Nine Over Ten 9/10

It was 8.00 p.m and I decided to ask the guy manning the ticket counter at the cinema on whether there were still tickets to the 8.45 p.m. Terminator Salvation screening. To our luck, there were a pair of seats (the last ones in the house) 4 rows from the back that were not claimed by those who booked online. That was how my girlfriend and I got  to watch Terminator Salvation in all its THX glory earlier tonight.

The movie, which was missing James Cameron on the driver’s seat, was unlike the first two Terminator movies. It was really loud, visually arresting and for the first time, takes place in a dystopian future only caught in glimpses in the first two films.

Remember the first time you saw John Connor’s scarred face in T2: Judgement Day? Well, Salvation will show you how he got that, and then some, in the first place. Christian Bale, who plays John Connor in the movie, is overshadowed by Sam Worthington’s Marcus Wright, who is an unlikely ally in taking the fight to Skynet.

The plot leaves plenty of opportunity for sequels but I won’t spoil it for you here. Go catch the movie, but those who don’t like to be subjected to really loud noises (we are afterall talking bout some robot-blowing-up action here), some mufflers would do you good.

By the way, get a booklet filled with pizza coupons and stickers when you purchase Terminator Salvation tickets at Cathay Cineleisure Damansara.

Well it’s no surprise that the upcoming King of Fighters XII comes with online multiplayer for both the Xbox 360 and the Sony PS3, the two versions differ slightly in their online offerings with a couple of exclusives.

The Xbox 360 version has the exclusive TrueSkill online rankings that enables players to record, replay and share matches. On the other hand, the PS3 version features an exclusive Clan Mode that allows for the creation of player clans, recruitment of clan members, blacklisting players and competition against other clans.

The rest of online multiplayer experience is similar to both platforms and will feature the following:

Online Lobbies – Up to eight players, online lobbies simulate an arcade experience where two players fight while the others wait in line for their turn to fight the victor.  Players can also duke it out via voice or text chat.

Lobby settings include:

• Winner Stays: Winner fights the next opponent in line.
• Loser Stays: Loser stays and gets to fight the next opponent in line.
• Sparring: The players that are to fight are randomized after each match.
• Player Match: A friendly match where no stats are recorded.

The Online Ranking System & Leaderboards:

• Grades each player’s performances (via letter grades) and keeps track of their best Time Attack times.
• These results are displayed online via public leaderboards.

Check out the following screenshots of the King of Fighters XII online multiplayer menus for both platforms, starting with the ones from the Xbox 360 version of the game:

PS3 Shots:

King of Fighters XII will be out for both the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 this July 2009. Be sure to pre-order it over here, along with other stuff as well (fancy a KoF XII gamepad)?

It looks like Digg has embraced both Facebook and Twitter as means to share out articles. You’ll no longer be able to “shout” your articles to your legion of fans/friends on Digg, as that feature has been long abused by those with big “click-armies”.

Check out an article from the Los Angeles Times describing these changes  (click  here).

War.War never ends. Here am I sitted in the middle of nowhere cleaning out my shotgun. Living in the Wasteland necessitates regular weapon maintenance as a means of survival. One would never know the horrors at every turn in this irradiated land.

This is something the people from the Vault, the place I used to call home, fail to understand. Their very human traits of curiosity and enthusiasm makes them disregard the relative safety of the vault to answer the call of adventure echoing from the Wasteland.

I do not share their enthusiasm for the Wasteland, having spent the most of my adult life there. I’ve seen things no sane man should have seen,  done things that run in  contrary with all things civilized and I’ve continued the Good Fight,which is not necessarily a good thing to stomach.

War. It really never went away. My shotgun is fixed. I’ve cannibalized two shotguns taken from underserving lowlifes to service my trusty stead. And once again,I’m heading out.

That’s right. In anticipation of the long-delayed Fallout 3 DLCs for the PS3, the Capital Wasteland Wanderer is back, and he is trawling the Wasteland like never before. Stay tuned for more Tales of the Capital Wasteland Wanderer right here at Nine Over Ten 9/10.

