Luminous Arc - Finish!

I've returned to the realm of tactical RPGs, and Luminous Arc is the latest completed in the collection.

Story - 3.5/5
Insanely predicable and cliche ending. But happy endings are good and I shouldn't be complaining. And the plot twist when a certain character totally changes from a goodie two shoes into a badass lolita. It was a good change though. Interesting how they used the whole Christian philosophy and warped it to the extreme.

Gameplay - 3/5
There's so many obstacles in using a stylus in this game. You'd think it's the greatest idea in the world, and it is, but some of the problems I encountered regularly obviously weren't addressed. The biggest annoyance was during cluster fucks, some other guy (could be your own guy or a bad guy) would be blocking the square you want to select. Then you'd be screwed and have to go around for another strategy or end up hurting all sorts of people you don't want to hurt. Not only did other people block the way, but map OBJECTS (a THICK POLE for example) even got in the way. Highlighted squares weren't all obviously highlighted. For example, Vivi who was on a carpet covered her whole square so you can't see weather her area was selected or not. You'd be blowing up your own mates and not know it until it's too late. I also disliked the fact that you couldn't see the stats of the other players on the map at any time during anyone's turn, especially your own (except the person you're currently controlling).

Finding Vitae is a bitch. One, you don't know what the real names are until you go to the workshop to check (or unless you memorized the names). You can only view your vitae list at the workshop too. You also don't know where they drop either. So you'd be running back and forth, hoping it was the one you were looking for. Luckily, I was able to make more than half of my ideal weapon/armor sets.

This game LAGS. Sometimes wiping out most of the enemy doesn't save you from the lag either.

Characters - 4/5
The characters were great. The voice acting was decent, some parts sounded very direct-script-reading and some of the stresses for voices were... stressed in the wrong part of the line which made it really awkward. Nikolai's voice is probably the worst plus the angel was purposely annoying, I assumed. Poyon is plenty amusing, although his tech sucked so I stopped caring for him.

Sound - 3.5/5
There were a lot of reused sound effects. The beginning few bgms were great listens... I think I enjoy the character selection screen the most. I can tell it's composed by Mitsuda too... I swear that's not my reason for liking it!

Overall 4/5
It's been a while since I played a tactical RPG so it was refreshing. The game was overall quite easy, especially after when you get the Twilight Witch (Restore was my best friend on the last boss). It was also very cheap to level up, if you really wanted to. A heal or a stat up granted you 30exp instantly, and 4 turns of that gave you a new level. My winning team consisted of Alph, Theo, Leon, Cecille, Vivi, Mel, Heath, and Lucia. Unintentional balance between magic and physical. It's safe to say the character's were well balanced, which was why... minus Poyon, who had the shittiest tech (accuracy) so why bother with him. I even had faith in him at first.. until I noticed his tech wasn't going to go up anymore if I were to level him anymore. 10+ minute battles are quite exhausting though... however they are quite addicting. I experienced quite a number of red lights during my playtime.

After completing this, I actually look forward to Luminous Arc 2. But I think I'm going to take a break from stylus gaming -- too stressful for your controller gamer.

Burnout

No, I haven't been playing Burnout but my brother has and it's fun watching him play. Online mode is GREAT. It's just too bad I don't play those types of games, or I'd jump right in. My heart will be racing (pun not intended) when he uses first person view (which is mostly always). He'd be hitting into other cars/objects head on and I'd be cringing. It's funny that he's been playing so much Echochrome that his in-game music player is strictly classical/orchestra. He seems to play better that way.

Oh yeah, I've decided to start up a collection log of all the games we own. Sometime soon cuz there's a lot.. and it's scary. We're beginning to not know what games we already have.. it's quite sad.

AMG

We have this marketing consultant who can't see the colour green. Therefore we have to change the whole colour scheme I established for this massive web interface I've been working on the past few weeks.

AMG.

I can't believe this.

EDIT: It's been confirmed, he's partially colour blind.

ABDC S2 & Bus Stalkers

I finally got to watch the ABDC finale yesterday, after missing out on it Sunday and the rest of the week. The results were as I expected, though I feel bad for So Real for not winning even though they had the whole "never been at the bottom" streak going on for them, making it seem like their chances were high. Anyways, fun season. Fanny Pak should've so won.

