One Thing After Another

Parents rush-flew to and from China/HK the last week to see family and bring back my grandpa's remains for a brief ceremony here later this week. The next few days will be busy-rushed-hectic with the service preparations.

Last Sunday, my friend got his car broken into the night before that, getting all his electronics taken. It really sucks to hear about these things and be unable to do anything about it...

Strong winds also decided to blow down our backyard gate pretty badly the other day but we were able to fix it to some extent. Ugly but more livable than before at least.

To make the week even better, school has been heavily involved in establishing a theme for our grad show. My team from Team Robots in 2nd year worked decided to work together again for our concept. It began as a harmless bubble tea outing after class which evolved into a 4 hour discussion. We then had another amazing 6-hour bubble tea session another day to finish up our presentation preparations. However, due to personality/ideal clashes with the class, our thoroughly developed concept was shot down. There just seems to be this extremely sinister hate coming from at least a good half of the class for anything remotely Asian or 'cute'. SO back to the drawing board...


On the flip side, although not recent in the last month, one of my best friends went to Japan for the winter holidays. I've been using a magazine (ION Magazine to be precise, it's nice and square) as my mousepad since the wireless mouse doesn't like tablets (for obvious reasons) and it also collects dust way too easily off the table. I've had to work on my PC for hours at a time (doing ugh homework) ever since my laptop was out of commission so the wrist pain has finally set in. So I ended up requesting for a boob/oppai mousepad. No butts, no nipples, no porn.


She came back with a pink-haired, twin tail maid. :3

So! This girl's an original character drawn by Kuuchu Yousai, the character designer for Nanael from Queen's Blade and the Djibril series. And! She even has a bio to go with it: Hoshizaki Fuuka, 17 years old (!) high school 2nd year. She lost her family in an accident and now lives with the protagonist as his maid. Even though she has a dark past, she puts up a strong front but is a dojikko. Her signature moves are to spill tea and collide into walls. She's a classmate with the protagonist (which it notes is obviously a guy). Born on May 10th, blood type A. My mousepad has a background apparently.. I find that very amusing.

So guys, girls' boobs do not feel like this. Stop trying to trick yourself.

As for the FFXIII elixir, that was an awesome surprise. Sadly I will never open it so I will never know what trading figure it comes with. I'll just hope it's Lightning or Yung Fang and leave it at that. It'll be saved for an emergency when I'll need to break things like benches and cars with my head. Hm, much like how I never touch elixirs ever in game either.. waiting for the right emergency, but it never happens.

Alright, week 4 commences... 3 weeks till the Olympics.

Gone But Not Forgotten

There were a large volume of phone calls, particularly those out of town earlier in the week. To add onto the strangeness, my parents also acted unusually suspiciously. Both me and my brother knew something was up. It wasn't until a few days later, they decided to break the news to us... My grandpa had passed away on the weekend. Some time midnight Sunday for us, Monday for them in China.

It was really all too sudden and unexpected. He fell down a few weeks back and had to be admitted to the hospital. They discovered that he was undernourished and wasn't eating well. We were working on getting him set up with those daily energy supplement shakes. It was reassuring to know he was at least in the comfort of his own home during his final moments.

It's frightening to realize I have no more grandparents.

Twenty Ten

あけおめことよろ～

Hello 2010! Happy New Year!
Great to start the new year by running a STALE RED light. I *think* there's no camera in that intersection, but you can never be so sure. Sigh, fml.

Anyway, winter break... there really wasn't much of one. Finished Dragon Age for the time being and marathoned a bunch of anime.

Then came New Years Eve which was a bit unexpected. There were a series of power outages on my way home late in the afternoon. My house and area was also affected so when the rest of the family got home, we headed out for food instead. Later that night I finally headed to Mike's place for the usual celebrations. I honestly had no intention of drinking a lot but I somehow got befriended by one of the party girls and she had me "catch up" to her... and that involved a lot of whiskey and jagerbombs. The night also involved eating really good chips I don't remember the name of and learning how to lap dance.

Before the end of the holidays, the family (+ my bro's gf) also headed down to the states for a day as his "Christmas present" to us. We had to fit 5 people into my car so it wasn't all that comfortable of a drive (I wasn't driver/shotgun). The buffet at the Tulalip casino wasn't as good as we all hoped either but I suppose the successful shopping trip balanced that out. Gotta hold off the spending (for serious this time!).

