Comments (8)

By maskawaih, April 20, 2009 12:58 AM

I wasn’t sure why I chose the title above. Apparently I was drafting this post on Thursday after my presentation for MDeC preseed at Cyberjaya. But I was pretty lazy to finish it up. To sum up something related on the day, it was pretty hectic which gradually turned to mellow. My friend, Amin, had his presentation as well. Despite his best efforts to convince the judges, it seemed they couldn’t accept much of his idea. Basically speaking, the result would likely be a negative notion. Honestly speaking, I was quite a little bit slacking because of my crowded weeks earlier. Well, hearing unconvincing news from him made me doubting my luck. So there I went to the Innovation Center inside MMU with my other friend, Sapri.

Bloody hell

We arrived there at around 2:00 pm. There were some other people there as well. Pretty much my guess of them being some sort of participants were true as they’re also being called for presentations of their ideas soon after. My team’s presentation was supposed on 2:30 pm. When it was about the time, our group number hadn’t been called yet. I don’t really mind at that time because there were like many other groups there. But waiting until like 4:30 pm was really something. Well, according to the time table given, our group will be the last to present on that day and also for this batch as well. But only after some waiting of nearly 3 hours, even my confidence level was certainly reduced. Then again, why don’t we give the best of ours? After we were called to enter the room, the environment inside was quite pleasant. Not because there were some pretty chicks inside but the judges were calm and didn’t show any sign of fatigueness. Quite amazing as they were judging people’s ideas from the morning until that late afternoon. So we immediately started the presentation. After a brief presentation about our idea then the best part came, Q&A. They kinda like the idea of ours and started asking this and that. I believed I managed to give my best answers to them. Upon a question where I was asked by a judge of what may I proceed after finishing the project, I saw a brighter light. Though another judge quickly stated, “IF your idea approved” and they laughed gently. After that I went back to the office before going home.

BOOM! HEADSHOTS!

I did a few things at office on Friday. Well, I have to present my Masters’ progress report on the Wednesday, next week. Yeah, the semester kinda wrapping up before break (but no off days for working guys like me). But most importantly on that day was the yesterday’s results. My friends and I were waiting like until the end of the day before the results were sent to our emails inbox. I was kinda pessismist earlier though I do have high hope for my chances in getting good news. Amin’s proposal was rejected as he received an email from them. I only getting my email later on where my team is granted for approval cycle which means I will be having a second pitching with approval committees. Thank God.

Time for Siegheil

As I went back home, my copy of Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor just arrived. Oh, my PC was fixed, thanks to linkinstreet. But I lost a partition tho where my video collections of Minorin vanished. Yeah, pretty sad. Fishing sad ;_; Back to ToV, this is one of the game that I certainly buying it as I stated before. While there are some sort of additions, the 3 campaigns kinda short. Each campaign has 3 missions only. Within few hours, I finished all the campaigns and unlocked customizable units for multiplayer game. The AI pretty smart though. Previously when my friends and I were playing against Expert AIs, we could beat them easily but this new expansion brings better AI to fight with. Currently we were facing defeat by defeat as quitting the game halfway will be counted as a loss now.

