My current favourite video game is a sort of puzzle-rhythm game for the Nintendo DS called Elite Beat Agents. My brother introduced me to the game when we were home in the Philippines last December. It’s a good thing, too. I’ve been playing and enjoying the game since January while the game only got released in Australia just a few days ago.

The thing is, I’ve already played through the default level once and almost done playing the more difficult level. I just felt like it was getting a bit old. Although I still enjoy it, I want to be able to play new or different songs. I then realised that I should’ve also bought the original Japanese version of the game called Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! while I was still in the Philippines. I was pretty sure it was available there as my brother had one.

Then, a few weeks ago, I felt fortunate that we were going to Japan. I could just buy the Japanese game when we get there. As a side note though, the sequel of the game will be released in Japan a week after we return to Melbourne! Damn. Anyway, I’ve placed Ouendan on my what-to-do-in-Japan list.

I only started to actively search for the game about mid-way into our stay in Japan. I thought that it would be very easy to find. Just go to the rack where all the other Nintendo DS games are and pick it out from there. But, no. I didn’t find it in the first electronics shop I went to. In the second shop, I decided to get help from one of the sales people on the floor.

I tried asking him: “Osu Tatakae Ouendan wa arimasu ka?” I hoped I said “Do you have Osu Tatakae Ouendan?” correctly. Right or wrong, he started talking to me. Here’s the problem: I may know how to ask the right question, but I’m not fluent enough in Nihongo to understand the reply. I tried reading his body language but there was nothing. His face was expressionless and he wasn’t making any hand gestures as he talked.

I clarified to him that I don’t really speak Japanese very well: “Nihongo ga hanasemasen.” Translation: “I don’t speak Japanese.” which is actually a bit ironic since I’m saying it in Japanese. He started talking again and he was moving his two index fingers and thumbs to form a rectangle in the air this time. The gesture didn’t help any as I still couldn’t understand what he was saying. He could still be speaking in Japanese or a heavily accented English. I can’t really tell. I finally gave up, apologised (”sumimasen”) and left the shop. They probably didn’t have the game, anyway. I was definitely regretting my failure to brush up on my Nihongo before we went to Japan.

On our last full day in Japan, we went to Akihabara, an area in Japan known for lots of electronics shops. I didn’t realise that the place also had lots of manga and anime shops! Anyway, I digress. If there was a place I’d find the game, it must be there at Akihabara. We also did our homework before hand. I had Raquel write down the kanji (Chinese characters) for the name of the game on a piece of paper so that I could just show the piece of paper to the sales person next time. That should avoid any further confusion as to which game I really wanted.

The good thing about Akihabara was that more employees at the shops speak English. They were able to tell me that the game was just sold out, at least. After going through several shops, I finally found a shop that has the game in stock! At last, my search was over. I promptly bought it, of course. Mission accomplished.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of getting one of the three next-generation gaming consoles: Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. Sad to say, I can afford to spend money on only one so I have to choose carefully. After selling our old Playstation 2 recently, I only played games on either my PC or laptop. Although I still love playing Counter-strike on the PC, that’s about all I can play on it. The newer PC games have steeper minimum requirements and I have to upgrade my PC (again!) every couple of years maybe just to play those.

Unless I pay up for expensive top-of-the-line hardware, I’ll only get a mediocre to decent media experience out of these newer PC games if ever. At least with a console game, I won’t have to worry about minimum requirements and upgrading all the time. Any game I buy for the console I own will always play the way it was meant to (and as reviewed by game reviewers) and a console should last about five or so years.

Of course, consoles aren’t cheap. But if I compare the cost of the console to the cost of hardware needed to bring my current PC up to spec (or buying a totally new cutting-edge PC), I get to save a lot of money in the long run. Another advantage of consoles over PCs is that whenever I want to play a game, all I have to do is place the CD in the console, boot it up then play. On a PC, I have to boot up Windows first, then run the game I want to play. This takes quite a while specially if you don’t have a top-end PC. Since I don’t have a lot of time to play nowadays, being able to get into the game as quickly as possible is a big bonus as every little minute counts.

Another cool thing about playing console games is that it doesn’t require installing anything. And here in Australia’s EB Games at least, if I buy any console game, I can return it within 7 days if I’m not happy with it. It’s a good way for me to try games that I’m not sure I’d like. I can’t do this for PC games though.

So, I want a gaming console. But which one? I had to do a lot of research on the Web, comparing features of the three current consoles to get to my choice. Each console has pros and cons, so it was a bit difficult to choose from among the three.

Here is my personal pros and cons list for each console:

Nintendo Wii
Pros:

• Cheapest of the three.

• Great family and party games due to its user-friendly wiimote motion-sensing controllers.
• Free online gaming.

Cons:

• Not a lot of games I’d love to play for now and the foreseeable future.

