Wednesday, November 30, 2005

55 hours done, and a lot more to go

Ninja Gaiden: Done! Sweet. Well… sorta done.

I’ve just beat normal mode, and my game timer says about 29 hours. Including deaths, retries, etc, I’m suspecting it’s closer to 55 hours. And that’s normal mode. Now I’ve unlocked mission mode and hard mode.

Hard mode is going to prove challenging. I think in the original Ninja Gaiden for Xbox, they did what they did for Devil May Cry, namely, New Game Plus, but in hard mode – you carry all your items over to hard mode. I hear in NGB… well, you don’t. And that’s gonna hurt.

Yeah, I’ve been reading about it on the gamefaq boards, and I’ve used gamefaqs a few times to help me through the game. I feel a bit bad with the last few levels, because that’s when farming became really easy. There are these fish that die in 30 seconds, respawn after 30 seconds, and they give you about 6000 gold each time. So in about 15 minutes I can reach max gold and buy anything I’ll need, and then after challenge or so I’d go back and farm again. So yeah, last few bosses ate cheap item deaths.

So I’ve missed quite a few secrets in the game I think, haven’t looked at the FAQ for most of those yet (although I did for one secret weapon, which REALLY helped me through the game from level 4 on). Now I have Mission Mode which gives me soo much more replay, and then there’s hard mode, so I can unlock very hard, so I can unlock Master Ninja mode (equivalent to DMD mode in DMC I suppose). I hope I carry my items over from hard mode =)

Speaking of Ninjas, I finished reading Betrayers of Kamigawa. Time for Saviors.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Bistro Star

I guess I just want to write something here. So what am I up to now?

In Ninja Gaiden Black, I'm on the boss of the 3rd last level, and man, it's a tough one. Level 13 was beautiful though, and now i'm on 14 and the boss is killing me. I haven't tried too many times, but I know I will die many times more.

I recently stuck in Katamari Damacy for the first time. It's... an awkward game. It's fun, and the controls are pretty simple yet they do take some getting used to. You feel good while playing it, but I rather not play it for hours on end... maybe two stars a day is okay.

Anime-wise, I'm watching random stuff on my computer. Isaque gave me "He is my Master" episode 1 a few months ago, and just recently I watched it so then I downloaded the rest of the series.

Career-wise, I'm still not doing anything - however my parents are taking advantage of that now and so I'm working with my mom more regularly now, and also tutoring Vinh.

TV-wise... well, it's time for CSI in about 6 minutes. byee!

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Less Poker



It’s been about 6 weeks since I re-started playing poker online, but over the past week and a half I’ve been playing less and less poker. It’s as if it doesn’t interest me so much, or I don’t feel compelled to play it. You can see this from the chart, the long periods of inactivity. I still touch it every now and then, but I haven’t otherwise been motivated to play. I still watch it on TV and sometimes my sister has poker games over here and I participate in those, but that’s about it. So that’s my poker-update.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Cialis

That Cialis commercial on TV was bugging me. If you haven't seen it, basically there's a taxi cab driver in a car waiting for people inside a house. He waits and waits, and then starts twiddling his thumbs and then starts a crossword puzzle.

Then a couple comes out of the house and into the backseat, and the cab driver signals to them "what took you so long" and then the man says "my wife couldn't decide what to wear."

And then the cab drives off and it says "ask your doctor about Cialis".

And that commercial has been on sooo many times and it really doesn't tell you what it's about. So I made a few theories, and then I searched on the web just now to find out what it is. If you're so good that you understood the commercial the first time, congrats. I didn't, but one of my two theories was correct.

And so I'm posting about it.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Need For Speed

I really like racing games – so it’s kind of exciting whenever EA releases another Need for Speed game. This time it’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which brings them back to the more real, more exotic cars, and brings back cops and stunts and whatever.

But… the driving experience in Need for Speed is actually sorta… mediocre. Basically, you drive, you brake, you turn; maybe you hand brake, shift gears, and nitro. You drive around, hit cars, hit walls. It feels… very basic. You’re given this metal box and you drive and turn around the course.

Forza and PGR have its physics. Outrun has its simplicity. Burnout has its speed. Each of these games are also a marvel to look at. So what does Need for Speed do special? Well, I guess they have the variety piece of the pie. Sure, PGR and Outrun have “special” challenges, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Forza and PGR are mostly about racing, and Burnout has racing and crashing. NFS puts a spin on the formula; you can race, but you also have other objectives – get away from cops, customize your car, etc – and with its varying locales and car types, it does a pretty good job.

So while NFS games aren’t really groundbreaking, the way Forza and Burnout are, NFS games still are a lot of fun. Also, NFS games aren’t the greatest looking, but they do an okay job. As for NFS Most Wanted, it looks promising… although PC-Keyboard turning/acceleration isn’t so great… maybe it’s time to buy an NFS for the console…

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Poker Salary

I’m out of apple pie… oh well. I liked yesterday’s entry, it felt nice.

Anyway, since you’re allll so interested in poker, here’s another update.



I’ve excluded the other lines; the peak is hovering above $120, the low is below -$50, and now the teal line would be $6 above the actual line. It’s still interesting to see those lines, especially on days where the peak is maybe $10, actual is $3, and low is -$20; you have to wonder what happened on that day.

So I’ve been playing poker for about a month now, and I’m doing very well, at least for someone who isn’t super concerned about it. I did keep saying that I wouldn’t mind if I lost a lot, but it would still suck if I did. So after thinking about it, I came up with a semi-fuzzy-clear goal. My goal is:

To make a pretty chart.

