The Oddity That Is Us

In all our experience with Nintendo's handheld consoles, we've only ever started having issues with it starting from the 3DS. With the rise of the Nintendo eStore and downloadable games and content it was hard not to compare it with Apple's iOS devices and the App Store / iTunes Store.

So last Thursday the old-new Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow & The Flame was released! Just in time for the long weekend.

Christmas must have come early: Magic: The Gathering: Duels Of The Planeswalkers 2014 came out last Tuesday, which saw us scrabbling to clear out some space on our meagre 16GB iPad so we have space to install the new game while still hanging on to Duels 2013 because we haven't finished the game yet (also, if they put the expansions on sale we can finally get then).

Given how we've not been able to join the friday night board game group much (if at all), we've been eyeing the App Store for games that have managed to make the transition to digital form. And there's been quite a fair few, much to our surprise actually!

So tonight we ended up back at Boardgame Cafe as we were free tonight and there were new games from Essen to try out.

First up tonight: Crude Oil, with sinbadwolf, Khim, angxj and yours truly.


It's a dice-throwing game where players take turns throwing dices to activate assets they've built on their quadrant of the board (we kept thinking of Battleship).


You throw the dices, activate buildings that land on the coordinate lines (harvesting crude oil, refining crude oil to gasoline and selling said gasoline if possible), and buying/selling assets as the player sees fit according to the market forces.


The game starts with everyone having $200mil, and gameplay progresses until a player gets $750mil, then there's a final turn for all players (except the player that triggered the endgame step).

Pretty much looks like a quick game of throw-dice, get oil, buy-sell, and hopefully don't get screwed by the market.

Jack208 said the game would take around an hour or so to complete. Our game went from...late 9.30pm all the way till 1am. We're thinking this was due to dice rolls and inventory hoarding. The game began with everyone going roughly for the same strategy (a refinery to convert crude oil to gasoline, a couple of gas stations to sell gasoline to customers, and as many oil drills to dig for oil), with angxj going for more oil drills concentrated in a certain area of his quardrant.

Somewhere in our first round itself we were hit by taxes when angxj and us rolled double 1s, bleeding our funds dry when we had to pay tax for every barrel of crude oil and gasoline we owned - angxj was first to have to decide which of his assets he had to sell to pay off taxes. It didn't help when the economic state went on the rise, pushing prices of refineries/drills/stations up.

Soon everyone got a feel for the flow of the game, and worked towards his own strategy: angxj kept up with trying to build oil wells to generate crude oil, Khim aimed more on selling gasoline via gas stations, sinbadwolf had a balanced game, and we decided on buying crude oil from the domestic/foreign market, concentrating on refineries to convert them and stations to sell them to customers while keeping a minimal number of buildings.

In our game run, the economic state of the game kept switching from recessions, depressions, downturns and recoveries, keeping the customer market for selling gasoline low (although buying buildings were also cheap). We've only ever hit a economic state of prosperity twice, so trying to make money from selling gasoline wasn't lucrative enough. Even selling to the domestic/foreign market fared only slightly better.

angxj and sinbadwolf hoarded crude oil produced by their oil wells, and when it came to a point where we were all locked out from buying crude oil from the foreign market, the rest of us suffered as prices for crude oil went on the rise, from less than 10mil to 10-15mil per barrel. It didn't help Khim and us that angxj and sinbadwolf only sold a few barrels back to the market, and customer demand for gasoline remained low.

In the end Khim had to rid himself of his oil well to finance his other assets, angxj utilised his entire territory with an orderly arrangement of oil drills and wells, stations and refineries, sinbadwolf and us were trying to get more wells. Then came a point where angxj, having stocked up enough barrels of crude oil and gas, decided to sell everything to trigger the end game.

End score:
sinbadwolf: 820
Khim: 741
angxj: 1169
us: 714

1. Why don't you Draw Something?
2. A classic Prince of Persia.
3. Jeng jeng Jenga.
4. Come on, join the Jetpack Joyride.

So over the years, as our desktop of now nearly 10 years declined into obsolescence (actually it was already in that state some 5 years ago) we've replaced it with our Nintendo DS and our iPod Touch for all our gaming needs.

True, there are some games that just can't be replaced by mobile gaming, but then again there were the occasional cybercafe jaunts too. The ageing desktop was relegated to other matters like syncing our iDevices with iTunes, converting our CDs to sync onto our iDevices, blogging, storing our photos, converting movies to sync with our iDevices (which usually is an overnight job for JUST ONE MOVIE)...and perhaps for some gaming. That is, games from the pre-2000 era.

Otherwise, until 2009, our most-used gadget (and best investment) was our Nintendo 3D because we've been gaming on it like crazy. The Mario games, the Zelda games, the Castlevanias, Nintendogs...

Even when we got our iPhone 3GS in Dec 2008, our iDevices wasn't heavily used for gaming as the App Store was still relatively new and we were still careful about buying apps (much has changed then).

Gosh. Come to think of it. When the App Store was still new we could afford to check it weekly and probably go through most of the new apps for something free/worthy. Now there's just too many to bother.

Now our iDevices take up more than half the time while we wait for more 3DS games to appear (and seeing how we can't buy anything from the Nintendo eShop unless it's free).

So let's talk about gaming on the iDevice. Specifically on the iPhone for now.

