Role-playing

This is a one shot post about my hobby. I will be using random words together with few to a lot of bad grammar. Thus, I apologize in advanced for such problem. Also for few ignorant things that might occur in this post (as I am not a fully modded super-geek in gaming), I apologize for that too.

Role-playing game has been the best of gaming genre that I ever played. Starting back in my childhood, at age around 7-8 years old. I bought a book that give us a table in the beginning of the book, and then a story begin that take us to assume a role of last warrior, Lone Wolf from a magical school embarking on a journey to defeat the “evil lord” that kill everyone from the school. Within this book I can choose different choice that take me either to next page or or few pages in the back that ultimately show what is the choice I made. And when I entered a battle, I have to use some mathematical senses and dice rolling method to fight the enemy, and with that I will know – in gambling senses – the outcome of my battle. (For more information: wikipedia)

Here is the uncool thing: because the book was in Malay, and because I am lazy so much, I never really follow the rules in the book and read it through from the beginning to the end. Also, since there is so many books spawn from the series, even until he is no longer a normal soldier and have turned to a grandmaster Yoda level, I gave up. There are few of my friends that took it seriously, yet they still gave up in the end.

It wasn’t later than that I learned about Final Fantasy, a series of RPG video games by Square-Enix (Used to be called SquareSoft before the emerging). Before the the year 2001, I always came to my friend house to check him out playing Final Fantasy VII. That was all I can do until I bought PSone in 2001. But around that time Final Fantasy IX was released, so I was stuck with both game and also my PMR (a mid-school examination).

After the PMR ended in September 2002, I started playing Final Fantasy IX, which I have played it half way before the exam. I played it almost 24/7 I recalled it again. And what did I get in the end?

When the game finished, I felt a strange surge in my body about the game. I can even remember how I felt sad when the game finish. I want something more from the game. I felt satisfied with the game. But I didn’t played it again, I move one with the greatest hit of Final Fantasy, FFVII.

It didn’t took me a long time to finish the game. Together with a guidebook, I mostly finish all the side-quest and the main quest. But at the end, I never felt the same feeiling with finishing FFIX. Probably because for FFIX, it was my first time playing RPG. Probably. But in any ways, FFVII was a greatest game of FF by far (not until I encountered FFXII).

Then in 2003, I bought a PS2, after few month and years waiting for it (I got a good marks in PMR). And my first grab of many games: Kingdom Hearts. There was also FFX, but I was less enthusiast with it compared to KH. Kingdom Hearts brought me to a new level of RPG after quite a while of hiatus after FFVII.

Why wasn’t I felt all that good about FFX? It has a good camera option, a smooth CGI, a good and beautiful looking characters. But I believe it was deluded by KH and and the blitz ball side-game. I hate the blitz ball. Also the grid system that need you to have certain crystal to level up. Not to forget also the dark theme of the story.Yet I think I want to look at it  again some other time. Maybe I might get the feeling again. Sometime in the future, perhaps.

Not to forget also, a tactical action game, Metal Gear Solid. I was enjoyed and thrilled with this game when I played it in PS emulator in PC. But the quality was low, and stupid. So I played it again in PSone later, and I can consider it as the best game series in my gaming years.

Now in this unstoppable changing in gaming generation, new platform and games coming out, but only few games that I’m looking forward: Final Fantasy versus XIII, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. But to play both of this game, I need to start saving from now, and maybe after I begin to work in the next two years. All of this can wait. Yes, I have to have patience. Not to forget also few RPG tactical game in PC that are now absolutely ridiculous in the computer specifications (Crysis, Fallout 3, Gears of War, etc.). To play the latest games, you need to spent thousands amount of dollars to get a good PC to play the game. But not to worry, even that is also in my long term list. Buy the disk now, and played it in few years later. LOL.

What is my gaming experience basically? The first game I ever played when I was young, after my father brought back a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) look-alike (I believe it was replica, made in China probably) was Tetris. With it then, I played few other games, swapping catridges with my cousin that included Contra, Mario, pin-ball and few others that I forgot the names. Then came PC games, cheap PC games such as Dragon Lair, Prince of Persia and a game that is almost like Contra, however I forgot the name.

Then in 2000, I got a Gameboy and with it I played the sensation hit of that time, even now – Pokemon (short for pocket monster). I was so obsessed with it, that I was able to collect all 245 Pokemon together with my friends. Now I wonder where did I put my Gameboy…

Then PSone came shortly after that. Final Fantasy IX, VIII, VII, MGS , WWE (it was a hit for some period), Legend of Mana, Breath of Fire, etc. (I basically forgot the least best).