So I was coming home on the bus yesterday from work, and when I was getting ready to get off, I had to excuse myself past this big guy. He turned to me and said, "You're getting off? Ah, I know cuz I saw you last time." And I was like WTF. Okay, thanks, stalker, excuse me, I'm getting off now and fast.

That's why I HATE THE BUS.

At least there's Suikoden. But the pace doesn't help sometimes.

2nd Last Weekend of August

The weekend failed to disappoint, or at least, it was quite eventful.

It started off Saturday... I woke up early as the rest of the house was still asleep. I drove and dropped my car off at Oakridge and headed down to UBC via bus for convenience. However, the RIGHT bus didn't come for the whole 45 mins I was there. This other guy who was also there for the same bus waited longer than me. A dozen of other buses arrive until ours came, but I was already late for Gar's panel. So a friend in the gaming industry held a mini panel there educating keeners as to how to break into his industry and become something maybe as good as him.

I finally arrive at the site, all the normal university students "Whoa!" out loud in the bus upon seeing a giant row of strange people in rainbow costumes and wigs (who were lining up for the dealers room apparently) - tis AE. I went straight to the info booth to ask for where Sty's table was. She had a table there, promoting her theatres about the upcoming showing of the live action Death Note there. The info booth people were garbage.

I figured the artists alley would be the best bet, so I did that and it took me a while to figure out there was a "more artist tables this way!" letter-sized paper hanging on a doorway. Good signage! (y) I finally find her booth, I steal a badge (I'm not paying $45 bucks for a one day pass and to enter ONE panel) and ran to Gar's panel, entering 10 mins before it ended. As a group (Gar Saboo Nina), we headed back to Sty's panel and they unloaded, then went to the dealer's room. The line up was still as massive as I first saw it from the bus stop. The sun also came out of nowhere, and began cooking us like eggs. I had my trusty umbrella and shaded us, honger style. Apparently, me and Gar could've been able to enter the dealer's room without lining up cuz we were "VIPs" (aka. PRESS and PANELIST respectively).. but we only found that out when we got closer to the door. The dealer's room was a lot more spacious than the multiple room combination at SFU as it was in the gym this time. However, more than half of the stuff there's still fake. Just thinking about that makes me angry. I even posted to rant about it on their forums, hoping they'll do something about it. And I'm not even the type of person who would voice my opinion on these things... I'm a lurker for goodness' sake. I even posted about this before a few years back and yet the problem still persists. They don't learn do they.

However, I did not leave completely empty handed this year. I fancy decorating my car as you may or may not know, so I decided to get a mini Domo plush to hang on my window. Aww he's so cute. Gar and Nina went off to their Phoenix Wright/Apollo 13 Justice cosplay meet, so I stayed with Saboo as she went through the room a few times to find something to get just to get her $45 pass' money's worth (by spending more money, haha). My feet were becoming painful to stand in, so we fled back to Sty's table to rest. Saboo Gar and Nina eventually went off to eat together while I stayed to accompany Sty. 6:30ish rolls around, and I headed back. I missed the bus so I had to wait another 20 mins, sigh. Man, the bus ride back was noisy.

Got back to Oakridge and then dropped by Matt Hon's BBQ on invite. Had a sausage or two, met up with some super old friends/classmates from way back when and did the good ol' catching up talk. There was also another half of people I did not know, nor will I ever know. Actually... to be honest, I didn't know the people there all too well. I'm not even close with the actual host who invited me.

Sunday was full of rain and cloudy periods. May invited me and Mo2 to try out this new church's sunday service in Richmond, so we woke up and went. Eric came by to pick us up and found that the place was actually located in an elementary school. I really like their branding... it's very unchurch-like (out of the box!) and felt much like a "friendly corporate". It'll require me to get a bit more used to it however. Did I mention I love their business card? They used this really expensive coating, which made it all nice feeling and everything!

Ahem, pretty paper aside, the actual service was not bad. I didn't know a few songs and the pastor was an interesting speaker. I think it was only me, but I didn't quite understand his sermon. His example didn't quite connect to the actual scripture especially well, but I think I still got something out of it. Man, after listening to his sermon makes me miss listening to Dr. Stephen Ng over at the old church... he's my favourite speaker. Too bad the people there SUCK so I'm not going back. :(

After service, we were invited to eat someone's homemade chocolate muffin (I called it a brownie... I guess I don't know the difference) and old school Rubien (sp? - lay bun lap) juice. The snack totally filled me but we still went for lunch at Alleluia with Pastor Kay and his family. The restaurant made us wait for soo long, at the end, finding that they claim they called us, but we were sitting right beside the reception so it made no sense. I introduced them to their awesome 3-selection combo meal and they all hopped to it. I had no appetite so I shared a rice with Mo2. Throughout the meal, I got mad calls from MINI from the ccsbb asking me when I'd arrive where they were waiting. Not MY fault they left a message stating WHEN on facebook which I do not check late the night before.

