The absence of being

As I said before, it was a lot of months before I'd post again, but here I am. I'm ready to post some stuff.

Among a few things that happened (besides lazyness, of course), is that I completed the 1st stage of my community service in college and I'm going to do the 2nd half of it no sooner the semester starts. Another thing is that I've been playing in lots of leagues in NHL94.com and I had different measures of success in them and I'm getting a bit better at it, but I still have a lot to do before I become one of the best. Between this and watching the Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup, my PC dying thanks to a stupid thing I did which had me embarrased, getting my new laptop, applying for a job which I'm waiting for by tomorrow and see if I'm accepted for it and having suffered a minor car crash (by minor I mean not being in the hospital and the car not a total wreck), these are the things that I've done and happened to me so in a way, this is my life so far and hopeflly it'll get better.

Now then, I'll keep doing reviews as much as many games I can come across and soon enough, I'll do a review on Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3, plus some other stuff I'll come up with. I'll see you all here in this blog. :3

Toooooo long....

It's been way too long since I last wrote in this nearly forgotten blog, but I'll make a few notes to liven it up again. The chaos is back!

I got a new laptop and I got a few stories I may tell you all, but you have to wait until tomorrow to find out about them. For now it's getting late: I should think about sleeping now... -.-

Top 10 AVGN moments

Ahhh, the Angry Videogame Nerd... pwning shitty games and providing us great laughs since 2003. What better way to commemorate his work than a top ten? This video was done byQuincyFreal, so full credit goes to him. Check out his video and enjoy the first moments of the Nerd in YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_cH7qZzyJI

Review will be posted tomorrow.

Terry Yum Goong

This cool GAR video I found in YouTube 2 years back and even now it's pretty nice. This particular video was made with the voice collection of Capcom vs SNK 2 and BGM from Fist of the North Star in this particular scene of the film called The Protector.

Words can't describe how awesome it is. Just watch the video. :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ze-xQoEfOU

My bro's birthday

This past weekend, it was my big brother's birthday and it was a fun feast! In case you want to know who it is, he's the guy in the middle of the group with the birthday coat and headband in the pic. I'm the guy at his right.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to the Sakura restaurant, a place that serves some nice Japanese food and we gathered around a Tepanyaki table with my mom, my 3 aunts, my cousin Angel and 2 colleagues from his work. I've eaten seafood tepanyaki and it was great; it had octopus, shrimp and fish along with various vegetables, fried rice and chicken soup. Needless to say, our food was delicious and we had a really nice time.

To top it off, we had chocolate cake with Milky Way pieces on top of it and it was pure sweetness. And to make it even better, my bro won an auction at eBay for a 60GB PS3 with the backwards compatibility, one of the previous models before Sony had the 'great' idea to do away with that option and brought in the 80GB model. What a stupid move!

But fortunately, we'll get the other model around this week. Happy 29th birthday, bro!! :3

Star Ocean goes eroge?! o.O

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NHL 94 review

This is the review that I promised to post for this week, so here it is.

I posted a review about NHL 93 some months ago in this very blog and though some can say it's more of the same, it isn't. As you can see, EA published the game and High Score Productions were the developers of one of the great sports games that came out for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo consoles. Although the graphic engine is the same as in NHL 93, it has better sprite texture, the ice looks very nice complete with the home team's logo in its center and a few extras in gameplay.

What are the extras, you ask? For starters, the new shot featured in this game (And from then on, it would stick in all the rest of the NHL series) is the one-timer shot. The one-timer consists of an offensive player recieving a pass from his teammate and shoots the pick no sooner it reaches his stick as he aims to score a goal. In real life, this move can take plenty of practice because not only you gotta pay atention when your teammate is going to make a pass towards you, but also you must be able to hone your instincts in such a way that you'll know that once the puck reaches your stick you'll be able to make the shot while setting yourself to recieve the pass and prevent a opposing player from knocking you off the play. I have never played hockey personally, but it's about as difficult to pull off more than it sounds. You may debate with me on this, but we can agree that you do need to practice in order to pull off a one-timer like a pro.