Just recently everyone's caught the Draw Something bug. And we think it's been done rather well, although we're rather wary of playing this via mobile 3G. You add a friend, choose a word depending on the difficulty, you draw it out in whatever colours are available to you, and send!

The immediate problems? Battery life playing on the 3GS, for one. If you're playing with a lot of people, you may find that as soon as you've played a round starting from person A to person Z, it's time to play with person A again.

And while the game is available as both a free and paid app, we don't think it's worth paying because somehow we have this feeling that by a week's time this game will lose momentum and in under a month quite a lot of people will stop playing.

Just a feeling.

Meanwhile, we're trying to hold out from buying Prince Of Persia Classic that has reappeared on the App Store. Funny. They actually launched the app on the App Store December last year as an universal app at 99¢, which we automatically bought.

Or, would have bought. We couldn't, as a pop-up notified us that the game needed a front-facing camera. It could have probably meant that it was for the iPhone 4 onwards (although we don't see why so), but it was a bummer that we didn't manage to download it then. Then not long after that, it got pulled off from the App Store.

And now it's back, at USD1.99. While the iPad version is at USD2.99. Whatever happened to it being an universal app?!

It's still Prince Of Persia 1, all dressed up in nice fancy graphics (and from what we've seen on YouTube) minus the violence of being sliced in half or impaled on spikes.

We still remember one of our most shocking moments playing Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow And The Flame was when the Prince was running down a corridor when suddenly out of nowhere he violently split in half with blood splattering everywhere - our introduction to the wall blade trap.

So...not buying Prince Of Persia Classic yet.

Jenga was free recently and we've downloaded it and gave it a quick try. The first impression? I still rather my actual physical Jenga set with friends, and all the crazy rules and setups we come up with. It's worth the trouble of setting up the pieces to play, really!

And prior to Draw Something most of our casual gaming was on Jetpack Joyride. A free endless running game that's gotten the mix of power-ups and objectives just right. Unlike other endless runners, with Jetpack Joyride we're more focused on completing objectives rather than "getting the furthest distance".

We'll probably only stop playing this once we've bought out all the costumes and jetpacks - but there's an update for this game coming and who knows what new content will be available then!

Still, too many games, too little time, and the urge to get more games!

Okay, we're pretty much a Street Fighter gamer and SF4 had us excited because it marked the return of the old roster of fighters in a rather pretty package. Great graphics, still great gameplay, new Ultra/Super/focus attack mechanics, and... bugger, still a blood cheap boss at the end.

Then SF4 came out for the iPhone, and even with the virtual joystick, the simplified controls worked extremely well. There wasn't the need to do the full motion of controls to perform a special move, now we just needed to push forward and press the SP button. Viola! Instant Dragon Punch.

Combos just got easier.

Only it wasn't really so fair, because for the fighters with charge moves like Chun-Li and Guile, as you'd still need to charge in one direction for a couple of seconds before you can execute the move.

Then came Super Street Fighter 4 for the 3DS, and boy, things got even more simpler (and much more impressive!). Now we have the entire roster of fighters available in Super Street Fighter 4, there's all that alternate costumes and colours, nothing's missing from the game, and they've made all the buttons customizable (and included four more buttons on the touch screen)!

With all the buttons being customizable, now it's even more easier to perform ridiculously difficult-to-pull-off combos!

But yet it all works for the mobile gaming platform. Quick simple fun, anywhere, anytime.

It's just that...we're so spoilt now with the simple controls that we're not sure we can play SF4 properly on the console or arcades any more...

Dear M.

It's has been a long time since we've met. But we hear you're coming back to town! We're excited and can't wait, really.

We remember, we were only twelve when we first met the gang: you, your friends, not to mention your sister and father. A popular bunch, known by many. It wasn't long before we both hit it off, though. We were really taken with your grace, and your coyness at times as you like to hide your face like some shy kitten.

Oh, how we admired your bravery, challenging your father's decisions at times.

When we first met, well...those were good times. Most nights we spent together, time slowed down for us indeed.

Of course, we had our differences. Like your choice to wear magenta hued clothes, and the murderous glares you gave us when we suggested you try on green once in a while as it was our favourite colour. Hey, little did we know then that your sister's bodyguard (rich family that you are from) that you disliked wore green.

Then, a few years later, you disappeared. You and your sister. As you were always fighting with your dad, we knew better than to ask him. Your mum didn't have news about you, too.

We left the gang, not having any way to keep in touch with them as they moved on to further popularity.

Sad to say the few times we could meet up with the gang, you weren't around. Especially some 12 years ago now, when the gang fell in with the '3D graphics' hype, you weren't there to celebrate. We wondered if you were cut off by then, deemed not popular enough. In our heart we knew this could not be true, and the gang, well, the competitive bunch would never offer any answers. Well, once again, it was only much later when we found out you were still around but by then we never did get to see you...

But you came back! 7 years ago you came back!

And you looked gorgeous, M! It was the best we've ever seen you.

We even heard that you were featured in Playboy. Don't worry, we weren't jealous of you. We were honestly glad to have have you back with us.

Those were happy days again. We would come back from work and you would even demonstrate your new martial art skills to us, and while we prefered the speed you performed Ying Yeung stances, you chose to go with the more graceful and powerful Mian Chuan style.

Well...both of us had moved on since. We did meet up once in a while, but rarely.

But we hear you'll be coming back to visit us again. We can't wait.



