The PS3 version is:
graphically inferior to the Xbox 360 version. The game’s textures seem a lot less crisp compared to the 360 version, and we found more obvious instances of jaggies and artifacting in the PS3 version (and more frequent occurrences). Frame rate seemed to hold steady for most of the game, with some noticeable slowdown during especially crowded firefights. And in what seems to be the norm for recent Capcom PS3 games (such as Devil May Cry 4), you are forced to go through an installation process at Lost Planet’s initial setup–our install took roughly 12 minutes.
(Review quote from: Gamespot)
Colour balance is generally worse, with a bleached out effect that wipes out a lot of the more intricate detail, but far more offensive is the inclusion of horrible motion blur and some truly horrendous frame-rate drops.
(Screenshot and quote from: Eurogamer)
Hey awesome! You get a shittier version of the game the Xbox crowd was playing 13 months ago! Gotta love them PS3s! (Hey if you still want to rub it in, call out Dead Rising and its maintained exclusivity to the Xbox 360 platform.)
Fast forward a year and some change, Lost Planet 2 is on the horizon. Most believe that, Capcom, a company that isn’t a big fan of console exclusives, would release Lost Planet 2 for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3. But there hasn’t been news from the Playstation side of things, and the press releases have been exclusively brought on the Xbox 360 console. What gives? Apparently, only an Xbox 360 version and a PC version is currently planned. (Which doesn’t say if it will either forgo a PS3 version or decide if one would be feasible later.) Source: Kotaku
So what does this mean? Its possible that Microsoft may be in negotiations to keep Capcom’s game exclusive, though I highly doubt it. I bet that the development for the PS3 version is either taking a while (because the Playstation 3 is a biatch to work on) or is on-hold at the moment. Which explains why they can’t announce a version for Sony’s console. (Can you imagine what would happen if a Playstation 3 version came out months later and it was graphically inferior to the Xbox 360 version, again?!) Its also possible that Capcom is considering on waiting for further proof that they would have a large enough audience on the Playstation to warrant development for it. (Which basically means they don’t think the Playstation 3 is not a viable platform for titles like these.)
Either way, none of these possibilities proves to be a merit for our Sony pals. I hate repeating myself, but Sony really is in the shitter. And no, their arrogant PR execs isn’t exactly winning any sympathy from me.
Here’s a quote from my post regarding the iPhone:
I’d love to hate the iPhone but at this point I can’t yet. Its got the best touchscreen in the business and the smoothest user experience thus far. The main draw is that the iPhone uses a capacitative touchscreen instead of a resistive one. The former reacts to your skin’s electrical conductivity, while the latter relies on physical deformation (resisting/pushing/pressing) of the screen. It enables the iPhone (and any future capacitative products) to have a very accurate and sensitive touchscreen compared to everything else.
Couple that with Apple’s stylish, snappy interface, and you have a phone you’ll love just tapping on. The built in Safari browser is the best mobile one so far, even without the support for Flash. (most streaming video and colorful websites use Flash intensively) YouTube can be viewed via an application on the phone separate from the Safari browser.
The only reasons you or I shouldn’t run out to get an iPhone might be based on our preferences (or business needs). Some notable considerations include:
1.) Data plans in the Philippines suck. Considering that regular iPhones are locked into Globe, you’d find it funny to learn that Globe’s internet through its “high speed” 3G network is horribly sluggish. Without the internet, the iPhone’s capabilities are limited – possibly even negating the need for the large touchscreen. I mean, do you really need a big screen to call people and/or text?
If you can get Wifi in the places you frequent, then this shouldn’t be an issue. Plus it wouldn’t cost you a ton from Globe.
2.) Not the best business phone – I believe Apple just recently updated the iPhone software to include Push E-mail. Which is a big thing for business-savvy people. It enables your e-mail to be automatically sent to your phone, and replied on your phone, whereever you are. It still lacks a few more standard business functions similar to that. The lack of a real Querty keyboard also hurts your typing speed a wee bit. If you’re going to be using one, I’d imagine you wouldn’t be typing blog posts in it – but you’d easily type a couple paragraphs on a comfortable querty-phone.