The best thing about bargain bins is that sometimes, you’ll get limited/special edition games included in the list. Check out the following bargain bin limited edition Nintendo DS titles:

• Dokidoki Majo Shinpan! 2 DUO [First Print Limited Edition Box] (USD 29.90) ~ Click here for details.
• Koharu no DS Uchigohan. Shokuji Balance Guide Tsuki Hibaihin [Special Edition] (USD 29.90) ~ Click here for details
• Tokyo Majin Gakuen: Kenfuuchou [Limited Edition] (USD 29.90) ~ Click here for details
• Zekkyo Senshi Sakebrain [Club Nintendo Limited Edition] (USD 29.90) ~ Click here for details
• Game & Watch Collection [Club Nintendo Limited Edition] (USD 39.90) ~ Click here for details
• Harukanaru Toki no Naka de: Yumenoukihashi [Premium Box] (USD 39.90) ~ Click here for details

On other news, the Gyakuten Kenji NDSi has been priced at a pretty conventional price of USD 299. While it’s not exactly cheap, the price is not enough to blow someone out of the water, so check it out over here.

For those of you who don’t want another new console, you can also join in on the Gyakuten Kenji Limited Edition bandwagon with the Gyakuten Kenji [e-capcom Limited Edition]. It looks to be worth the USD 149.90 price tag for the following items, so be sure to pre-order it here:

Animal Crossing DS is one of those games that, like wine, actually ages through the course of time. You don’t need to turn the game on everyday but on the occasion that you actually do, you’ll see some new blades of grass, new neighbours moving in, old ones no longer to be seen and trees actually growing.

But what happens if you do not turn on the game for 2 years? Well, my copy of Animal Crossing DS has been sitting pretty on the shelf for roughly that amount of time, give or take a couple of months, so check out the following video I took earlier when I turned on the game after a 2 year lapse. I can give you a hint though: lotsa grass, weeds and cockroaches.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeXpWApSKJQ[/youtube]

Remember Linerider? That Flash game was at one time the scourge of productivity in my previous workplace. The premise of the game was simple (and in hindsight, addictive). You basically draw a line (with a pencil) which represents the path/slope your sleight-rider would take. Press the play button and watch whether your sleigh-rider (named Bosh) can make it through the course you’ve drawn.

There are plenty of examples on Youtube. One of the more interesting ones would be this:

Heh. If you are done picking up your jaw from the floor, Line Rider has made the Nintendo DS it’s new home with release of Line Rider Freestyle. While the web-based game wasn’t exactly a heavyweight, Freestyle adds in a couple of additional modes, Story and Puzzle as well as the ability to upload content to be shared with friends.

The Freestyle mode, in which the game is named after, is the web experience translated to the portable gaming platform. Strangely it felt abit rugged (maybe it’s because of the small screen), but this issue aside, the ability to save your course/map is God-send.

Besides the infinite replayability value (I don’t think you can design the same course twice), the developers also included something that I’ve not seen in a DS game in a while, a soundtrack in which you can choose which song to play!

Pretty cool stuff this. I noticed a number of what were previously web-based games being ported over to the Nintendo DS, so what’s next? Feeding Frenzy?

The last message to come out from the Resistance was ” TSU: Thank you for playing the Terminator Salvation Twitter game “. You mean it was a game all this while? I really thought we were deciphering messages from Skynet. Rants. Blogs about this travesty.

Now, I don’t think any of the participants for the Terminator Salvation Resistance 2019 Twitter game suffered that kind of breakdown since the game ended on the 22nd of May. I had the ignominy of being harvested by Skynet, not once but twice towards the end of it, losing 12 points in the process.

Not that it matters since the game has ended, but taking a look  at leaderboards, one guy nearly made it to John Connor’s Squadron with 1424 points (you need 1500 points to get into that very exclusive squad). I hope he didn’t lose precious points getting harvested at the end. It really would have been a case of robbing the guy blind.

In retrospect, Resistance 2018 was an interesting Twitter-based game, and the integration between the game site and Twitter can be described as flawless. Too bad though that the questions, which were trivia-like didn’t really expand beyond the 3rd sequel in the Terminator franchise.

Malaysian companies that prophesy about embracing social media should stand up and take a hint, this game, with its combination of Tweeter, blogs and other websites, is one of the more interesting ways to hold a contest. Check it out here.