I was dropped off at home where I sped to my car and made haste to Metro. I arrive 2 hours later than they originally posted. I found them (Markster, Sahara, MINI) bumming (literally) in front of the Disney store and I knew it was them without having to call. They were craving the munchies so we headed to the food court and shared some New York Fries. We talked for a bit before MINI had to go, then I was left to entertain.

I suck at thinking of things to do but I started with going to Crystal Mall next door, just to give them a taste of a Chinese mall. I also introduced them to the famous butt moving chair. Then we headed to Richmond and went to Aberdeen but the featured petting zoo event was already GONE! I bumped into Mo2, Braman and friend there who also JUST missed the petting zoo too. Agh - so we went to Daiso, showed them the power of a toony. While we anxiously waited for Shi2 to get off her AE volunteer work, we went to e-spot for some good ol arcade. We saw SFIV. I had them try out the sticker picture machine wakakakaka... the screens were moving so fast so we didn't know what we were doing, but we made some pretty interesting shots. We then spent a good half n hour, at least, drawing on our pictures. Finally I get a call from Shi2 saying she was on her way and I find her outside since she didn't know the place. When we attempted to print our pictures, we get a flashing ERROR message. We were devastated! Luckily the mechanic was able to retrieve and reprint our pictures AND we got our money back for the inconvenience.

Time was beginning to run out so we went straight to the night market instead of having hot pot as I originally planned. I was willing to pay for parking just for convenience sake but I got lucky and found street parking. When we got there, we headed to the food section and ate and ate and ate until it was time to go. Well, more like we didn't have the time to walk the actual night market due to time constraints and we were busy trying food.

To end off the day, we drove them to where they were staying that night (near Victoria Dr and Marine, which was close) and got stuck on the Knight bridge for a while. It was a rather short visit unfortunately, though I told them to come back in 2010. They better. Everyone better.

Feeling: Meh...

So I woke up feeling really horrible this morning... so horrible I called in sick for the morning and started working from home at noon. For some reason (unrelated to my horrible feelingness), I've been getting really tired of work lately... frustrated, unsatisfied, and just plain sucky. The longer I do this, the more I dislike being an in-house graphics designer. I never liked it to begin with... and the only plus to being an in-house is the [relatively] steady income (until your contract expires, that is). I am so glad school's approaching in just over a week. I notice I gain so much weight (= fat) when I'm sitting there for 8 hours, clicking at my laptop. It's such an inactive office job, compared to the other office jobs I've had... not to mention, the graphics design company next door has nothing but overweight ladies and (for some reason) skinny guys. I don't want to become one of them when I grow up... ;____;

Anyway, I hope the weekend makes up for the crappy week.

Tales of Veperia trailer fun

I always wanted to make my own videos but due to insane laziness I never get around to them. So for some reason yesterday I decided to take a shot at making a Tales of Vesperia fan trailer for the Tales Brigade community video-making challenge. I aimed for something fast paced and destructive, so I ended up making a battle-centered video accompanied by Anubis ZOE's theme, Beyond the Bounds. The criteria was that it'd be around 1min, which was way too short to make anything too interesting but at the same time, it lessens the amount of work. I took a few hours of my evening and slapped things together to make the following:



If I was really dedicated, I'd tweak it to perfection but no thanks. Since the sources were from youtube (I call it youtubs), they were given as mp4s, and were a biotch to reencode into another format, so I left it as it is. However, this prevented me from using it in Premiere Pro, so I resorted to Windows Movie Maker. The customization is pretty crappy but I had to make do. At the same time, because it was so simple, I didn't need to spend an insane amount of time on it. Unlike my friend's FFXI wedding video I've yet to find the right encode for. I also have my sources ready for a Besieged video I wanted make a year or so ago. Slowly.. maybe I'll get to those sometime.

Work Frustration

I design something and then the first thing I get is, "What do you think?"

