I managed to catch Nasi Lemak 2.0 in the cinema last weekend. Word on the street was the movie is receiving rave reviews and it was difficult to get a seat. Anyways, the fiance managed to score 2 tickets and off we went to watch Namewee’s (the director/lead actor) latest movie.

He shares screen time with Karen Kong, a local singer and a host of other Malaysian celebrities. The plot is a comedic one, with Namewee playing a Malaysian, albeit racist chef, educated abroad, who when down on the dumps, has to learn to cook the ubiquitous Malaysian dish known as Nasi Lemak.

In a way, the movie is a play on how Malaysian Chinese look upon members of other races in Malaysia’s melting pot of cultures, and it was actually quite funny to watch how all these stereotypes play out on screen. Oddly though, aside from my fiance and I, and a few other people who were howling with laughter, the rest of the audience seem to be unable to catch the jokes on screen.

Perhaps being Malaysian Chinese they couldn’t take such an interesting way to point out just how coloured our views can get. I guess some people really do need to lighten up a bit.

Nasi Lemak 2.0 gets a 4 out of 5. The ending was a little weak though, could have thrown in the outtakes during the credits to spice up an otherwise quiet (and silent) credits roll.

If you are reading this blog and you are not yet on Raptr, you might do well to check out the world’s leading social network for gamers. Raptr now has more than 10 million registered users, including more than one million daily active users (including yours truly, check me out over here: http://raptr.com/jasonlwz)  Raptr provides a centralized hub for people to connect, share and discover content about the games they love.  Built with powerful proprietary data tracking features, Raptr delivers personalized news and content based on players’ interests and gameplay activities.

“With more than 10 million users, Raptr has become a vibrant community for gamers to share and discover a fun mix of content about the games they are passionate about.  We’re constantly adding features that enhance the Raptr community by leveraging our deep data tracking to help users get more out of their games and fuel conversation between players with similar interests,” said Dennis Fong, CEO of Raptr.

“As a result, Raptr is also in a unique position to provide developers and publishers a deeper understanding of consumer trends and habits, helping game creators connect with their consumers in meaningful ways.”

In May, Raptr launched an all-new personalized news feed allowing players to “follow” gaming topics that interest them.  In just three months, users have followed more than 500 thousand topics related to upcoming game launches. Raptr analyzes more than 23 million gaming sessions and a billion minutes of gameplay each month, and is the industry’s only source for comprehensive gameplay trends and statistics across consoles and PC.

Raptr partners with video game publishers who bundle Raptr’s client into their games to enhance their products with social features that increase adoption, interaction and revenue.  It also provides game developers and publishers with deep insight into player trends across titles, genres and platforms.

William Fortheringham’s book, Cyclopedia, is one of those books that would look extremely cool on a bookshelf. Not only is this hard cover in a shade of yellow that is very hard to miss, it’s an exhaustive tome to one of the things that is well loved by him, which is cycling. This encyclopedia of sorts is probably the next best thing to Google when you need to look up stuff about cycling.

Arranged in a style that reminds me of a thesaurus, or a dictionary, Cyclopedia covers a wide range of subject matter and topics in regards to cycling, from personalities such Henri Desrange to Chris Hoy, events, history, terminologies, technology and even the crazy and inane stuff related to the sport. You’ll be hard pressed to find an alternative to this book other than going online. Even then the book has an advantage of having everything (as of 2009/2010) in one, single location.

Having said that, tackling the book head on like a normal book would be a staid manner of approach, who reads a thesaurus straight on anyways. I would recommend just heading over to a random page, and be surprised, and learn a new thing or two about the sport. One grip I have about the book though is the publisher chosing the colour yellow as the font colour for words that have entries in the book, it makes some paragraphs rather hard to read.

One of the many fun parts of the book including an illustration on how many cyclists needed to power certain household items like the humble light bulb to a washing machine. Each individual in this book has a fascinating to tell and you can’t help but imagine in your head how those classic races played out in your head, thanks to Fortheringham’s prose.