Sorry if I got carried away with this explanation. In the game, you carry the puck towards the attack zone (that is, the zone where your opponent's goal is), you make a pass to a teammate while it switches control and you shoot it with the C button. If your position is well placed, you'll reward yourself with a cool goal while the goaile looks on in disbelief. Of course, the opposing team isn't going to let you score with out a fight: They may intercept or block your pass, knock your teammate off his position or the goaile simply blocks the shot

Another feature is the clearing shot. It simply consists of being able to clear the puck away from your zone by tapping on the A button and the puck will fly out as far as it can or goes out of bounds if you shot it right next to the boards. This comes in handy when you're at the receiving end of a power play and you want your opponent to back off as soon as possible.

The next feature is the penalty shot. When you come in streaking towards the opposing goal, you think you got a big change to score on a breakaway, right? But suddenly, a defenseman zooms in on you and trips you up before you attempt a shot; the referee whistles as the goalie catches the puck and you're awarded with a penalty shot. It's just you and the goalie in this instance and this is a test of skill to see if you can score the winning goal or not A penalty shot can occur when a offensive player gets tripped, hooked, held or knocked down with a rough check, so it's a free play for you. If you were the one who caused the penalty shot, you'll use the goalie to prevent the other player from scoring on you. The play ends when the goaile catches or blocks the shot away, the attacker scores or misses or the puck flies out of bounds due to missfire and when time runs out (You have 25 seconds to try and score a goal, so try to take this opportunity as best you can).

With all these features, you think that's all she wrote, right? No way, Jose! Before you begin play, there are a couple of extra stuff you should know about. First off, you can now swtich between using the goalie during play or let the CPU do the job for you. But in many cases when you play against a friend, you'd rather try to shot your opponent's shots when he closes in on you than let the CPU do it, as the goalie somehow ALWAYS tilts to the side a bit as your opponent makes a deke shot. This also applies when you're going to block a penalty shot. The other feature is that you can now show off your winning records, goals scored and saves made by activating the User Records option. With this on, you built-in memory on the cartridge will save all data of the stuff you've done after a game; you can save how many goals has a star player scored against a particular team, you can see how the home crowd was throughout the game and how many saves has your starting goalie made and so on. This can help give you a good idea to see how you're faring in games and all the data storted also applies when you play in the playoffs on Player Cards, which you see in the Pause or Intermission menu between periods.

And though it seems minor, you can have the CPU make line changes for you when a penalty occurs, you score a goal or the goalie holds onto the puck. By switching to Auto on the Line Change option in the main menu, the computer will make the change whenever one of your lines gets tired. Sometimes it can work well, but others you may want to do the changes yourself, so turn it On when you want to do it.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the graphic engine is the same as NHL 93, but it was been refined and well done and you can even check out the cool animations when you check a player into the boards or on the team bench and the penalty box. In addition, there is also the personalized rink music which gives each game a special, realistic atmosphere as you feel the home crowd cheering for you as the music rings nicely to your ears and it also chimes in triumphantly as you score a goal. How the game looks and hears is different from the Genesis and SNES versions and I give the Genesis the edge over the SNES, although the Super Nintendo plays just as nicely once you master the controls.

If there's something missing or bad I can find in the game is that there is no Season play! (You get that one from NHL 95 and so forth) While doing the playoffs is nice, you would wish that you could play an entire season with your favorite teams and work as hard as you can to capture the Stanley Cup. Another thing I found is that there is no fighting in the game either. Fighting is an exciting thing on hockey, but when the NHL prohibited this for the next couple of years, EA complied with this, much to our regret. There is no blood either when a player gets injured, but I feel it's minor compared to the aformentioned elements that are sorely missed in this game.

NHL 94 has aged well in these past years and a way cool comunity keeps this game alive online in NHL94.com. For those who hunger to play against another player, but don't have the console and cartridge, simply go to http://www.nhl94.com/, say your greetings and introduce yourself to the excitment of hockey with the folks flocking there with custom leagues and hacked ROMs that fit this purpose, or you can also play the original ROM if it suits your fancy.

In fairness, both versions recieve a 9/10 rating. It's an improvement to an otherwise great game and you owe it to yourself to give this game a try. You'll be glad you did.