We do hope this new Mortal Kombat won't be a bomb. Come back and entertain us once again, Mileena!

We still liked you best in Deception, followed by MKII.

It's a bit of a predicament.

With our Nintendo DS, our games were basically limited by, firstly, our wallet, as games here are not cheap (easily anywhere between RM150-RM200 each for a popular game, goodness we've sunk quite a fair bit into this), and secondly, there aren't too many games so we can basically just focus on what we want most (which would mainly be the Mario and Zelda games, can't go wrong with those, and we must say the Castlevania series on the NDS were entertaining enough with better replayability than the former in our case).

Since we've gotten our NDS (good gosh, when was this? Late 2004? Mid-2005?) it's earned the title of Most Valuable Gaming Asset - trumping PC gaming and all the consoles whatwith the ability to play games anywhere, anytime, even before going to sleep.

Then the iPod Touch came out, and the App Store in all its infancy never did have much games that would cause us to impulse buy. Yes, well, much later on as the App Store started growing and we started using the iPod Touch for more than just mobile surfing we deliberated lenghtily before buying anything on the App Store (because it's in USD and not RM!). The most expensive app we bought back then was probably ToDo, at USD4.99, after trying a few other free to-do apps. Motion-X's Poker Quest was probably one of the first few games we ever bought, too.

Then Tap Tap Coldplay came along and we didn't deliberate for very long. Tap Tap Coldplay's probably still one of the best Tap Tap apps, featuring their best songs from all their albums, unlike the disappointing Lady Gaga Revenge which only featured songs from her first album The Fame, hence there were lots of remixes that weren't to our fancy.

Anyways.

Time goes by and the App Store starts filling up with more and more games. There are ports of old games which hit our Nostalgia button and may probably hit our Impulse Buy button at the same time (ie The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition), there are boardgames converted over to the iOS that we will access before going for the Deliberate Buy (Carcassone being the poster boy of a game well done), and then there are games that, due to their popularity, we may just buy if we like the gameplay (like Angry Birds, which we would never had bought if we never did get to try out their Lite Version beforehand, and Robot Unicorn Attack, because of Erasure's 'Always' admittedly).

We've just counted 71 game apps currently on our iPhone (inclusive of the Inception app). There's more we left on our pc without syncing over to the iPhone, due to us not playing them ever (like the Rolando series) or because we have to play something else first (like Simon The Sorcerer 1 before we can play Simon The Sorcerer 2), or perhaps because we've finished the game (like Beneath A Steel Sky).

The point is, thanks to Touch Arcade (and their AppShopper app), we've been on the lookout for more games! More and more games!

So much so that we've no time to finish all our old games! Both remakes of Monkey Island sit unfinished, especially after we've inexplicably lost our save game files and have to replay from scratch, while we spend an absurd amount of time replaying Devil May Cry 4 Refrain, Street Fighter 4, Seventh Guest and Battleheart!

And the games keep on coming especially when they are either priced at USD0.99, or they go on sale from USD9.99 to USD0.99 (the very unexpected Street Fighter 4!)! App pricing? A topic for another time.



OH MY GAH!

And it's not as if we've stopped playing games on our NDS (asides from the fact that there aren't any new games that would cause a Near Impulse Buy), but The World Ends With You does keep track of when we last played, and suffice to say it's not three times a day. Or even once a day.

After all that rambling...

We're actually considering the Nintendo 3DS. Sold out on day one in Japan. Coming out in US next month. Wondering how much the price tag will be once it hits our shores. Should be higher than our NDS, but will it cost almost the same as our Wii? And asides from Super Street Fighter 4, what other games are there? Will it be worth it? Or shall we drown in more iOS games?

You know, it being our first time going to the east coast and our first time to Lake Kenyir Resort And Spa, we admit to being a wee bit excited as to what the place held in store for us. Factor in a treasure hunt that would start around 7am in the morning (which meant everyone had to be up by late 5am to early 6am, meet for breakfast and then head down to the venue in Shah Alam) and take around 7 hours, followed by another 250km before we reached the hotel, well...

We knew that there would be the chance that we wouldn't be able to do much once we arrived at the hotel as it would be quite likely we all would take a nap before dinner. We remembered the Rasa-Rasa treasure hunt, where after the hunt around Klang Valley finished by 3pm, we went back and slept till near 7pm before heading down to 3K Inn at USJ for the dinner.

We never expected that we would only reach the resort at Lake Kenyir only at 8pm.

8pm!

The treasure hunt itself was rather adventurous, taking us all over the place out of Klang Valley, and while solving cryptic crosswords helped speed up our ability to solve certain puzzles, we were still lacking a bit in certain areas. Like in spotting rather small logos/signs that were the answers for some of the questions. Some of the times where we spent too long looking for answers were due to trying to spot that small sign which were still visible from the car. However, there were still some questions that stumped the lot of us, that can't be helped except to keep doing more puzzles we suppose.

Once we were done with the treasure hunt, it was onwards to Lake Kenyir Resort And Spa! As esteban was familiar with Kuantan, we all stopped at Hai Peng for a tea break (time management during the treasure hunt meant we never did had time for a lunch break!). The stopover at Kuantan turned out to be both a good and bad thing, good because it meant we got a quick rest, food and coffee before making our way onwards to the resort, but bad because we only reached the hotel at 8pm, just in time for the start of dinner.