Nutbladder 2: Return of Wideface

So, I went to Lowyat Plaza on the next day. Sora and I were planning to exchange PS3 games between us. I wanted to borrow his Disgaea 3 while he wants to play Valkyria Chronicles. It’s been a long time I haven’t had weekly /AS/ gath at Lemon Food Court. In the same time, Sora wanted to meet linkinstreet because he borrowed Rin Tohsaka and Haruhi Suzumiya figmas from linkinstreet long time ago and he wanted to return them back.  As usual I parked at Berjaya Times Square. Simply because it will be easier for me to go to KL-Seremban highway for going back home from there compared to Lowyat Plaza’s basement carpark. Since there’s Borders bookstore at BTS, I went there first. Finally, there’s Hidamari Sketch (Sunshine Sketch) volume 2 released. Immediately I bought the manga and grinned until my face became wideface. Then I proceed to the gath. Well, I gave to Sora my Valkyria’s game but Sora forgot to bring his Disgaea 3. Cibailancaufuck you Sora. After having lunch, talkcocks and whatever, we went around to find good deal for Sora’s memory stick. He wanted to buy a 4gb memory stick for his PSP. So there we strolled around from floor to floor. After strolling through several shops, we went to All IT Hypermarket at the 3rd floor there. While finding the thing the he wanted, I saw some LCD monitors. Range of brands and sizes. First, I was looking at Samsung. The 24″ LCD monitor was like just below RM 900 but no HDMI though. Well, not bad as it’s Samsung after all. Previously I had a thought of getting the Dell S2409W as it’s priced at RM 729. Of course I can only buy that LCD online which requires a credit card. After looking through Samsung monitors, I saw an Acer monitor there. Hmm, 23″ and priced at RM 669. So I looked at its specs; VGA/DVI/HDMI supports and Full HD 1080 resolution. Wait whut? I went to an ATM out there, forked out some money and then bought the LCD lol. Man, ever wonder how cool is that. Even the Samsung 24″ HDMI monitors are usually priced over RM 1000.

Acer H233H

My one year old Samsung 22" LCD monitor

Dual widescreens anyone?

I plan to sell my old monitor to linkinstreet. I was about to give the monitor to him on Sunday but it was raining heavily just now. Perhaps, next time.

Cool things about Acer H233H:

• It supports resolution up to 1920 x 1080. Widescreen. Full HD.
• It has VGA, DVI and HDMI slots.
• Audio output for sound from HDMI source.
• Sleek panel and the buttons are like touch-panel rather than actual buttons.
• Input button that cycle through inputs from sources. Which means I no longer need to connect/disconnect my cables to switch between PC and PS3.
• It comes with cables for all inputs. (I nearly buy an HDMI cable previously)
• It’s RM 669!

Meh things about it:

• The whole size of the monitor is not exactly that bigger than my Samsung.
• The screen is like a mirror. Too much reflections especially during the day compared to my old one.
• Bigger resolution means more burden to my Ati HD4850 graphic cards. So I have to reduce some details to make my game smoother.
• It’s kinda hard to find cool anime wallpapers at such resolution.

After all, it’s a good deal. Welcome to the Full HD World.

Comments (4)

By maskawaih, January 9, 2009 12:33 AM

It’s been awhile I haven’t put up any kind of post about games. In fact, I’ve been struggling to find a writing theme for my site which eventually ended up as personal blog rather than what I planned before (it was still something personal stuffs but with more varieties.. oh well). For example, there’s one unrelated post in this blog that seemed out of the league (*points at MiG news*). Nevertheless, let me write something about upcoming PC Games of 2009 that make me feel amusing just by thinking about it.

oliolioooo

2009 is the year of sequels. Many existing games are currently having their continuitions under development and some of them gonna be released this year. Of course there are also brand new games that look promising such as Rage, Dragon Age, Alan Wake, Tom Clancy’s End War, Men of War and some others. Anyway, I will only give a slight preview over my personal favorites for upcoming games (without any preference order).

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor

Yeah, the best World War 2 real time strategy out there. I am not playing with the “best” word here. From the first original title to its first expansion, Relic have delivered us with awesome and realistic games involving WW2 theme. Fallschirmjagers, Calliope, King Tiger, Priest and many more cool units. The next expansion will have no new faction. Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor gives players new campaigns, units, multiplayer modes, and maps. Having three new campaigns with new units are excellent enough to add up unto this excellent game.

Tigers!

Tank crews in action

As much as I hope they include more factions into the game, perhaps balance issues might plague the game once more if being added just like when Opposing Fronts were released some time ago. Nevertheless, this is a must buy game for me. No exact date of release yet. Perhaps March or April?