I think this way I would be happy. It’s a little ambiguous, but for example: Let’s say I just made $15, so there is an upward rise in the chart. The next day, how would the chart be prettier? Well, this is kinda weird, but any option is valid. After a rise, a regular chart would see a fall, preferably somewhere between $8 and $20. If it flattens out, it won’t be as pretty as a fall; but then a re-rise would be great.

After a fall, what’s good? Well, definitely a rise, of an equal amount of the fall, or maybe a rise over the spread of two days, or a rise, double the size of the fall. I’m sure I’ve lost all of you reading this, I’ve also lost myself. But, if I tell myself the graph would become pretty even if I lose $7, then I wouldn’t be so worried about coming into a game with $7.

Anyway, here’s another chart, with another innate, long term goal.



This is my salary chart. If poker was a job, I would be making $2.45 per day. My long term goal is to multiply this by 50, so I can make $100 a day :P

Monday, November 07, 2005

Simple Pleasures

Raking and bagging leaves.

Warm apple pie under a scoop of French Vanilla icecream.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Warning Forever – Wide Armor Philosophy

Yesterday we had a magic draft, and afterwards David came over and eventually we got to playing Warning Forever. In this game, there are several different “type” of bosses; usually by stage 4 or 5, you can tell what type of boss you’ll be fighting for the rest of the game. We think either a) you determine what kind of boss you fight by your playing style in your first 3 levels, or b) it’s random.

Anyway, sometimes I would complain about the type of bosses that they’re throwing at you – and I noticed I do consistently better on some type of bosses than others, that is, The “Wide Armor” and “Wider” types compared to the “Wide Attacker” types. I didn’t get to show the difference yesterday while playing because it didn’t come up, so I thought I’d dedicate an entire blog entry to it, for the fun of it.

Here is a picture of the Wider or the Wide Defender/Armor type:



First you shoot at point 1, which is open to you. From there you have a clear shot at point 2, and you can even sneak yourself into the enemy and focus all your fire on there. Points 2, 3, and 4 are the joints connected to the core, the heart, and destroying these points will destroy the corresponding “chunks of boss”. So just concentrate fire on the joints, and the boss will go down easy.

Now here is an example picture of a boss that is a Wide Attacker – or the ones with really long feet:



Again, the joints, points 2, 3, and 4 (3 and 4 not shown, but you know where they are) are the best places to hit the boss, to destroy whole chunks of the boss faster, and get rid of a few cannons by just destroying a joint. Again, once you destroy point 2, points 3 and 4 aren’t so hard. Except this time around, it’s not as easy.

What do you have to do to destroy point 2? With Wide Armor, you just destroy point 1. Now, you’ll have to go through the three X’s, AT LEAST, and even then you won’t have a clear shot at point 2. You’ll have to tilt your cannon and you can’t get too close in because of your ship’s orientation.

And sometimes it’s a pain because parts become invincible. Joints never become invincible. So with Wide Armor, you’ll destroy point 1 before anything becomes invincible, and then if all of “2” except the joint becomes invincible, you can still get rid of it easily. But with the Wide Attacker, it’ll be hard to reach point 2 when some “2” things become invincible.

And that’s my post.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Remix of Lain, Warioware, Texhnolyze, and panties

It’s like there was a collaboration, between… the creators of Lain… the creators of Texhnolyze… the creators of Warioware… a pervert… and a DJ/Remixer. And then throw in splices of random shots, and then lots of drugs. And what do you get?

You get a mockumentary, a fake documentary, about the problems of perversion and the realities of perversion, of course, blown up and exaggerated. All told in a wacky, yet mildly intriguing style, with several odd remix parts. You get… Colorful.

Ahh, Colorful. At the time of writing this paragraph, I’ve seen half of it. It’s a collection of shorts, each about 5-6 minutes long, each with an individual or group of individuals trying to look at panties and cleavage, and what they do in order to achieve their goal and their thoughts about it.

Okay, seriously, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. At the same time, it’s not as pornographic as I thought it would be. First, the graphic style isn’t regular anime, it feels more… weird, or say, artistic. As I said, there’s a remix dude involved, and drugs, and splice of random shots, which adds to the weird funkyness, or artisticalness to the piece of work. Every now and then they splice in some random filler and random techno music. And it’s overall funny, that it’s not overly sexual. It’s kinda like Video No Otaku, which pokes fun about anime clubs and the addiction of anime – so in the same way that it’s so over the top, in the sense that Video No Otaku won’t offend you (for loving anime), you won’t feel guilty watching this because it’s so obviously funny.

I give it an 8/10.

+ not as bad as I thought it would be
+ not as racy as I thought it would be
+ funny and artistic
- not as erotic as I thought it would be
+ sorta funny behind the scenes look
- mostly retarded behind the scenes look
+ randomness
- sometimes repetition is annoying

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Yeah, Baby, YEAH!

Okay, this was the last poker progress chart, which was about 5 days ago:



And this is the new one, updated today:



YEAH, baby, YEAH! Yes, today I made about $39 in online poker. So I think this would translate to about $18US/hour, which is pretty spiffy – of course, I’m not playing 8 hours of poker a day, and results would fluctuate a bit. I’m glad my poker skills are improving, because I think they are – I’m not being as risky with hands. I remember I did reach $200 in my account one time, and then reduced it back to $120 because of a few bad days – I’m hoping I won’t have such bad days anymore.

Anyways, I’m feeling sorta jumpy inside – it’s like I just won a whole lot of money. Oh wait – I did! :P ($39 is a whole lot, compared to the +/- $2 I was doing on most days)