The most dangerous guy

PS2 hit me in 2003. Titles included Onimusha (1,2,3, Dawn of Dreams), MGS2 (Sons of Liberty, Snake Eater), Kingdom Hearts, Silent Hill 2, Katamari, Medal of Honor, Zone of Enders, FFX, FFXII (the best yet in my experience – whole new level and I love the concept), God of War 1 & 2 (the best!!), Shadow of the Colossus, etc.

Right now, I have a Nintendo DSi, a new hand-held console from Nintendo, one of the oldest gaming company that still survive until today with their genius gaming platform. But due to financial problem, I can only afford one game now, The World Ends With You and I’m still working on it. One of the coolest thing about this game is I have to stop playing for a few days so that I can level up by shutting down the console. What a unique game.

Well, now hoping for the future, Final Fantasy versus XIII, I will definitely play you!

I love games made by the Kingdom Hearts developers team.

Disclaimer:

All images are from Google Images.

Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts are all belong to Square-Enix

God of War belong to Sony Game

Metal Gear Solid belong to Konami

Katamari belong to Bandai – Namco

Beautiful, yet Dangerous; you never defeat her in the game

Things that made me smile :)

It has been almost one month since the last post, and almost 3 weeks since my spring course started. Yup that’s right people I can speak a little bit of Spanish right now, but not really fluent of course. Just few words that has been taught in the class.

Back to the title of this post, I just wanna share few things that has been happening lately. Starting with my Bermuda field trip, friends Graduation day, my birthday party (small party), summer blockbuster movies, and music.

Bermuda

The trip in overall was awesome. Despite of some “motion problems” on the boat, but overall, I did my best to make the trip enjoyable. Let me summarize what we did for the marvelous week:

• In Saturday the day we arrived, we checked in the Bermuda Institue of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) with empty stomach they only served us sandwich and few chips plus cookies. what the hell right? but yet we still got a good supper / dinner that evening after we got back from St. Georges, a nearby “old” town close to the BIOS station.
• The next day was the day we start snorkeling, but not from the dive boat in the middle of the ocean, instead we snorkel close to the ocean, at a place call Whalebone Bay. That day wasn’t really good for me because of the foggy mask thus I can’t see anything underneath. Then I learned that our spit is the best solution to the problem. The thicker your spit is, the better. After the snorkel, we headed back to the station and look underneath microscope the sediment sample that was collected at the ocean floor of the bay. After the lab process, at night we have short lecture about what we learn and what we will see tomorrow. This schedule is continuous for the rest of the week.
• Then come the worst day of my life. With a strong arrogant, I didn’t take the motion sickness pills before the trip, and the result? Guess for yourself. With the dive boat, we went to few places near the east of the island to do some snorkel and diving. The water was cold and freezing, and the wave was intense. Since I’m not a good swimmer, it was so hard for me to go across. Furthermore, there was this stupid jellyfish that is call Portuguese Man of War that is deadly, so what we have to do was swim around it try not to get sting. This is where the motion problem came in: I took of my snorkel (the breathing tube) to catch some good breath, and wham! the wave hit my face reall hard and I swallowed mouthful of seawater. Then I start to feel uneasy. Once I got on the boat, I couldn’t hold it anymore…
• For the following days, I took precautious step to eat the pills before every trip on the boat.
• On Thursday, we were allowed to wander in Hamilton, capital of Bermuda. So Harold, our Bermudian friend took us to few beautiful spots in the island, and take a ferry back to Hamilton. It was a best thing that I did in Bermuda (not the lab thing, darn prof).
• One thing that I don;t like about the trip was changing time. He (our prof) said the night before that we depart at 9 a.m, but then he change again the nex morning 15 minutes earlier. Every single f**king day, and that really didn’t make me happy. I have to do a bussiness after every breakfast, but he disrupted my mood every day. I felt really pissed that day when he really change the time on the spot that morning after I carefully plan my time. Idiot.
• Most things in Bermuda are crazy expensive, and the food is hell expensive than the clothes.
• The best moment of my snorkeling experience: a sea turtle sitting in the middle of two pinnacle reef looking at us with its cute face.

Birthday Party

Since my birthday fell on Friday, my friends, all Asians (duh) decided to throw a BBQ party and anticipated surprise birthday cake. It was nice of them to do that, and I was really happy that day despite we have wait every five minutes for it to be served.