I honestly didn’t expect Nine Over Ten 9/10 to be on Rice Blogger’s Top 100 Malaysian Blogs, and being  70-something on the list just makes me want to do a better job with this blog.  I told my girlfriend that despite being on the list, there’s absolutely no chance anyone is going to stop me anywhere to ask whether I’m Mr. Nine Over Ten 9/10.

It boils down to 2 reasons: a. I rarely talk about the blog and even so, its to a limited number of people, and b.  I don’t have my mug plastered on the blog. I think I did a pretty good job going incognito, since my friends and my mum (”Are you in the News Straits Times today”) only found out about the blog this year, 3 years after Nine Over Ten 9/10 was started (one can only say “I don’t blog” for a limited number of times).

The reason for such err, secrecy, is because I always felt that being recognisable in public for what you write online is a double-edged sword, and a very sharp one at that, especially if you choose to upload your life to the Interwebs. And while I’m really sure my life is filled with blog-worthy material (e.g. I was on the front cover of a certain Tech pull-out for a certain popular English newspaper, cough), I prefer to talk about games.

Why? Because it’s easier (you need two opposable thumbs, well, not really), very satisfying (especially when I beat a game before writting about it) and many many more people can relate to the subject matter. So if you are here to see whether I’m ranting about work, tough luck.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my readers, fans, comrades and all those nice PR people and indie developers who decided that Nine Over Ten 9/10 deserves to get some delicious scoop material (thanks Romeo, Lauren, David, you guys know who you are). Without all your support I don’t think this blog would be anywhere near that list. Thanks to Rice Blogger for coming up with the list as well.

Ok, back to some gaming items. I’ve updated the About Nine Over Ten 9/10 page, I somehow forgot to add the Dreamcast along with the two SNES consoles to the list of consoles that I own. Say hi also to the latest addition in the list, the pink Game Boy Color.

I’m on a budget here, so anyone interesting in selling a PSOne, a Sega Genesis or a Gamecube to me? Do e-mail me. Now, time to blast some aliens in Space Invaders Extreme on the Nintendo DS.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a Star Trek fan. Starting with watching the old Trek movies on TV2 and then graduating to The Next Generation and Voyager, I’ve always loved the franchise.

I was doing the “live long and prosper sign” back in primary school and still continue to do so (when the occasion calls for it). I don’t really have a lot of Star Trek memorabilia, just a deck of Star Trek  Collectible Card Game cards bought from Las Vegas in 1995 and a whole bunch of Star Trek ships in gashapon form:

The Best of Both Worlds Part 1 and 2 remain as my favourite TV episodes of TNG while The Wrath of Khan and First Contact were probably the best Trekkie films I’ve watched. And I’m about to add one more film to make it a triumvate of the best Star Trek movies ever (IMHO). Yup, J.J. Abrams re-boot of the franchise is nothing short of amazing.

I don’t know whether to cry or laugh but the feeling of awesomeness pervades the film which I watched last night. I applaud the vision shared among the director and writers to come up with something really special for a franchise that has been forced down the drain by the two previous films (Insurrection and Nemesis) and one shitty series (Enterprise). The casting, if I may add, is just stellar!

One thing some people would have a problem wrapping their head around would be the concept of time-travel in this movie. While in First Contact, the Borg seemed to have altered the future by assimilating Earth in the past, Star Trek (yup, the new movie is titled just that) showcases the other side of the time-travel coin: alternate realities being created as a result of time travel.

The movie does a good job at attempting to explain that concept (it’s pretty funny as the characters take to being in an alternate reality like how a duck takes to water), but still, it’s heady stuff  to explain to other people. LOL.

Another source of confusion would be (and I blame the trend of putting backstories into prequel comics) would be Nero’s ship, the Narada. The chap is Romulan and I’m pretty sure casual Trekkies would be asking themselves, shouldn’t that ship look more like a Dreadnaught and why does it look like a freaking Borg nightmare.

Well, it is a Borg nightmare (when in doubt, throw in the Borg) as the Narada started of as a mining vessel which was outfitted with Borg technology shortly after Romulus (the Romulan homeworld) was destroyed by a supernova. The vessel was outfitted for the sole purpose of vengeance on the part of Nero who lost his wife and child when the planet was destroyed.

I hope they bundle the prequels with the subsequent Blu-Ray release of the film. Back to the movie, you’ll need to watch this. Enough said.