You don't really want to be travelling on the roads to Lake Kenyir when it gets dark. There aren't many street lights and as we were reaching Lake Kenyir, we were greeted by a particularly treacherous road filled with lots of potholes.

If the travel time didn't already discourage us from going to Lake Kenyir again, the roads did. We kept worrying about the car suspension when we accidentally hit the potholes in the dark, and it only got easier when we caught up with a lorry, and used it to navigate the road. Another three cars caught up with us, and didn't try overtaking us too. We learned later that they decided it was much easier to tail us to the resort, thinking we knew our way as we had lad's Nokia N97's Garmin leading the way. They continued tailing us even after we made a wrong turn and led the entire party to a jetty instead of the resort at first.

Honestly, we don't think we'll ever make the trip to Lake Kenyir by car or coach from KL. If it's a flight to Kuala Terengganu first, then a transfer pickup from the resort, then maybe.

Reaching the resort at night meant we couldn't see any scenery, but not that it mattered much anyways because we were rather hungry by that point. Parked at the parking lot, got our room keys, and were ferried by buggy (buggied?) to our respective chalets to drop our stuff before we were taken to the dinner venue.

Had our fill and then it was time for the prize-giving. Prizes were given for the top 31 places (the odd number due to tied scores we surmise), and calculating based the score the 31st team scored, we suspected we were somewhere in the top 35 (so we would like to believe).

Anyways, when people ask if we won anything we would nicely say we won a one night stay at Lake Kenyir, complete with dinner and breakfast, and a nice goodie bag. Which we did, after all.

We didn't plan to do much the next day too, for judging from the time we took to reach the resort, we thought it best to check out early for the 7-hour journey back home. So all we did was have breakfast with a view...

Then headed down to the jetty within the resort grounds to take a closer look at the lake. No, we didn't decide to rent a boat to go rowing. We hate how we tend to compare lakes here with those in Glasgow or the Lake District or in Austria, where their lakes were like mirrors.


After 5 minutes at the jetty, we headed back into our air-conditioned chalets for a quick game of Kill Dr Lucky and some rest before we packed up.

Then it was time to check out and leave!

Stopped by Kuantan again, this time at Kemaman Kopitiam (because all other places were closed when we arrived around 3pm). Three of us had the Nasi Lemak Special while esteban had the Nasi Dagang, we all had coffee and such, and then lad went to pay. When the cashier rang up a total of RM72.80, lad thought the cashier was joking. Turns out the cashier wasn't, and then we discovered that the Nasi Lemak Special we had, with the chicken chop sized lemongrass chicken, was about RM12. Our drinks were RM5.50 each. Only esteban's Nasi Dagang was the cheapest, being RM3.50. Good thing the food was good, otherwise we'd all be griping all the way home.

It was somewhere around 7pm when we arrived home, even though we left at 11am!

It was a shame that we didn't extend our stay at the resort, since the difficulty in getting there itself means we aren't going back there any time soon. So we can't say if Lake Kenyir would be a great place for a vacation. But it certainly is a large place to explore, and if you're the adventurous, nature-loving type then there would probably be enough things to keep you occupied what with the many waterfalls to visit. Otherwise, lazing a couple of days in the resort chalet would be a great way to destress (provided you don't mind your chalet running the risk of being invaded by insects that may find their way in).

Another unfair comparison we have to make here. After Nusa Dua, Lake Kenyir can't really compare. And dammit we never did get to explore the spa facilities!

And the weekend is finally here! Team Layton, once again, into the foray of treasure hunting! This time Team Layton will be taking on Top Gear's treasure hunt, which starts from Shah Alam and goes all the way to Lake Kenyir!

Well there was a treasure hunt organized by GSC, but the entry fee was a bomb while this one costed only RM600 and included a one night stay at the Lake Kenyir Resort & Spa with meals included, and each member got a generous goodie bag! Definitely quite worth it, even if we don't do as well as we could. In fact, lad has already mentioned that if we cannot answer half the questions that will come out we'll just head straight to the hotel instead.

Now if only we knew just what to expect of Lake Kenyir! Will we swim? Visit the waterfalls? Laze at the resort playing Jenga and other boardgames? Will the shutterbugs with their fancy DSLRs (and us with our iXus and iPhone) go trigger happy?

Or will we all be knocked out in bed from an exhausting morning (because treasure hunts do start at unimaginable hours of 6am!) and miss out on all Lake Kenyir has to offer? What more we should only be reaching the resort after the treasure hunt late afternoon to early evening, and on Sunday we'll be heading back home!

Here's to us snagging top prizes!

Let's take a look between this:

And this:

And finally, this:

Photos are credited to gamebooks.org. We prefer our cover to be number two, where you can see Lone Wolf standing on the pedestal (and not looking scary, waif-thin and unheroic...come on, he's trained for battle, why is he looking so fragile?!).

We can't say we like the cover art for the Lone Wolf books that were distributed in Bolehland (which is cover art three), but we didn't know that there were alternate cover art until we saw the books at an old schoolmate's house. Compared to the ones we've got, we were impressed with the artwork and the fact that they actually drew out the character of Lone Wolf. Turns out, those nice artwork covers were the American release edition (with grayscale map instead of colour maps and, in some cases, abridged) while the ones we got were by the UK publisher showing some artsy perspective of a monster.