Cyclopedia is a worth addition to any cycling enthusiasts’ bookshelf, Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates it at a 4.5 out of 5. It is available on Amazon for about USD 16. Click here to check it out.

The bulk of DC Comics’ first issues of the new 52 arrive this week, and among the key highlights are Detective Comics #1, Action Comics #1, Batgirl #1 and Animal Man #1. To me, it is as if the books I’m reading are sharing an overarching theme of being gory, as if the objective here is to creep the reader out.

Detective Comics #1 has the Joker apparently getting his face sliced off, among OTHER things, the evidence is pretty much there on the last page. Batgirl #1, has Barbara Gordon back on the saddle and through a miracle she’s walking again. The shocker is however having a hospital patient thrown out of the building and Batgirl failing to act to save him. OUCH.

Animal Man is having his own set of problems. Not only is he suddenly bleeding out of his eyes, after a really cool sequence of taking out a hostage taker (err…no pun intended), his daughter seems to have the ability of bringing dead animals back to live, fulfilling her wish for a pet. Freaky. It’s like Pet Sematary (blame Stephen King for the typo).

Grant Morrison’s Action Comics #1 does a take on Superman which most people would have a hard time not noticing the similarities with Batman. Featuring a younger Superman with under-developed powers and really lousy costume (the cape might as well be a towel), the guy throws a perp off a building only to catch him right before he lands on the ground.

Having a guy dressed up in black with a bat logo on his chest do that is cool, but Superman? He’s supposed to be a boyscout, straight arrow kind of guy. Anyways, it’s a whole new DC Universe out there and with plenty more of books this week (OMAC #1, Green Arrow #1, etc etc), which one would be competing for your dollars? I’d go for Detective Comics #1 and Animal Man #1 from this lot.

Some pretty interesting stuff got released yesterday on the iTunes App Store, and one of them was UK-based Pezzini Games’ puzzle adventure game, His Adventure 1.1.3 for the iPhone and iPod touch. His Adventure combines an adorable art style with addictive gameplay and fun game mechanics. Players take control of a platform to help him get home through over 70 exciting levels.

With 216 challenging stars to collect and 4 beautifully designed worlds, His Adventure is packed with hours of content. Let the His Adventure begin! His Adventure combines a adorable hand drawn style with accurate and precise touch controls that anyone can pick up and play. This exciting new puzzle adventure has a cute design and an exciting new game mechanic.

Players take control of a platform with their finger and must help guide him though each level. The task is not that simple, they must be sure he avoids the moving saws and obstacles whilst collecting the three stars in each level. They’re going to have to use their finger precision to get them all though- some of these stars don’t hang round forever!

The challenge doesn’t stop there! With Game Center leader boards players can also compete against friends to collect more stars than each other.

Easy to learn and so much fun to play, His Adventure is hard to put down. Packed with 4 worlds with new game mechanics, challenging stars to acquire and obstacles to avoid. From hitting switches to being plummeted into the darkness, with over 70 levels and 216 stars to collect, His Adventure is packed with hours of addictive game play.

Check out the game over here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/his-adventure/id448738557?mt=8

The Final Destination movies have always been formulaic. If you haven’t noticed it already, it goes like some fella gets a premonition that something bad is going to happen, and somehow barely manages to avert the tragedy, but as you “can’t cheat DEATH”, fella and his companions will one by one die horrifically.

This same formula is in effect in the latest movie of the series, Final Destination 5. I guess that the audience is in it for how these new bunch of characters die and in video game terms, the deaths are like finishing moves rather than outright insta-kills. There are plenty of red herrings and distractions, but somehow the deaths tend to be comical AND horrific at the same time.

Perhaps in 5, the series is branching out into the horror-comedy genre instead of just plain horror. In any case, there’s very little invested to the characters, but there’s one standout, Miles Fisher, who plays a character not unlike a younger, more intense Tom Cruise, but albeit taller. He’s almost a shoe-in for future Mission Impossible movies.

Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Final Destination 5, a 3.5 out of 5. The movie is a rather short one at an hour and 30 minutes, and yup, no kids allowed.

From a video game design point of view, I can actually categories the games that I play into three different categories: minimalist, middle ground and sandbox. Minimalist games tend to be perceived as simple, but truly, these are the ones that are easy to play (the rules are clear cut), but prove to be really hard to master. Such games include stuff like Tetris, Chess and even games like Flower.

Middle ground games tend to inject a little more versatility, and yet the player will always know that he is bound by invisible boundaries and are linear in nature. FPS games such as Call of Duty and Killzone are games that offer up plenty of action with goals in mind, be it a boss fight, reaching checkpoints, finishing at the top of the leaderboard or capturing an enemy base’s flag.

It’s the last category that fascinates me the most. Don’t let the term fool you, these sandbox games tend to be really vast and expansive and allow players to do one major thing, which is to create their own stories. Such games include Red Dead Redemption, inFAMOUS, Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto are all in this category, and with the exception of the latter (I haven’t really played it), all of them are my favourites.

I’ve been playing a little bit of Deus Ex: Human Evolution lately, and I can’t help but be impressed as the game has all the makings of a sandbox game. I’ve only gone through the first mission and already there are so many choices at the behest of the player but it’s even more linear than say….inFAMOUS. I’ll give the game some more time before coming to a conclusion (sand box or middle ground), but in the mean time, Deus Ex is looking more and more like Game of the Year kind of material

*Warning, Spoilers Ahead* So, the whole cause of the DC Universe reset was due to the Flash trying to go back in time to save his mother from certain death at the hands of the Reverse Flash, only to cause time to shatter resulting in the events detailed in Flashpoint (and its accompanying books). Upon realising this, The Flash goes back in time again in Flashpoint #5 to stop himself from going back in time to save his mother, and this results in the new reboot of the DC Universe, due to the merging of timelines.

Justice League #1 is the first book to carry the new DC reboot. The character of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and even The Flash have received superficial changes but for anything deeper, one will need to go through the upcoming books for the respective characters. I particularly like the Superman and Batman costumes, Superman seems to have ditched the spandex look, for a more armor-like suit. And Batman, being the only superhero with ZERO superpowers (except being extremely bad-assed), packs even more armor and surprisingly even shoots a grappling hook THROUGH an alien adversary.

Most certainly everyone looks younger here, mainly due to the fact that the book is set 5 years in the past of the new DC Universe reboot. Haha. Confusing, no? I can’t wait for the next issue though, it’s gonna be the newly rebooted Superman, versus the newly rebooted Batman! Yeah!

Selamat Hari Raya to all of you Muslim readers out there who are celebrating Eid ul-Fitri, or more commonly mentioned over here in Malaysia as Aidilfitri, or Hari Raya. Maaf Zahir dan Batin. And to all you fellow Malaysians out there, Happy Independence Day (Merdeka Day) as well! It’s nice to see Google putting up a nice Merdeka/Raya Google doodle to commemorate this joint celebration.

Life must be hard for those who get pwned by the Apple juggernaut. Lets do quick check: Google buys Motorola Mobility, not so much for the handsets, but for the patents to shore up itself against Apple, and HP shutdowns WebOS and its Touchpad line, after failing to make headway in the tablet market.

Now Nintendo is rumoured to be coming out with a new redesign of the 3DS and distancing itself from the 3D functionality of their…well…not so well received handheld gaming device (apparently Apple is to be blamed). If these rumours are true, then my earlier conversation with my pal this morning pretty much sums it up:

Gan (G): Pffft no money. Me saving for 3DS! I heard they going to release new version.

Jason (J): I’m going to SG (Singapore) this weekend!

G: zzzzzzzzzzz

J: ya with LESS 3D, more buttons (actually it’s an add-on thingamajig)!

G: lol. NINTENDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!1

J: u going all khan on them?

G: i hate those f*ckers.

IMHO, they should have just made a smartphone in the first place.