As for new year resolutions... I've been sleeping more than usual and I always felt oversleeping was a time waster (I still feel the same about it now) but I've been giving in to the awesome comfort and laziness of rolling in bed and not having to feel sleepy midway through the day. It's a sign that I must be becoming more of a lazy person (or lazier than before). Probably not a good thing considering my current position and the time of year. Hm, this would make a good new years resolution. The process of unlazying myself?

School has restarted and I'm not looking forward to the final semester. A fastforward 5 months button would be great right about now.

Dragon Age: Origins - Cue Drama and Blood

I don't think I've ever died as many times as I did in a game before. Enter Dragon Age: Origins - it likes to kick you ass knowing you'd come back for more.

STORY 4/5
The main story's straightforward, but there were various routes that diverged from the main to support the story. Those scenarios, which usually played a major role in the outcome of the game, were optional and can be done in whatever order wished. Within each scenario presented various choices the player can make which would also affect the outcome of the game (or that scenario). Minor choices/actions can make an unexpected significant impact as well. However, ones choices/actions is really up to how the player wants to play anyways, so there's no real wrong or right choice... Maybe just better choices than others that can help or work against you.

Your character's background determines your beginning story (and influences the rest of your play though) so it varies from race but basically something dramatic and heart-wrenching happens and so you end up being forced into becoming a Grey Warden -- an order of guardians who protect the land from an evil race that's trying to destroy it. Of course, it's never that simple when politics are involved. The land and its cities have been divided due to the chaos so it's up to you to restore the peace.

I found it interesting how even a small choice you make can alter the game completely - sometimes immediately or in the future and then you'd be like OH I remember, oh damn. I've only played through the Human Noble scenario, but I imagine the other stories would give you a better insight on certain story characters and backgrounds.

CHARACTERS : 4.5/5
The travel companions were all very fun and you had the option to dismiss them permanently from your party at any time (I never actually tried). There were obvious personality clashes which made amusing idle conversations. Choices made throughout the game also affected the approval rating of those characters (if they are in your active party). Usually because of those personality clashes, you could never really satisfy everyone. Thus Morrigan, being known to be on the other side of that spectrum, likes to disapprove most things you did, unless you were a unmoral person to begin with, then vice versa, your other characters wouldn't like you very much. However, that's usually easily remedied with giving gifts, which I felt was TOO easy to remedy. You can max out any character's approval rating of you without trouble which kind of ruins the "importance of choice" aspect of the game a bit.

I'm not sure who wouldn't like Alistair. As the heroine, he was definitely my type. ;) He had a cute personality which made me giggle in more than one situation. Morrigan was a pretty sarcastic and blunt, which made interesting idle conversation with the other characters. The secret companion was also quite a surprise but I did not take him (he's too old and ugly anyway).

SOUND : 4/5
As the usual western RPG, you don't really notice the music all too much (as there wasn't much either). The strange pop rock vocal song that played during the credits felt really out of place though.

As for sound effects, there were a lot of explosion noises even though there weren't any explosions happening. My brother would hear me from the other room and tell me all he hears are explosions. And then of course, there's the screaming. As a warrior, I like shouting a lot.

The voice acting was excellent. The cast had completely charmed me (especially Alistair, can you blame me?) but I am not one familiar with any of the voice actors themselves. I only wished the hero you played as wasn't as mute as he/she was.

GAMEPLAY 4.5/5
Played like an MMO.

You had the option to control one character while the others were controlled by a set of tactics you determine (AI), or control them all yourself. For me, I controlled all the active party members myself since it ended up being easier doing so, but left them some basic actions for when they're idle. This definitely kept me busy and extremely active during battles. The only time you'd be bored would be when you had to travel. Traveling seems to suck no matter what game it is.

The game was definitely difficult a bit before mid-game, when you're still getting used to battle strategies and had a lack of abilities... and most of the death action happened during then. The biggest difficulty was healing at first, for sure. You only had a limited number of potions, potion making items were scarce, you had no money anyway, and you had little to no healing spells. The work around this was to basically strategize a plan of attack and try and try again. It was frustrating at first but funny I didn't give up. I saved like there was no tomorrow.

The beauty about this game was the magical pause button... because strategy such as crowd control was extremely important and controlling 4 members at a time is not really possible in real time, the pause button was able to provide some breathing room. Not to mention, it is also neat to pause during certain slo-mo dramatic death blow moments (see above image).

There were also an abundance of sidequests which were nice. The completionist in me probably spent way too many hours on them than I should've. Some yielded good items, other times, they were a waste of time. The random drop system can be frustrating at times (stop giving me garbage). Or then you'd have so many items you want to keep, even the storage box isn't enough.