It was only after some 15 books that the UK version came out with art depicting Lone Wolf...but a faceless Lone Wolf it was. Perhaps it was so you can stick a photo of your own face in place, since you'd actually be playing the role of Lone Wolf.

While the US cover art were drawn by different illustrators so Lone Wolf looks different from cover to cover (yes, yes even after factoring in age as he goes on to becoming Kai Grand Master).

Recently we were just in Mage Cafe and came across the Legends Of Lone Wolf Omnibus, covering the first two novels based on the gamebooks (hmmm we should check if 'Ward still has most of the novels) and that brought on the nostalgia for the gamebooks. Our collection of the Lone Wolf gamebooks (and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks) were all given away when we shifted, and we've not gotten back to buying those books because, honestly, who actually honestly plays those gamebooks?

We've tried. But at some point or other, we lost track of which section we were supposed to turn to, or died in combat, or died out of nowhere, we went, "Ahfuggedaboutit!" and just read our way through the books.

And now, since we're feeling nostalgic, we feel like playing reading them through again. But we're lazy to do it at Project Aon (which is a cheaper and easier way to play the Lone Wolf gamebooks) and we're rather not keen on buying the books again yet (for collecting purposes).

For Summerlund and the Kai!

The current method of anti-piracy prevention where you need an internet connection to play games irk us terribly. Not that there's a lot of games that do this, really, so far it's only with Steam that we have our gripes against but with games like Assassin's Creed 2, C&C4 and now even Starcraft 2 requiring an internet connection to play, we get a serious case of the irritables.

You're paying some RM250 for an original copy and there's still more hassle? In order to install, you need to connect once and create a Battle.net account and link your CD Key to your account, then you're able to play? In order to save your achievements in the campaign, you need to be connected. In order to play multiplayer, you need to be connected because there is no more LAN multiplayer.

Well. At least it's a mite improvement compared to C&C4, where in order to play even the single player campaign you need to be connected.

We have this notion that if we buy Starcraft 2, we're buying a game that we can play as we like at any time we like provided we have a PC that can support the hardware requirements. We kinda see Starcraft 2 as a single-player strategy game with additional multiplayer options, hence we think of it as a game where you can play offline and only connect online should you want to play with/against other players. Not, as it partly looks like, a multiplayer online game with a single player campaign story mode thrown in. Perhaps if we think of Starcraft 2 as a multiplayer online game then we wouldn't gripe over the internet requirement for gaming. But it's hard to think of it that way when Blizzard is releasing Starcraft 2 over three campaigns for the story!

So what happens if internet connectivity goes down again? No multiplayer then, yeah?

It's interesting how Starcraft 2 gets our goat while C&C4 doesn't. Sadly after Red Alert 2 we haven't really had any of the Command & Conquer games make us feel like how Starcraft 2 does - like we're back in college or university and off to visit the cyber cafe after lectures almost every day. We put this down to nostalgia and the love for Zergs.

You can label us as being 10 years in the past where 'connecting online' was an option limited by the speed of the modem and data charges, nowadays everyone is on broadband. But we don't like to take our internet connection for granted as being 'always there'.

Recently we've actually picked up a slight interest in Portal (after listening to Still Alive and watching some of the Portal YouTube clips admittedly) but never did get around to borrowing the game from someone - for one thing first-person shooters give us vertigo, although alakazen tells us that since Portal's very much a thinking game rather than running and gunning the vertigo shouldn't be so bad, and for another we wondered if our PC could support the game.

What really got us intrigued about the game was GLaDOS. Not the thinking using portals and definitely not because it was a FPS.

Then just last week, we got word that Steam was releasing Portal for free!



Hence no need to wait to borrow from anyone. And we'll be owning an original copy.

So far, we've only found time to play the game twice, and both times we could still feel the vertigo come on (although not as fast as, say, when playing CounterStrike or Left 4 Dead!) and we're quite happy that Portal runs smoothly on our PC...when the video settings are set at the bare minimum. That's fine, since GLaDOS kept us entertained with her exclaimations and the game doesn't really need to be played in high-end graphics to be enjoyed.

Our only gripe? Playing via Steam meant we at first spent the entire night and following morning downloading the 5GB game, and then finding out after that that we need to be connected online to play! We're not sure if we need to maintain the internet connection while we play, like for Command & Conquer 4 or Assassin's Creed 2, but we don't like the internet dependency as set by Steam.

What happens if something happens to our connection, like our modem getting fried?

At least with Good Old Games we can download and play anywhere anytime. At least Steam chose a good game to lure us in. Otherwise we might just forgo the download (and getting games from Steam in the future) and just borrow Portal from a friend. For now, we'll be busy exploring the depths of Aperture looking for cake.

Now we pretty much could have made do with using our old modem, but there was one particular thing that had us got us looking for a new wireless modem router.

See, it all started when William mentioned about playing Scrabble with SK, now that they've joined the ranks of iPhoners. That caught our attention, we never paid much attention to that app in the iTunes Store as we never fancied playing with AI, whatmore needing to pay USD4.99 for it. Asked him and it turns out to be a free app, so we jumped onto the bandwagon for some gametime.

And this pretty much happens.

Prior to playing Words With Friends Free, our data usage mid-April was some 250MB. We'd never really hit 500MB with our Maxis data plan and thought 500MB was a comfortable limit for us, we could Facebook, email, surf, navigate via Maps and not really worry about hitting 500MB. So when we started Words With Friends Free, every time it was our turn and we were free to play we would be looking for word placements. And it being the free version instead of the paid version, advertisements featured heavily in the game, especially after every move we made, an ad will pop up.