Summer Movies

I watch three movies so far, and I don’t know if I can watch more (but Transfomers 2 is in the compulsory list – I’m gonna be in Ottawa that day, so careful Ottawa people) since the theater is far and the taxi cost is not cheap.

Angels and Demons

I was excited by my friend that keep saying the movie is awesome and yada-yada. But what the hell, it wasn’t the great that I anticipated. The movie compared to The Da Vinci Code has less puzzle to be solved and somewhat straight forward to me. I just don’t feel any kind of emotion arousal in the cinema aside of the air conditioner in that place. The movie does have moral that we can see and interpret easily unlike Star Trek, but yet the pace and the story blend wasn’t feel right for me. I can’t comment more on this but the movie is okay but not that good.

Terminator Salvation

The movie has good cinematic movement and great special effect with human expression of apocalyptic future, but no dramatic moment that can intertwined the whole movie. Christian Bale has a less cinematic appearance (I think) than Sam Worthington, but anyway I can say that the movie is good because of them. The pace of the movie is good, I felt enjoy by the action sequence, but at the end I felt empty again just like watching A&D (above) and depressed by the feeling that there’s gonna be another terminator movie to explain why the hell Arnold’s 3D recreation is evil, not good.

Star Trek

Nuff said, I have been waiting this movie since January this year, and the anticipation is worthy. This movie is so awesome (despite of empty philosophical meaning unlike The Wrath of Khan) that the whole pace, the comic relief situation and the characters are well blend together with the special effects that really open up the whole Star Trek Universe again to the new modern audience. This movie is enough to fill the “emptiness” of my summer movies (plus Transformers 2 perhaps).

Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown

This album contain the same sound and political / rebel lyrics as the previous American Idiot. I felt down at first, but after few perticular songs, I have to admit that the album made me smile for a day. Particular best tracks : Viva La Gloria, Before The Lobotomy, Last Night on Earth, 21 Guns, and American Eulogy.

Thats all folks for now.

Adios.

All posters from IMPA Awards.

Musim Bunga

Musim bunga semakin hampir. Tak lama lagi sekolah pun dah nak habis. Tamat sudah pengajian tahun 3. Ada lagi 3 minggu jer. Tapi aku masih ada matlamat belm tercapai lagi. Aku taknak sekolah berakhir macam tu sahaja. Akan aku laksanakan matlamat itu.

It seems that this blog will go on hiatus for the next few weeks, because: 2 presentations are coming and I ahven’t do anything about it yet; final exam is approaching; another paper for Hydrogeology is coming and it will be tough; financial crisis put me into deep solemn; reading comics; watching movies etc2.

I think that it is written this way, I won’t be working this summer. Instead I’m gonna sit in my room, enjoying my days while learning Spanish (that’s the plan). If any alst minute call come in, I won’t hesitate to take it. Money is crucial right now, but taking care of myself is more important.

Sorry for not updating this blog in quite a period (this is a reply to Reen). Busy gila, paper, assignment, masalah negara, tgk TV shows, macam2 lagi lah. In other words, malas sebenarnya. It is really hard actually I think, been confined to this place from other friends, have to be busy with school works, all of these made me feel sick with my own life sometimes. I feel tired with this life, I need to go somewhere to entertain myself. Nak online YM pun malas, MSN apatah lagi. Facebook pun sebab taktau nak pergi mana lagi kat internet ni. Bukak web lucah pun bosan, download movie bosan, download music bosan. Semua bosan.

Now, I want to talk about random thing. Here we go guys.

Music

Please do check out this guy. His real name is Gregg Gillis, stage name is Girl Talk. I believe, that he is right now the best mash-up DJ I ever found (I remember during my Maktab time, Hitz.fm always put up mash-up song in late saturday night). I like some other mash-up remixes DJs out there such as Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow, and few other that I feel lazy to say it here. But GT is amazing. Not just did he mash-up different song, but it is totally different. In his album (Night Ripper, Feed the Animals) I found different buch of songs that I like which is always appear on the charts. He mixed them all up in one album with good beat from the beginning until the end of the album. It’s like a pool of cool songs that keep me up moving myself everytime I listen to it (warning: unsuitable to listen during sleep time). Highly recommended. To read more about him, wikipedia is the best place.

Movie

Los dan Faun best. Haha. Tu jer. Nothing is new. Serious.

TV shows

30 Rock ROCKS! The best episode I’ve watch so far: “Succession”. The most brilliant story line ever and background music that push the bounadry of comedic series. But I still like Scrubs because it’s the first comedic tv shows I’ve ever enjoyed.

Geology

I’ve found out that geology is scary. What a revelation!

