Projects, Games, and Spain

Congratulations to Spain on Rafa Nadal's win of 2010 Wimbledon and the World Cup.  I actually didn't get a chance to see Nadal in the Finals, but I did get to see the winning kick for the World Cup.  It's definitely a time for Spain to celebrate.

I also watched parts of that 11 hour tennis match.  That was an incredible feat, or they had incredible "feet", haha....okay, bad joke...

I started my summer cleaning my room and organizing it so that I can put books into my room without creating a stack.  I brought my old bookcase into my room so that I could do just that.  I also pulled down my posters I've had up in the room for...wow, 8 years.  I want to look for a new poster.  Maybe Lighting from Final Fantasy 13.  I've been looking for a Rurouni Kenshin poster forever, but I never found one I liked.  Well, I'm done with cleaning and I started working on projects again this week.  I'm currently finishing up a PC game I started working on with friends from my videogame development club in the beginning of the school year and hope to move onto more projects before I look for jobs.  I really want to be working on independent games at the moment and learn more from it.  Other than that, I also want to work on my music projects and get better at playing the instruments and working with music programs.

Over the past 2 weeks or so, Steam had a huge sale of games that put a majority of its featured items 50%+ off.  I bought Counter-Strike Source, Global Agenda, Lead and Gold, Left4Dead 2, Mass Effect, Dark Void Zero, and Beat Hazard during those deals.  I had a friend who bought like 10-20 games each of those days.  I've also been wanting to play new games since I've been playing the same games on my laptop for the past year.  In turn, I started giving up some MMOs in order to free up Hard Drive Space.  Here's some short reviews of those I bought and gave up on.

[Counter-Strike: Source - PC]

This game has actually been out for a while now, but I've never played it.  I've always been playing CS 1.6 for the longest time, and so the switch was kinda weird.  CSS is a nice distraction when you just want to shoot something, but you have to find the right server to join.  If you join a regular game, it might get boring if you go against hackers, pros, campers, glitchers, whiners, spammers, angry ragers, or the guy that sings in the microphone for the duration of the match (but I guess this applies to a majority of First-Person Shooters).

The game is different from CS 1.6 as it's easier in terms of controls, tactics, speed, etc.  It may seem subtle to those who don't play CS too often, but you feel it if you play only 1.6 and move onto source.  The other cool thing is that there's other free mods that uses the source engine so you kinda get several games for the price of one.

[Global Agenda - PC]

I finally bought it.  Why?  $26, free subscription now, and 6 months worth of updates into the game.  It can be disappointing when playing with bad team mates while the other team is ownage, but you sometimes get into good teams.  I like it so far.

[Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West - PC]

The biggest fear of getting this game had come true when I purchased it and opened up the "Join Server" page: barely anyone plays it!  Aside from the stupid spawn campers, pro players, and weird controls, the game is as fun as I thought it'd be.  I got into a few full games with semi-equal experienced teams and found the team-play, action and premise of the game to be really fun.  What sucked was the day after I bought it for $7, it went down to $2.  In terms of Steam, that's another game right there.  If the game gets more people to play, have more updates, and fixes its problems, it'll be a great bargain.  I'm hoping Blacklight: Tango Down will be the same.

[Left 4 Dead 2 - PC]

Bought it, haven't played it yet.  Not enough Hard Drive.  =(  'Bout time I got it right?

[Mass Effect - PC]

I played it before and decided to buy it and play it throughly...once I get enough Hard Drive space.  A friend of mines bought it and beat it already and then went to buy the second one.

[Beat Hazard - PC]

Think Audiosurf in a Geometry Wars type game.  I like shooters and I like music.  Nice combo:

[Dark Void Zero - PC]

Bought it at a low price for a nice 8-bit nostalgic experience.  "No savings?  Crud....."

[Dream of Mirror Online - MMORPG]

One of the only Chinese MMOs I had, DOMO was fun, but kinda slow.  I was running out of hard drive and would like to play a game that had faster progress or quicker gratification in my tight scheduled days where I don't have time to play all day everyday.  But yeah, this game had a lot of professions, cute graphics, interesting controls and game mechanics, but just too slow for me to continue.

[Gunz: The Duel - MMOTPS]

I love this game, but it's a shame that people don't play it as much anymore.  The game is filled with hackers or pros, which a lot of MMO shooters suffer from.  So sadly, I gave up this game until they release Gunz 2, which they are.  I just hope they keep the hackers out.  Pros are okay, they can own me all they want as long as they don't cheat.