Now, come May we checked our usage and saw we were close to the 500MB mark. We weren't really sure how much but thought we were safely within the limit. But our Maxis bill told us otherwise - from the RM100 average to RM150ish! Overshot.

That got us to slow down playing Words With Friends Free unless we're in a wifi area, and so no playing at home.

Until now, that is! Currently we're on par with William, derek, carpe diem, poor SK keeps opening up opportunities for triple word and double word scoring, and Legolas is absolutely trashing us!

First we had Angry Birds to occupy much of our time. Not only did the game had many green pigs to kill and birds to launch, they do a pretty good job getting us to come back to the game again and again, first to finish all the stages, then to score three stars for each stage, and with the recent update, a new episode with more stages and a new type of bird.

Now that that's over with, we're waiting for more episodes from Angry Birds to occupy our time. In the mealwhile, we've found two other games that tickle our fancy:

First up was Babel Rising. Was free for a while back, looked simple yet interesting for a god game, and so we figured no harm trying and downloaded the app. We had a good laugh with this, as we visited all sorts of divine retribution against the heathens building the Tower of Babel. Very addictive app, and after a few games we gave in and bought the (in-app purchase) Campaign and Fury Modes.



The Campaign Mode allowed for slight variations in gameplay (ie, the tower begins half built, a level is added to the tower at the following stages) and allows abilities to be upgraded, while the Fury Mode has the workers being invulnerable to certain abilities (blue workers cannot be electrocuted, for instance). In fact the longest we'd played on a single stage was in Fury Mode (normally somewhere within 10 minutes the workers would have overwhelmed us) was just over 30 minutes! The battery drain we faced!

Then we were introduced to Crush The Castle. Admittedly when we first saw this app on the iTunes Store we weren't impressed. Only recently we got around to trying the Flash version online, and it's sort of a mix between Angry Birds and Babel Rising. Instead of birds on a catapult attacking pigs, it's a trebuchet launching stones at castles with people in them. Kings, knights, maidens, all must be killed to clear the stage. Blood splatters everywhere as they scream when rocks fly, walls shatter and everything plunges and crumbles.



Using the trebuchet isn't as easy as the catapult but that doesn't stop us from now trying to score gold for every castle!

Now, if only there was a free version of Canabalt for the iPhone. We find ourselves singing Erasure's 'Always' when we play that. Oh yes, and there's also Canabalt Typing Tutor to try as well...

Ok the first time we heard of Video Games Live was after when we missed the opportunity to go hear Distant Worlds perform in Sporeland. VGL was coming up in Sporeland and we could actually get tickets, but we weren't too sure about it. One thing was because VGL featured music from loads of video games, including games we've not played like Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts and Halo.

Went to iTunes and found that they have an album out there, and checked the songs. Out of the lot, we were only really inclined to listen to the Civilization IV Medley. We're not really sure how the other songs would sound, and we aren't even sure if the Civ IV Medley would have Baba Yetu in it.

Anyways we skipped the VGL concert in Sporeland as we weren't too sure of the venue they were performing in and moped over the loss of Distant Worlds but got over it...

Then about a month back lad informed us that VGL was coming to KL. Since they were coming here, we made a spontaneous decision to go and immediately bought tickets for lad, esteban (the two most likely to enjoy video games music among the lot heh), and for Chief and us. And every now and then we would get paranoid that we would forget to bring the tickets on the day itself.

Come last Saturday, we drove everyone down to KL, making a dinnerstop at Yellow Cab near Asian Heritage Row for dinner.

So...we couldn't decide what size pizzas to order, and had the waitresses bring out all the pans so we could see just how large a 10" and a 14" pizza would be, and ended up ordering two 14" pizzas to share among the four of us - an anchovy pizza and a mushroom pizza.

Verdict? Rather good, but rather pricey at over RM40 per pizza heh. And these aren't the meaty options with chicken, beef pepperoni and salami and the likes. We've yet to try those. But they were filling, and the four of us were definitely full after that.

Headed straight to KLCC with barely fifteen minutes to spare! Arrived at the Plenary Hall just in time to seat and let the show start.

What can we say about the concert?

Ninty to ninty-five percent fanboy attendance. Rest, fangirls/girlfriends/wives.



The opening had everyone excited. This concert was one where no one sat quiet throughout the performance. Everyone was cheering and clapping at every point of the show! Hearts were plucked at nostalgic 8-bit games coming up on screen with the music supplied by the orchestra, everyone laughed to see Tetris played as the screen slowly filled up with Tetraminos (accompanied by music from the NES version of the game, oh and there was a choir too! They had to shout 'HEY!' at the end of the Tetris piece!), everyone shouted to see old games pop up.

In between performances there were videos from the composers, a Skype conversation with the creator of Pong, and games! One dude was invited on stage to play Space Invaders, he had to wear a t-shirt with the picture of the spaceship and ran left and right about the stage to shoot the incoming alien invaders. He didn't manage to win the top prize, but the goody bag he got had pretty good premiums too! Portable Space Invaders, an Earthworm Jim CD, he got to keep the Space Invaders t-shirt... The fun bit was the orchestra playing the background beat to Space Invaders, which got consecutively faster as the invaders approached closer, and the audience clapped along as well...

