the grunter

Today afternoon I had a plan, list of things to do while hana (hanaya..) spent her long dreadful day at school battling dull discussions and a hopeless lab partner. The list include tidying the house a bit, organize desk, play some XBLA titles, and other games.

I have also been installing several demos and full games to warm up the new 8800GT, I’m loving it so far, and the fact that it gave me over 10K score in 3DMark2006 and a solid framerate playing Crysis only makes me adore it the more. So I got Spore, Hellgate: London demo, Crysis demo, Redneck Rampage which I got from the beta of Good Old Games.com lining up waiting for me to double click their icon. On the other hand my 360 was urging me to spend my remaining Microsoft points on the full versions of Geometry Wars 2, Bionic Commando Rearmed and Samurai Showdown II. All was good and ready until I came across this website called ArcadeFly.com, you type in your address and it locates the nearest arcade locations from you, as well as some limited information on what kind of games they have.

The “meh” part of the search was that all three of the closest arcades from home were no strange places for me, but the “WTF??!” part was that all three places were one of the 27 locations in the whole North America (according to ArcadeFly) that offers the long-waited game on my list — Street Fighter IV.

I needed a second source to confirm this, few seconds later I found this list of arcades in NA that have SFIV installed, yup those three locations were on there too. Few more seconds later I was holding my car keys and shutting off my monitor and TV, off I went to experience the epicness of hi-def classic VS fighting.

And there it is, when I got there I saw two cabinets of SFIV at the centre part of the arcade. And it is only 75 cents per play!! The down side is no official cabinet and 16:9 HDTV, just the generic white cabinets with 4:3.. but eh, I was thrilled enough by the fact that a SFIV cabinet is located less than 10 minutes drive for me.

I played only one game, even though no one else seemed to be interested in joining. My first ever game of SFIV I managed to get to the final dude, Seth I believe was his name. The graphics are good, way to keep the 2D elements while incorporating some unique art styles into a game that otherwise would just be a VS Powerstone. SFIV has the humors of Powerstone though, when Seth KO-ed my Ryu with his ridiculous Ultra combo finish, Ryu ended up splatting on the fourth wall and comically sliding down eventually.

Another thing was the great balancing of the game, it was my first time playing and I didn’t feel that I was being completely cornered by any particular opponent (Vega was my 3rd fight, what’s up with that?) except for the Seth dude, god I hate the lazy let-him-use-the-moves-of-all-fighters-type boss design.

Glad to have been assigned to focus on the 360 version since week 2, the PS3 ver. is hard to enjoy..
No more overtime these days, off work at 5:30pm yay!
Still can’t tell you how my weekends have been yet, since haven’t had one since mid-August.
Do me a favor when you get the game next month, hold LT and click your right stick three times after you score a goal. This has been my signature move in the team, it brings out both smiles and curses from people.
Another good trick is hold down RB and do 8963217874123698 with your right stick (go around clockwise once and then counter clockwise once, see numpad). Soon as the somersault starts, you must press A whenever the player’s head/feet touches the ground, otherwise the celebration will end with a tragic wipeout.

Club mode is very sophisticated, not only can you recruit people to join your club and play together, you can also post up club news in a blogging manner or send private messages to members.

Also saw the PSP dev kit.. interesting

Bought Spore, to be honest I wouldn’t make the purchase right away if I had to pay retail… but Will Wright doesn’t bullshit I know that much, so I definitely cannot wait to give it a shot. Maybe it’s time to also let the old pc have a taste of DX10 with a graphics card upgrade?

Company patio bbq on a Friday, they call it Forget-It-Friday which means everybody gets off work an hour early, gather at the patio and enjoy all the grilled burgers and cold alcohol you can consume. From the patio you get a really nice view of the famous EA sports grounds, so I capped a pic..

Impressive? Most definitely. But some say that it is official size? Largely incorrect.

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I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but I’m running low on sleep and energy these days. I hope to stay in good shape to the end of this project because it has been really enjoyable, so i’ll come back and write some more next week when things are over and I can haz moar free time. I also appreciate my family and the missus for their understanding on the fact that I’m at work at least twelve hours everyday, it is definitely a brand new experience for me too. And for the people who thinks they are the victim of me finding a job that I truly value and enjoy and blaming me for not being able to dish out a few hours because I need rest from my (on average) 70 hour work weeks so that I don’t collapse: Get over yourself, grow the fuck up and start paying respect to people who deserves. I’m out.