[Shin Megami Tensei Imagine Online - MMORPG]

This game is fun, but hard.  I die a lot since the battles are very strategic rather than being fast paced.  So you can't just click the enemy and wait for the battle to end.  You have to juggle an assortment of skills and abilities much like Mabinogi in order to win each fight.  The game is really hard with its default controls, but I have a speed pad that made it much much MUCH easier to play.  Sadly, it was taking up too much Hard Drive and I was not getting anywhere in the game since it took a lot of time and patience.  Patience?  I have.  Time?  Not so much, even out of college I'm still working on stuff.

[Valkyrie Sky - MMO Shooter]

Find three other friends to play this with you and you'll have a fun time going throughout the game.  Play by yourself and you may struggle.  Play with random people and you may get frustrated since they don't know how to play.  This game was fun, but I think I'll go back to Touhou and other shooters that take up only a margin of my Hard drive and time.  Fun game though, I wouldn't mind going back to it if I found 3 people to play with.

Finally, I wanted to let everyone know that Blacklight: Tango Down is out right now for $15.  This was the game I tried at E3.  Remember how I said I'd jump on it if it was $20?  It's $15!!!!!  But reviews are making me skeptical, so I will wait a little and see what more people say.  I don't want it to turn out like Lead and Gold with so little players.  I'll probably end up buying it.

Highlights of my SoCal Trip

[Witnessing history being made]

I am speaking none other than the epic match between Federer vs. Nadal at the Wimbleton.  Their match alone is a record breaking event as the match became the longest running Men's Wimbleton Final. (4hrs 48mins)  My family and I were in our Hotel room and had just woken up from our first night in Irvine, and turned on the TV to find that the Wimbleton Finals was being broadcasted at the time.  At first it was *meh* but then as the it became very close for Nadal to winning, we started cheering (he always had a weakness on grass court) and was hoping that he'd overcome his weakness.  The points were already 4-6, 4-6, 7-6, and the fourth set was very close to a win for Nadal until he lost the tie break.  So we stayed in the hotel room an extra few hours just watching who would win.  We kept screaming so much throughout the last set, especially my dad (omg it was making me so nervous).  It got to a tie break once again and the tension was so high that I felt like throwing up.  The push and pull kept going and did not stop with Nadal barely surviving Federer's lead and amazing serves; however, when Nadal finally got the lead, the moment finally came.  Nadal strikes the ball to the opposite ground Federer had positioned himself to.  In Federer's effort, he tried to strike back but finally ended the game with him hitting the net, announcing Rafael Nadal the new Wimbleton Champion after Federer's 5 time straight wins on the court.

The people who witnessed it live in action got what they paid for.

[The shopping]

(Castlevania Judgement)

Though I did not buy that much, I did get some interesting stuff.  One thing in particular was the going to Barnes and Nobles and finding that the latest Nintendo Power talked about the much rumored Wii Castlevania game now named "Castlevania Judgement".

I was bummed at first to hear it was a fighting game, but as I read the description more, I started to like the idea.  Castlevania characters in a fighting game intertwined with elements of the past Castlevania games.

(Fossil Glasses)

I found a pretty cool looking pair of sunglasses that was on sale and looked pretty good.  I would post a picture up, but I'm too lazy to do that at the moment.  Instead, let me share something else with everyone:

(Tetris Cube)

I saw this a Puzzle Zoo, a toy store full of puzzle games, board games, and misc. stuff.  I didn't buy anything that day (Day before we left Irvine) and so I went and got this interesting little boxy thing that resembles the pieces of the popular puzzle game Tetris.

Little did I know that this was evilness in a box.  9839 distinctive solutions to put all the pieces back into the box, and I had to cheat (Youtube) in order just to find one of them.  If you want something to kill time, this is definately one toy to do it (it was either this tetris cube or a Rubik's Cube).

(In conclusion)

We mainly went down to Irvine and LA for my orientation and for a school tour of UCLA.  Irvine was more close to a homely type of place with flat grounds and everything close by.  UCLA was more of an extravagant campus with an incredible scenery everywhere and a lively enviornment.  It was a pretty good trip.  (I missed my computer a lot through those 5 days).