Why are you asking me what -I- just designed whether it's good or not. Is it not obvious that I would design something to the point that I, personally, would be satisfied with it first before I hand it over?

Given the obvious, I'm then threatened that I must give a valid opinion if I want to stay working as their graphic designer.

Don't give me that shit.

Hair, Heat, Hot...

Haircut time. School's approaching so it's safe to cut it early and let it grow out to the right comfortable length by September. However, even with my specific, specific and EASY instructions... it still went wrong. She said she wouldn't touch the back, and yet SHE DID SOMEHOW. But I must admit, I love salon hair clay... I need to get some someday. I basically got home Saturday with a 90's hairdoo... At least the hair dye job was good.

It was hot that night so I lazily tied it up carelessly and slept on it.

Next morning I had classic bed head and kept it that way. Bumped into Patson on the way downtown. Went with Mo2 to get her butt tattoo on Davie then I joined her and Braman grocery shopping at Metro T&T. Cheap Calpico.

Also found out that DS games that use the stylus are not friendly to long gaming hours. Been focusing on Luminous Arc on the weekend, and discovered stylus-hand pain (more specifically the palm area close to my thumb)!

Work week starts again, so that means I'll need a new game to keep myself busy on the bus. The next PSP bus game: Suikoden - seriously needs a run button.

Mmmmmphgrmxlbpzzzzz...

Tales of Destiny: DONE

Story - 3/5
The story was rather simple. Swords that held spirits and power from an ancient war were reawakened and gathered to save the world from some idiots trying to use power from the ancient times in the present to rid it from its "corruption" aka. human beings. There wasn't much depth to it but it was short... The beginning already introduces you to all the towns (ugh so much NPC talking action) and then throws you there again for other short missions... makes the game so short feeling.

Character - 4/5
The main characters were great, especially Stahn. He was a funny sleeping brick and for some reason he doesn't feel like the right love interest for Rutee, or should that be the other way around. I didn't particularly like how there were suddenly three extra characters near the end you could pick from to fill up your slots. They didn't really connect to the main story, so they felt out of place. However, two of the three (the two I chose) were extremely powerful and useful so they were a good replacement over, say, Garr. As for the non party members, there wasn't enough story for them so there was no sympathy for those characters at all. First you meet them, and the next thing you know they go plop already. Only more feeling developed for those characters after I took a listen at the "face" event dialogs that were unlocked after I completed the game. Oh, I also like the fact that they kept the Japanese voices.

Gameplay - 3.5/5
The biggest irk was not even the game's fault, but the ISO itself on the PSP freezes the game sometimes when spells are being casted. I had to do quite a bit of resetting but that was easily avoided by not casting offensive spells. When I was reading through the guides for side quests, I looked at their level recommendations and noticed I was quite a few levels behind but I didn't have any trouble with the enemies. With the right tactics, even the most annoying [CHEAP!] enemies (the ones that do nothing but mass cast AOE spells and basically mutilate your party if you're a second too late) go down without trouble. Oh, I hate the Tower of Druaga (the optional tower). There isn't a single good guide out there and one too many levels went to waste because their solutions didn't even work.

Music - 2.5/5
It was s'alright. A few catchy town themes. Nothing memorable.

Overall 3/5
It felt like they could've used that story to make it more "heavy"... Perhaps more on the ancient war. But then again, maybe that's why there's ToD II. Oh yeah, Phoenix in this game is overkill and it's great. I finished the game plus sidequests and extras in under 40 hours.

It's gone...

My chicken leg is gone :(

Reminds me of when I lost Cloud too... :(

KRAZY!

I finally had the chance to go KRAZY! at the Vancouver Art Gallery yesterday. As explained on their site: "Krazy! The Delirious World Of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art is the first exhibition of its kind, a groundbreaking project that offers unique and dynamic insight into the world of comics,animated cartoons, anime, manga, graphic novels, computer/video games and visual art." Rather exciting, you would think?

I met up with Mo2 after work while we waited for Simon and gang to get their late arses there. We chilled at Starbucks until they arrived. We started in the comics section... They use a lot of liquid paper. They had an attempted "interactive" part which was basically you drawing your own comic (eh.)... failed bad. There was this guy artist who drew the life of a really, really depressing woman. I really like his text though. It's so small and yet so precise and clean. Then there was this sad little book area, so you could read... and then that lead to the manga section.