• For games that I’d like to play, there is a version of the same game on the two other consoles and provides better graphics.

Microsoft Xbox 360
Pros:

• Lots of awesome games I’d like to play right now.

• XBox Live. The online features on the 360 are well developed and the community is already large.
• Can be used as a media centre.

Cons:

• The Xbox Live Gold service isn’t free. That means, I have to pay a subscription fee just to play online against other players.

• According to users who post in forums, there is a big chance of getting a machine that conks out in about a year or so. hence the popularity of the terms “red ring of death” and “bricking” in gaming circles.
• Wifi adaptor costs extra.
• Downloaded content only works on the hard-disk and Xbox 360 combination it was downloaded on. Meaning, I wouldn’t be able to view the stuff I bought on my hard disk if I use it on a different Xbox 360.
• Supposedly, very noisy.

Sony Playstation 3
Pros:

• Plays a lot of popular Playstation 2 games including God of War II and few more of my old favourite PS2 games.

• Free online gaming.
• Built-in Wifi capability.
• Built-in Blu-ray Disc player.
• Controllers get recharged via USB cable.
• Slots for standard-type memory cards (like SD and Memory Stick).
• Easily upgradable hard disks (and cheaper than the proprietary hard disks used by 360).
• Can be used as a PC if Linux is installed.
• Can be used as a media centre.

Cons:

• Most expensive of the three.

• Not a lot of games I like at this moment but according to release lists, there are games I’d like to play to be released soon.

From my list above, you must’ve guessed by now that I’m leaning towards getting the PS3. Sure, it’s more expensive but it has most of the things I wanted out of the box. With the Xbox 360, I still have to buy a separate Wifi adaptor and an extended warranty. After that, I still wouldn’t have a Blu-ray player, a recharge kit and only a 20GB hard disk. As for the Wii, it may be the cheapest in the market now, but I really think the novelty of the games I’d like to play on it would wear off after a while. And the type of games I’d probably want to continue to play (like first-person shooters) are better played on either the 360 or the PS3.

One of the major draws of the 360 for me is its large and growing Xbox Live community. This meant that there are a lot of players I can go up against in games. My main problem with it is that I have to pay $79 per year for the benefit of playing against other players online. And if Raquel wants to play online too on her own account, that’s another $79 a year. This wouldn’t really be such a big deal if I had lots of free time to play because I’d be getting my money’s worth of online gaming time. As it is, it’s possible for me not to play for days, weeks or even months. That’s why free online gaming provided by the PS3 appeals so much to me. I can skip playing for a month and I won’t feel like I’m throwing my money away on a subscription service I’m not using.

Another thing that turns me off from buying a 360 is that, according to reports on the Internet, the 360 is a lot more noisy and literally hotter than the PS3. There’s also that off chance that the 360 will scratch and ruin my gaming CDs if I’m unlucky (I’m not sure if this problem still happens though). At worst, I’ll get the infamous Red Ring of Death where my 360 will become “bricked” and unusable. It’s scary to think that the machine I’m buying might become useless in a year or so.

It’s good if the 360 breaks down before the standard one-year warranty ends. I can ship it off to Microsoft to get get it “fixed” (which could mean getting a different refurbished machine instead). But according to my research, there are quite a number of people who got their 360 bricked after year one. So, to be safe, I should get an extended warranty that’ll cost extra but at least I can just have the 360 replaced with a brand-new one in the event my the one breaks down within two years of purchase.

As for the Hi-Definition (HD) aspect of the 360 and the PS3, I don’t care much for it right now because I don’t own an HDMI TV yet anyway. Supposedly though, PS3 does have the better HDMI capability at the moment. That is, until the Xbox 360 Elite (a more beefed-up but more expensive version of 360) comes out some time this year.

Nevertheless, I’d like to be able to play HD movies eventually. To do that on the 360, I’d have to purchase a separate external HD-DVD drive while the Blu-ray drive comes built-in on the PS3. Note that although these two formats are both HD, these two are incompatible with each other, hence the format war going on between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. In my opinion, Blu-ray will likely win though because more film studios (including Disney and Sony Pictures) support Blu-ray whilst only a couple of studios back HD-DVD. So, Blu-ray seems like a safe bet and the ability to play those movies already comes built-in on the PS3.

And even if the Blu-ray format loses the HD format war, the built-in Blu-ray drive will still guarantee that games for the PS3 can contain a lot of content as one Blu-ray disc can hold up to 46GB of data. On the other hand, the 360 only uses DVDs for its games which can only hold up to 8GB of data. The 360 can probably get around this limitation by using multiple discs and swapping between them when needed or make use of the hard disk for pre-storing of important data like 3D textures and sound effects.