3.) No decent camera. I’m way into this one. The reason I chose my current phone is its powerful camera and flash (5MP and xenon flash – digicams use xenon). The iPhone has a 2 megapixel shooter with no flash. While useful for small prints and viewing in small LCD screens, it wouldn’t blow up nice and would generally be dark. I don’t bring a camera unless I’m sure there are formal, social occasions, but then that means I’d lose all the chances of taking pictures whenever I didn’t bring one. Hence, the built-in camera preference. I’ve been in more than a few social occasions where nobody’s brought their cameras and my phone was there to the rescue. What’s more, and the iPhone has this, is GPS-tagging photos. So when I go back to my gallery, I can pinpoint exactly where in Palawan this wierd shaped island I took a picture of is. A small detail, but I like it.
4.) Apple’s slighty monopolistic products – be ready to like iTunes, the software that you need to sync your iPhone with your computer. If you have an iPod, this shouldn’t matter, but if you like choice, Apple isn’t for you. Some accessories, chargers, and products need to be Apple approved products, as there are no generic USB cables or similar. There is no memory card slot either.
In the end, you’d have to consider what you’re planning to use the phone for. What I find most often with iPhone owners is that they rarely ever pull it out and use it, possibly because you can’t really do much in them unless you have an internet connection. Buying an iPhone for just voice calls and text messages is a complete waste, even if you consider the fact that its a fun, stylish phone. If you were planning on using the iPhone’s browser and multimedia functions a lot more, then a purchase will be more warranted. If you were planning on tapping out a lot of e-mails, texts, and any business-minded activities, you should pick out a great querty-phone like a Blackberry or the E71.
Personally, I’m into travelling, night spots, social events, and any spontaneous activities in between, so my choice is a xenon flash-equipped cameraphone – to capture the moments even at night. It instantly gives you and your friends a use for the phone as a form of a.) view pictures of previous social events or b.) take new pictures. I can find no way to introduce an iPhone into a social crowd save the fact that they can tap on the screen and swipe around pre-saved pictures you took out of your computer. Not exciting at all.
Whew! I hope that helps.
Wait What? The PS3 & Japan Only Shameful RPG Got an Xbox360 Version? Guess The PS3 Really Is In The Shitter.
Back in the day, when the world was young, the PS3 seemed to have an advantage over the Xbox 360, especially in Japan. Why? Because Japan likes naked cartoon chicks. Microsoft isn’t exactly the best at making them. Sony is in Japan. Hence, naked cartoon chicks games were bound to come out on the Playstation 3. Case in point, Record of Agarest War. (Disclaimer: they’re not actually naked, but its suggestive as hell – like most JRPGs.)
But wait! As with most Sony Playstation 3 exclusives, this one seems to have gone the way of its other exclusive predecessors – multiplatform. An Xbox 360 version is now out, and has a (kinda NSFW) slight aesthetic difference.
That said, I’ve only recently learned of this development when a European company has listed the same game for a release (in Europe most probably). Why this news has escaped me for so long is probably something I should look at. I must have missed it in the long list of dumb shit Sony can’t do right news flood.
So Remember Kids, Hentai is Child Porn. In Other News Today, A Ton of People Facepalmed.
The Philippine government hasn’t exactly had a smooth track record of brain-related use. I mean, that’s why we’ve had, what, a hundred EDSA revolutions, right? (Whatever did our forefathers and mothers do before EDSA was named EDSA?)
Anyway, recently, the government pulled out another big can of stinking fail when it unleashed the: Animated Japanese Porn is Child Pornography bill. So yeah. Quick quiz: Is Hentai completely about children? Apparently it is.
So as with most govfails we pass the thing around our blogosphere, and like a tin-can full of fart, we wince and cover our noses as the stink wafts through. I guess today is my turn.
Originally found from this link here. Also, if you are viewing said link in the company of any Congressional figures, don’t click on any other links or pictures in the site. (Reading the comments is truly inspiring too.)