Diablo 3

The new sequel of Diablo that will be unleashed upon its fans who have already waiting like 7-8 years? Blizzard is currently putting their best efforts to make the game as fun as possible like before. We have already seen several sequels of other games flopped and ended up being some hype. So, Diablo 3 is being carefully made to become the best hack-and-slash RPG ever for this time around. Ever since the popular World of Warcraft already taking the top spot of RPG titles, the Diablo 3 development team tries to differentiate both games by having Diablo 3 concentrated more on PvP more rather than more economical bla bla stuffs like in WoW. Good move as I am not into using skills to combine several liquids or dusts to make a kind of aphrodisiac potion.

Meow!

This is an early alpha shot btw. The recent screenshot release shows that the game has become darker and horror environment just like its predecessors

Will it be coming out this year? I doubt so but it is something that we should hope to.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Another games that will be released from the same maker of Company of Heroes. Apart from graphical enhancement and new game engine, what can we expect from this new sequel? First and foremost, the game will be more on tactical sides. For that matter, there will be less resources gathering matters that need to take care off. More units customizations with different war gears and items especially weapons. The destructible environments will make the more to be more challenging and exciting. With no buildings, will the game be more like DotA that focusing on heroes and tactical squaddie?

For the Emperor!

Rocket jumps can crush enemies upon landing

This is one great game that should be collected. When we will be able to get it? Perhaps June or July.

Empire: Total War

Aah, the great Total War series now brings us back to the 18th century era. What can we tell upon that timeline? It is the Age of Sail. Yup, there will be real time naval battles unlike its predecessors. Apart from that, we can see the colonization of India and the New World which is America. We also can recreate the American Independence battles which introduces more rifles and firearms. Currently, Creative Assembly still deciding on what factions they should add into the game as of what we know, there are many nations and factions of the European origin. Some factions have already been confirmed such as Great Britain, France, Sweden, Ottoman, Prussia, Russia, Spain and United Provinces (which is the Dutch).

Box shot for British release. Subject to change, though.

pew pew pew pew

The released date has been confirmed on the 3rd of March 2009. A must have for those RTS fans.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.

The new air combat game from Ubisoft. Set on near future where some private military forces attacking the United States. Well, what you can expect from Tom Clancy anyway, huh? It might be just a good game if not a decent game. But, really, we have less and less simulation/arcade-ish games involving air combat games on PC recently. Especially modern air combat. With F-35 that we can control, how could I ignore this game? Heh, surely this game tries to compete with Ace Combat series that already have dominating the console games for air combat simulations.

High Altitude Warfare - Experimental Squadron

"Bird down! Bird down!"

Still no exact date of release. Maybe around March or April. I might be waiting for reviews before buying this although my hands feel itchy to play air combat simulation games for some time.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

Again, the mother of all RTSes. Now on the second sequel. By the look of its screenshots, there’s actually nothing that really impress me much. I know, it’s Starcraft. Who doesn’t get the hype of it anyway? Well, Blizzard will surely try to make the games not getting far off from its predecessor and putting new elements to make the games feels brand new. If we really want to compare with other ancient games that still alive until now with sequels, Red Alert 3 is a good comparison. In RA3′, there’s like a large gap between RA2 and RA3. Hardcore fans like to whine everything about … anything. Despite the developers put more effort on gameplay, some fans are biased towards old units and also the storyline. Being a spin off of the original Command & Conquer series, I don’t really care about RA3′s storyline. But things are different for Starcraft II. This is a game that I really want to get just because of it’s story. The Starcraft expansion has already left us with many hangovers and I’d really want to know its continuition.

jeng jeng jeng

Zerg rush anyone? How nostalgic

Just like Diablo 3, there’s no exact date for releases. However, Starcraft II will be coming out before Diablo 3 as the game was announced earlier than the latter. I sense Diablo 3 might be released at the end of the year or maybe next year.

Well, those are games that I am willing to get them this year, hopefully. Hmm, what should I write next? Politics? lol