Childhood

This is something which is totally random. I want to put this as the “25 random things about me” on Facebook, but again lazy-lah! This might be a post that gonna be so straight. Straight as a gay.

I did went to school wearing short pants when I was 6 years-old. I never went to kindergarten, since my dad was the principal of SRKSB, I can enroll in standard one at 6 years old. I wore short pants, probably for a week or less, then I requested my parents to buy me long pants, because no one was wearing them that time. I felt shy you know. I was given a chance to go to standard two after that, but I refused. So I basically took darjah 1 two times, which then I met Amir Muhsin, my dear friend up until now.

I went to Sekolah Agama until standard 3, then I quit without really noticing it (I quit just like that, maybe my parents did something for that). Prior to the quitting, I didn’t go to school because of; 1) Dash Yankuro and 2) Citer P. Ramlee. Because of those, I skipped the school and finally quit. Think back again, I don’t really remember learning something there, except of writing in jawi, main gasing, kuda tempang, keter Tamiya, disturbing girls (I remember doing that stuff) and such other kids stuff.

I was the most lazy kid in the primary school (even in secondary too), I think. I never did any homework, and never do it properly (I just remember this becuase today, I realized I did it again: I forgot to do my hydro assignment). It was my Kaklong that checked my school work every day and reported it to my dad. I never really packed my bag before going to school, lacking in class. Banyak lah benda negatif yang lain. However, I was selected as prefect until standard 6m probably from my dad reputation. Despite of that, I still remember myself being a slackoff. I was pratically worst in every subject, except English. That was the only thing I was strong with. Everyone respect me because of that. Haha. Bangga, macam gampang. Nak bangga lagi; I don’t really need to study hard for it, I always good at it. Math was my worst, and I hate the math teachers (eventhough I forgot their names).

For that, I was given intensive personal teaching from Mr. Nasir. I’ll always remember his name. Because of him, I becoming good at math. Not to forget too Mr. Rosyam, my BM teacher that is so good at teaching us (I still got B for Pemahaman, sucks). I also went to tuition (tusyen) at night with Cikgu… I forgot their name… They are the teacher that also crucial in my primary education. One was Science teacher, the other is English teacher. They live so close to my house, but then they moved. I hope I can meet them again later.

I never get any number below 10, seriously (the lower the better). I think the lowest one that I ever got was numer 13, or 11. Somewhere around that. To make it worst, my best friend was the Best Student of the school. What a cruel life. For that, no one im my family ever thought I am gonna get 4 As for my UPSR, my mom expected at least 1. Take it back, cruel life ended at that period, but came again after few periods. Yet, my life still becoming better in each period after  few downfalls.

Beside Amir, I did have few childhood friends that  I still remember them hard in my mind. In 2005, we did a reunion to gather back everyone from the class. But only few can be found, and those that could’t be contacted are the close one. Rasyadan also called my “kembar” was in Perak, so he couldn’t come. Shukri, some say he’s around but he wasn’t there. Salleh was with me until form 3, so I remember him well. Fakhrul, a very close frimd during standard 6, was nowhere to be found (lost his number), not even a news. But then I remember “him”, which was totally out of news.

I remember about his background, which I recently remembered since I’m in Canada. His mother was a Canadian and his father was a Malay guy. I think that his mother is a French-Canadian, based on her appearances one day at the school: brunette, tall, white-skin and blue eyes. Her sister name was Anastasia. Eventhough their mother was Canadian, both of them was nowhere near mat saleh look. He was known among us as the most “otak lucah”, yeah just like Harun, but was weirder because he did it at young age. He always go to Canada during holiday, met his grandparents perhaps. At age 12, he already start developing grown up man features (to us at that time). One thing was so cool about him, he is so good in drawing. He, me and Amir always try to create comic books out of our note book. But his was always better in drawing and storyline. There are some other childish stuff that we did together and fun, but I don’t really have the time to say it here. Owh, one thing. Since he has the Canadian blood, he is the other student that is so good in English. He was natural. And since I am one of his best friends, the teacher always questioning me why my English cannot improve? Okayh, I admit my english was suck, but better than most students.

With that, I wonder wher he is right now? Is he in Canada, or still in country? Maybe I should try to look for him one day, go to his nenek house (his uncle is Azman Adnan, goal keeper Selangor tuu), ask for him.

Why all the childhood remisnisce? Look below.

Comic

Read 20th Century Boys. Then you may know why.

There’s gonna be more random things coming up. Relationship is one of the best too. Until then, chow cincau~