Again, the amount of choices in this game really makes one think twice about what to say/do. I often paused to think hard about what's the best response. Hm, maybe something I should learn from for real life - ha.

The camera could've used some work in certain situations.
The game also liked to occasionally crash on me.
Also the occasional AI bug where a member controlled by your set of combat rules gets stuck trying to use that certain ability.

Little frustrations.

GRAPHICS 3.5/5
I can't stand that strange shiny/plastic look on some of the clothes and textures. Your clothes are surely fabric (wool, cotton.. what have you) not plastic, as it's not invented yet, my dear. So is your dragon's chest. Perhaps dragons bath regularly so it's always kept very clean and shiny - I do not know.

Graphics are generally pretty standard.. nothing too amazing. I wished they put in a bit more effort into creating more unique/different NPC faces. I spoke with Arl Wolff and saw Duncan instead. Some maid lady looked like my mom... actually I saw her a few other times. Character customization was not as amazing as I'd hoped. I did not particularly like my stoned face look in most cut scenes. If only I had more expression like how ugly I looked when I killed the last boss. Man, I was ugly but at least I demonstrated that I had more than just my stoned face expression.

I mentioned it before but the female body proportions were also kind of strange. We had men bodies with boobs.

The game also loved blood, which seems to be the running theme of the game. Just a bit of sword play with mice and I'm drenched in blood. Take off my clothes and lo and behold, I'm bloody under my armor too. Blood's apparently really, really messy.

Speaking of being naked, a side note: Morrigan's bra does not correspond to her revealing top.

OVERALL 4.5/5
I enjoyed this game quite a bit and I definitely took my time. I think I sunk at least 60 hours into it, and I only played through it once, completed as many sidequests as possible and both currently DLCs available are done as well. Again though, traveling is a pain in the ass. The game's "normal" mode was nice and challenging (can't imagine how it'd be beyond normal), and fortunately didn't scare me away from the rest of the game. The journey was well worth it but I'm still unsure if I want to run through the game again, taking on another character and personality.

I might just keep it around for the next DLC coming in January. My character and stats for those who have access and if are interested.

I am totally itching for a JRPG right now though.

Lack of Christmas Vegetation

Merry Christmas!
...and mere days before the end of the 2009 year.

School's been out for about a week and there's actually only a week left, which leaves me feeling sadfaced. I haven't had too many real "days off" yet where I do absolutely nothing but vegetate.. but I think that's what most of next week is going to be for.

The last few days of school were kind of ugh. Last Tuesday consisted of 8 straight hours of presentations in the conference hall for our major projects, 20 mins allocated for each student and a lot of teachers with on-the-spot critiquing. Didn't help that I was scheduled for after lunch and they fed us bad cafeteria pizza. It sure was a big sigh of relief when it was all over though. We had Cactus Club at the end of the day to celebrate. One more semester to go but I am so sick of my project.

Then the following day was my meeting with my actual major project clients. The second time ever. They seem stoked and it looks like it'll be more busier next semester with them wanting me to set up some focus groups. We got drenched walking to our lunch location (yay for Vancouver rain) since they dismissed my idea to drive there (lawl lazy student). It got worse when I ended up ordering a sandwich with fries plus a drink and they both only had a salad. I only minded because they ended up treating me! A lazyass AND a pig.

I've been hacking away at Dragon Age for the past while and been tempted to play Borderlands. I'll be good and finish what I started first. I don't understand why nekkid women in western RPGs are so buff and unattractive. Deja vu, Fable 2.

(Note: the game forced me naked... I am not a perv to my own characters! D:)

I've also been marathoning anime whenever. Higashi no Eden movie(s) nao prz.

* Watched Avatar in 3D the other day - very awesome.
* Ninja Assassin. What happened to Rain? I thought he was supposed to be hot.
* New Moon was earlier in November during our exploit-the-fan-girls cupcake fundraiser at Oakridge. Those fan girls were frightening.
* Sherlock Holmes tomorrow. Robert Downey Jr squee~

Speaking of fangirls...

/geek
My only irk with it is that the colour on glass is peeling off a bit. I've drank one and will save the other. Next they need more flavours and blood types.

I am also sad that I missed my package today. I was expecting the post office guy but he came an hour too early for me to wake up and hear him. Yep, slept right through it and now I have to wait until Tuesday to get it.

I finish with donuts.