It was when the host asked for the winner of the Guitar Hero competition held earlier that we only found out that we missed out a fair bit going on before VGL started that night. Anyways, the winner was invited up on stage where he got to play Guitar Hero: Van Halen. The song? "Jump", accompanied by the host, Tommy Tallarico on electric guitar, the orchestra and the choir (who shouted "Jump!" at every point in the song hahaha). Initially the winner was supposed to play the song on Hard, but the entire audience made him play it on Extreme - which he did quite well!

So there were music from Metal Gear Solid, Mega Man, Kingdom Hearts, Halo (this one we found the music very good even though we've never seen or played the game before), World Of Warcraft (there are more choral pieces than just A Call To Arms!), Sonic The Hedgehog (the choir even sang the "Sega!" bit at the start!), Super Mario, Shadow Of The Colossus, God Of War, a special appearance by Norihiko Hibino (composer for the Metal Gear Solid songs) playing 'Snake Eater' on the sax, and Laura Intravia dressed up as 'Flute Link' playing a medley of Zelda songs, and at the end...

Tommy (host): The company is...Square Enix!
(Audience goes wild.)
Tommy: The composer...Nobuo Uematsu!
(Audience goes wilder, shouts, cheers and whoops.)
Tommy: The game...Final Fantasy!
(Audience claps, cheers, shouts out their favourite series.)

Jack Wall, that is, we think it's Jack, the conductor, raises up one finger. No response from Tommy. Two fingers. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Tommy: ...SEVEN!
(Can audience go crazier? Apparently so.)
Tommy: THE SONG!
(Tommy and audience in unison, audience in fevered pitch, we too guiltily shouting along.)
Tommy and audience: ONE! WINGED!! ANGEL!!!

Seriously, has there been such fanaticism ever for an orchestra performance? Even for the Lord Of The Rings Symphony everyone was civil. No screaming fanboy singing along to 'The Bridge Of Khazad-Dum' or 'The Black Rider' for that matter. This was a rock band concert kind of audience reception to an orchestral performance.

There's only eight choir members which meant that they couldn't really be heard that strongly but the sound set up was very good. Lyrics from the original One Winged Angel, with music arrangement from the Advent Children movie with electric guitar bits. Absolutely grand.

For their encore performances, they gave us not only one, but TWO encore songs! First was a forum request for Chrono Trigger, which sent lad straight to heaven as he loves the game and wasn't expecting them to perform it. The second? Castlevania, performed by the orchestra, Tommy and Jack on guitars, Norihiko on sax and Laura on flute.

All in all, an awesome performance. Now...merchandise.

When it comes to musicals we would normally get the programme and probably the CD as souvenirs. But for this event, the programme booklet was RM25 for photos from their past concerts, no text, no credits to the National Symphony Orchestra or the VGL Choir or such. It really didn't feel something worth getting. As for the CD, it was the same one as we would find on iTunes, except almost twice as expensive. Somehow we refrained from getting it too. Could have gotten something else since they had other merchandise, like t-shirts, but we walked away with just our tickets and the event leaflet.

Now it turns out that members of the YKLS Chamber Choir were singing as the choir for VGL! This, we did not know as we decided to take a break this year. Met the bunch of them after the show where they let loose some steam over the short period of time they had to learn the songs, the difficulty of some of the scores...talk shop, basically.

Would we have joined as part of the choir instead of the audience if we knew? In this case, we think we best enjoyed the entire thing as audience. The choir couldn't see the screen to see what was showing when songs were playing, so it was hard to make out why the audience were all so hyped up. The energy may be infectious and you'd feel chuffed up for the performance, but the experience just would not be the same.

Plus, asides from Warcraft's 'A Call To Arms', the chanting from the epic-sounding pieces of Halo, FFVII's 'One Winged Angel', we don't think there was much songs we missed singing. Hmmm if they performed 'Baba Yetu' it might be touch-and-go between audience and choir...

For Distant Worlds, if they need choir members, oooh yes count us in straightaway!

So, will we watch this again? Sometime in the future, yeah!

Ok so every now and then, like on late Tuesday afternoons when the iTunes Store puts in fresh material, we'll take a looky for free music, vids, and app recommendations and the likes. Occasionally they'd recommend something that we like, occasionally we'll start from one app, head on to 'apps like this' or 'apps others also bought' and browse till we give up at the sheer amount of apps available that we have no interest in.

Or we might end up with a few different apps, mostly (if not all) free. A good thing is that there's always a 'lite' version of an app, which lets us know if we'd ever buy the app, keep the lite version or delete it.

Especially now that otousan has gotten himself an iPhone, and we're both still fresh comparing apps when we meetup, even we get to know a few more apps that we never noticed before. Well ok mainly otousan downloads games, and the games (as we notice) that normally grabs our attention are well-known games or PC games (ie Monopoly, Command & Conquer, Monkey Island, Beneath A Steel Sky, Zooloretto) while the new games that crop up don't usually get our attention, or, if they did, we've only put in about an hour of gameplay before we forget about the game.

So sometime last week we were hunting about the iTunes Store when we came across the lite version of Angry Birds. We'd never clicked onto the app to see the description of the game before and so, judging from the fact that it spent quite a while on the top 10 paid apps (for the Malaysian iTunes Store that is) we thought we'd give the lite version a try.