So, the manga section. They featured at 1980's popular guy's comic that was serialized in Shounen Jump way back when. Then there was this other comic who had this funny gag about a horse and turtle by Hitoshi Odajima. There was also FSS, which Sty would've loved but she has everything FSS already anyways. Quite a bit of Tekkonkinkreet was featured there. That Pure Trance series is pretty distrubing. After Manga was of course the Anime. There was this dark area which had film projectors projecting certain shows (Macross, Patlabor, Tekkon, Something no Mukou Yakusoku no Basho)... Then a little corner dedicated to Yoko Kanno. Moving out of the Anime section was Cartoons. I really like Gertie the dinosaur for some strange reason!

Moving upstairs, there was a feedback section which wasn't really clear and it was messy. Then beside it was the Gaming section. There was Super Mario and Zelda that was playable... unfortunately Quake was only shown on the projector. I picked up some pigs in Zelda. Then we found Mo2 hiding in the video room watching Dumbo. After Gaming was just general visual art. After that was the scary Alien-eyed strange girl section called "No Ghost Just Shell" (pun off ghost in the shell perhaps?). She's only cute in her anime drawing form... After making the turn away from the scary girl section, there was a 8-minute China cosplay video. Hilarious and dumb in all sorts of ways. I commend them for their costumes, but the video itself was ridiculous. They built up drama for majority of the video and then they all "die" within 10 seconds. And then the next thing you know, they're alive again living normal lives (in their not-so-normal clothing lol). The most interesting display was the giant pink head display. They expanded this girl's head and filled it with cute stuff. I'm not joking.

I took a quick look at the gift shop. They sold tokidoki stuff (not their bag/clothes line). That's probably the only thing worth mentioning.

Out of curiosity, we visited the upstairs which were other exhibits. Zhang Huan, in particular, had the insanest and most interesting exhibit at the whole gallery.

To break down the visit, it isn't as KRAZY! as its name, with the exclamation mark and all. The exhibit topic was way too general and broad, so it felt like they didn't even touch on much. Now that I think back, I was critiquing my way through the museum (just because of my studies in museum design last semester) and it was true, the setup of the exhibit wasn't all that interesting. But I didn't have high hopes considering the reviews I've heard from many others already before my visit.

I had corn on the cob for dinner that night. It wasn't even sweet.

PEE ESS FREE

So hay, I'm playing teh PS3 now. Not extensively, mind you.

On the weekend my bro was all like "WE NEED AN HDMI CABLE, LIKE, NOW - LET'S GO!" and that's how it all started. And whoooaa... compared to what we've been staring at on our 50 inch (normal TV), everything's so crystal clear and beautiful now *__*... We've been mad downloading demos and trailers over wireless (we'll need to setup a wired connection soon). I've been playing Overlord and Eden, though I'm still getting the hang of Eden's spinny and gravity logic. I also convinced my brother to buy Overlord and Echochrome. He's been playing Ninja Gaiden Sigma most of the time, as I watch him be a retarded ninja and do not-so-cool ninja moves ;b

But yeeeah everything's awesome on PS3 so far. Just needs more RPGs and Home.

Fireworks Finale

Me and Mo2 arrived at the beach first to save a spot, picking up Stepho's and extras on the way. We got there around 1:30-2 and enjoyed the sun a bit as it finally decided to clear up today. It wasn't until 3:30-4, Gar, D and Ruby showed up. Saboo joined us a bit later, after Mo2, Ruby and I visited the tattoo parlor for some appointment making. We convinced Shi2 to show up, who also brought Steph and arrived around 7:30. Us four had a classy dinner at Milestones (as opposed to fast food, that is) and then rushed back around 9. Then we had our rounds of DS where we played Mario Kart with a full 8 PC party.

China won people's choice. For some STRANGE reason, Canada, who had the most boringest fireworks display, won it this year. Rigged without a doubt now. Reminds me much of the bitter result of the first season of Dance Crew (wtf Status Quo as runner-up). They also had this documentary-like fireworks display that talked about the history of BC (BC's 150th bday), which is probably another reason why Canada won. Apparently this time's China crew (Pyromagic Productions) is actually from HK unlike the others that were from other parts of China... which explains the choice in music China used.

Oh yeah, we got a new 50 inch Panasonic HDTV. Now there's finally a reason to rip out the PS3! Just gotta get that annoying cable first...