If you have not read the comic book and instead chose to watch Watchmen the movie instead, you really are on the losing end of the stick. Get a taste of the comic book with this free download of Watchmen #1. It’s a legal download of course, courtesy of DC Comics. Check it out here.

Onto free video game related stuff. Those guys that made that really interesting shmup, Big Bang Mini, for the Nintendo DS has just released the entire soundtrack….for free! Check out the Flash heavy website at www.bigbangmini.com for the download link.

These Sumo Digital guys have done some interesting stuff.  New International Track & Field? Excellent stuff. The same can be said for Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast for the PS2. It took me quite a while to download the demo version of their latest game, GTI Club+: Rally Côte d’Azur, for the PS3, but the wait was somewhat worth it.

For some of you long time arcade heads, GTI Club was a pretty looking racing game released by Konami released way back in 1996. My first impression of the remake was, wow..am I in an arcade? The graphics are of the shiny, crisp variety, not unlike the ones you see on arcade units but in 720p.

The sound effects, well, pumping up the volume will make you feel like you are sitting in an arcade cab. The game comes complete with the cheesy announcer’s voice.

The demo only featured one car, a Volkswagen, but don’t expect real-world driving physics in GTI Club+. The handling is quite loose here and the car feels like a matchbox on wheels, lightweight and prone to catching some air.

The game is a pretty fun distraction, the only problem being the demo makes you wait for several seconds with a big ad for the full game on the screen. It’s available for download on both US and European Playstation Stores, so do check it out.

It’s more like the only purchase this month.  I helped offload a copy of Initial D: Extreme Stage for the PS3 from a friend of mine for RM 80. With Play-Asia selling it for an already discounted price of USD 49.90, I saved RM 96 buying a barely used game.

One thing to note though is that the game is in Japanese, but if you are getting a copy yourself, don’t worry. The version sold on Play-Asia (as well as mine) comes with an English-language manual!

On a side note, don’t get me started by shying away from Japanese games simply because they are in Japanese. It’s not like playing them makes you feel that you are getting a Japanese language stuffed down your throat (I wouldn’t recommend it, even though it is a Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten dictionary cartridge).

I believe some games have universal appeal and are playable despite being in a foreign language. I’ve even got Japanese games in my collection that feature no Japanese text at all save for the manual and box! So don’t fret, take the plunge.

Have you installed the Fallout 3 (PS3) Trophies update? Well, I did and having restarted the game from the point of escaping Vault 101 (yay..I has trophy for Escape!), I didn’t really notice anything different aside from the game seems a little sluggish. Emphasize on “a little”.

But things came to a halt when the game literally crashed/froze/became not responsive….take your pick, it’s all of ‘em. I was shooting a raider in the head while raiding (pun not intended, I can’t find a better word) the Springvale School. I know VATS has this slo-mo thing going on, but I didn’t know it had game-stopping abilities.

Good thing I did a save seconds before that crap (not referring to the raider surprising me and him getting shot in the head, but to the game crashing) happened. Have you faced the same problem post-patch?

I haven’t been playing the game since (it was 2 days ago) since the demo version of Lord of the Rings: Conquest has been a fun (but ugly-looking) distraction. Will be playing FO3 later after lunch.

I just spent the better part of Sunday afternoon doing some gardening. As I was mixing the soil to plant a new batch of cucumber seeds (fresh from the Malaysian Agriculture Research and Development Institute…so says the makcik who gave me the seeds), I realized how much fun people who are hooked to Animal Crossing (and therefore “virtual tree planting”) are missing.

And unlike Animal Crossing, where you can cheat; gardening and planting seeds (watching them grow and then reaping the harvest), gives a certain sense of satisfaction no “farming simulator” can match. So, switch off the DS, get out of the couch, get a pot (the non-smoking type ), some soil, and seeds, and don’t make a mess .

I was fortunate to watch WALL.E on Friday night at a really nice cinema hall at Cineleisure Damansara. Having had conflicting reviews from my parents (one of them fell asleep while watching the movie), I came in with mixed expectations.

The thing about American animated films is that they tend to feature a lot of dialogue. Show Toy Story to a 5 year old and he might end up speaking like Buzz Lightyear. WALL.E on the other hand takes a different approach, at least for the first half of the movie.

For starters, Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class) is a mini trash compacting robot, the last of his kind, spending his days doing among other things, compacting trash and building high-rise mounds of compacted trash in a small part of a desolate Earth.

Humans no longer inhabit the Earth, having left for the stars after consumerism has taken its toll on the planet’s resources, and leaving the planet, and its heavens a gigantic garbage yard.

Naturally, with no one to talk to, there is no dialogue as Wall-E goes about his day-to-day tasks. At the end of the day, the robot retires to a home of sorts, complete with a storage area for collectibles (my girlfriend and I exclaimed “Collector!” the first time the scene came up); knick knacks that he picks up while doing his trash-compacting duties.

The movie moves into more familiar territory with the arrival of Eve. Soon enough, Wall-E is on an intergalactic adventure, etc, etc. Depending on who you ask, WALL.E can be a movie with a unique first half, and generic ending, or a movie with a boring first half, and an action-packed ending. With such disparate views, you are better off watching the movie in order to form your opinion.

And I think it’s one of the better movies I’ve watched all year.

Play-Asia’s Summer Sale is back! 25% off the price of all in-stock items. Gamers and collectors alike, here’s your chance to grab video games (especially Japanese Imports) and toys at great prices! Click here for more details, or head over to the main site (here)!