Turns out that it was a catapulting game. And to think not too long ago we just pooh-poohed another catapulting game otousan was showing to us. Anyways, we played the free six stages offered, and we thought we would forget about the game after a while.

And given the fact that a stage takes less than a minute to play, we've been replaying this game nonstop.

And paid the skimpy 99 cents for the full version.

Hello, the cause of our battery draining even faster. Who knows how our battery will last when they finally make Street Fighter 4 for the iPod Touch much more worth it...

After two years being absent from regular boardgaming, we'd finally found ourself back at Old Town Kopitiam Cheras to meet up with the Boardgamecafe regulars for a night of boardgaming! This group, as coined by Datuk Long, is quite hardcore when it comes to boardgaming. Not just in terms of the kind of games they play, which range from the simple to the intricate, but also because a meetup for games can go from 9pm Friday night till 6am Saturday morning.

Goodness it's been some time since we've done that. And to think that we were going to stay just for Round 1 (simpler games till before midnight).

The evening started with us making our way from work to Cheras, and us deciding to use the Federal, take the exit after MidValley where others will also exit to Old Klang Road, taking the toll that'll lead us to Cheras somewhere before finding our way to OTK.

Ugh. We should have just remembered how we used to go there and stick to the tried-and-true formula.

First, there was the traffic snarl from Amcorp all the way to MidValley. An hour of senseless crawling. We took the opportunity to snack of crisps and a Christmas candy cane to while the time away and keep from starving. Once heading towards Cheras, the road miraculously cleared up and we rushed towards Cheras.

Once we reached Cheras, the fight began anew: this time with aggressive drivers. Imaginelah, a driver who sped down the emergency lane, tried to left-overtake us (and failed), and wanted to head straight on while we needed to take the left exit with him trying to block us in his attempt to overtake us. Oh oh oh and another, who sped all the way until near the divider where the left lane goes under a roundabout while the right lane goes up a flyover, and this sakai driver ignores the long queue of cars and tries to cut in just before the divider.

Thank goodness our own driving skills never really lost that edge when it comes to beating aggressive drivers at their own game. Of course, we wouldn't put Aidan in terrible risk, but that doesn't mean we let these bastards just walk all over us.

Stress levels? High by the time we arrived at OTK near 8pm and discovered that the rest have yet to arrived at 8pm. Soon, though, everyone started trickling in and we'd all did dinner first before delving into our first game.

With the food court nearby closing down and OTK expanding their menu, the Root Beer Float is very popular.

We'd all started off with blownfreak's Long Shot, a horse racing game! With jack208 explaining the rules, it dawned onto us rather quickly that we were essentially gambling (with fake money! With fake money!). Horses move based on the roll of the dice, money would be bet on potential horses in the lead or cards would be played to meddle with the movements of the horses, and the player with the most money in the end will win.

A good game with an easy theme. Plus it can take up to 8 players! Here's one interesting thing that took place in the game, tho'.

Now for Long Shot, you most likely will own a racing horse, and, if your horse was in the lead with other players placing bets on him (not to mention that you've place a considerable amount of money on him too), we're sure you would do whatever you can to make sure that horse won first place and snagged the prize money making you richer too, right? Not with Havoc Hewey, who instead of getting his horse past the finish line, instead got another horse that no one (save ayheng) had bets on into the lead. Havoc Hewey's horse saw a lot of money lost that night...

From there we moved on to Bang! Another game that could take 8 players. Unfortunately jack208 couldn't find his expansion set to allow a 8-player game so he sat out and allowed the other 7-players duke it out. We were sitting to the right of the Sheriff, making us the last player to move, and Sheriff Blownfreaks rather mercilessly peppered us with bullets using a Volcanic gun that allowed him to fired nonstop. We barely lasted two rounds, as everyone else avoided the trigger-happy Sheriff and targetted everyone else instead.

Some players soon left, and rhyen brought out Power Grid: Spain & Portugal. It was at this point that we lost track of time and thought it was only 10pm-something when in actuality it was past 11pm. We thought we could play a game, then leave the gang to spend the rest of the night having a game of whatever 18XX train game they brought to play. We got a shock when near halfway through the game, we looked at the time and saw it was past 1am.

A game where players build cities and then use their power plants to power said cities, Power Grid: Spain & Portugal turned out to be a punishing map where uranium was rare and expensive if you were running a nuclear power plant. Thankfully we snagged two hybrid power plants (which could use either coal or oil) to help keep our expenditure flexible, but we haven't played in ages and was thinking of expanding fast early in the game. A poor strategy for this map with resources refilling slowly and city expansion expensive.

Thankfully for us halfway through the game the power plants that came up in the market for auction were obsolete and that caused a gap between players, with us and jack208 owning newer power plants that could power 5-7 cities at least while the other players could only power 5 at most. Dodya's strategy of holding back to gain initiative in buying resources and building cities backfired at this point as there wasn't any suitable power plants for him to help earn enough cash to keep up.

Was the night over when Power Grid finished at 3-ish? Nooooo...we moved downstairs and started two games of Puerto Rico. Two more players left, leaving jack208, ayheng, ryhen and us, so before calling it a night we decided to do a game that everybody knew and was quick to set up. Puerto Rico it was.

So, yeah. Whether we can think of doing this regularly every fortnight or so? Hahaha not quite likely.