That reminds me of another thing I’m disappointed about the 360. Microsoft released a Core version of the 360 without a hard disk. This made the hard disk an optional requirement for 360 games. So game developers should assume that there is no hard disk that can be taken advantaged of when developing a game. That meant, no hard disk caching of data during game play that could result in slower loading times. I suppose eventually, they can program the games to still use the hard disk if it is detected by the game at start up. We’ll see if this happens. Last generation of consoles, Xbox has this advantage over the PS2. This generation, it’s now the PS3 that has this advantage over the 360 as all PS3s come with a hard disk.

Still, I may want to buy a 360 solely for its great games (like Gears of War, Lost Planet and the upcoming Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars) and the ability to play with or against countless other gamers on Xbox Live (if I’m willing to pay for it). However, I can’t be sure I’d get to play all the time. It just seems like a big waste of money to be paying a periodical subscription fee for a service I’ll only use on occasion.

So, my choice comes down to the PS3. You may choose differently though and that’s fine. For me, the PS3 is the way to go. The PS3 may be more expensive right now, but it would be cheaper in the long run as I wouldn’t be wasting extra cash on subscription fees. And although I won’t be playing the great 360 games, there are still cool games out for the PS3 right now anyway (like Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm) and some games I like coming real soon (like Half-Life, Unreal Tournament 3 and God of War 3). On top of it all, I would also have a Blu-ray player and maybe a Linux PC (after I install Linux on the PS3) that can play XVid and DivX movies. What’s not to like?

Okay, I’m still officially in a gaming mood this week from all the games we got either from the Pizza Hut PC Game meal deal promo or from EB Games selling games at the bargain prices during their stock-take clearance this month. And as fate would have it, my cousin KP (who doesn’t like being called by that nickname nowadays, by the way) who works in Korea nowadays dropped me a message on Yahoo Messenger the other day. He was going to get a real-time strategy (RTS) game titled Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth. That sparked a conversation about the good old days.

A decade or so ago, KP, his brother, my brother and I often played Warcraft 2 and Starcraft against each other online via modem connection. This was before Internet gaming was popular so we had to resort to modem to modem online gaming at speeds of 28kbps. Still, it was great fun. We did this almost every night. I remember feeling chills of excitement as our two modems connected to one another. I remember thinking, “tonight, I’m going to beat your ass!” Or something to that effect in Tagalog.

In a few years, Half-Life death matches became popular. But with that kind of multiplayer gaming, we had to go to a nearby LAN gaming centre which was still a pretty new type of business back then. By nearby, I mean traveling to Greenhills which was like over an hour’s bus ride from where we live.

Shortly after the popularity of Half-Life peaked, a mod for HL came out called Counter-strike. It was an instant hit with everybody and soon, it was the most played first person shooter game in LAN gaming centres across Metro Manila. My cousins, my brother, some friends and I would set aside one Saturday night to go to a gaming centre we rented overnight and spend the evening till the next morning playing Counter-strike.

Ah, yes. Those were some of the most fun times I had in my life. I had so much fun that when I moved to Australia in 2000, I missed playing games against friends and family.

The big problem for me was that I didn’t know a lot of people when I moved to Australia. If I wanted to continue playing multiplayer games, my only option was to go online for that kind of thing. So, I bought the latest version of Counter-strike and started playing it online. From then on, I’ve been an online gamer freak.

I’ve enjoyed FPS games mostly while KP still preferred RTS games. It’s not that I don’t like RTS games anymore. It’s just that, with my limited free time, I couldn’t commit to full RTS game matches. The thing with RTS games is that you cannot join a game in progress. Much like you cannot just join a chess match in progress. You have to be there at the start. That’s not too much of a big deal though. The big deal is that once the match started, it’s very embarrassing to leave the game.

And like I said, I cannot commit to lengths of time in advance just to play an RTS match. What if 10 minutes into the game, something comes up and I needed to go offline? I would have to forfeit the match. Although my opponent would get a win, that win wouldn’t be very satisfying. And then when I come back from being offline, I have to start over.

With FPS games though, I can join a game in progress. Sure, I would be behind the number of kills of other players already playing, but I can always catch up. And any moment, I can just leave the game. There’s still more of them playing so they’ll still continue to have fun even after I left the round. So with FPS games, it’s instant gratification.

So, where am I going with this? Nowhere really. I just realised I haven’t posted anything in a long while and thought that I just write something that’s in my mind at the moment. And here it is. Maybe next time I’ll write something about a totally different topic.

I dreamt of a colleague this morning asking me if The Omen is any good. Apparently she’s thinking of watching it with her kids and want to know if it’s suitable. In the dream, I told her that it’s an okay movie but definitely not for kids, especially not for the younger ones.

Releasing the remake of the 1976 classic today is a nice touch for the people handling the promotions for the film. With the reference to the once-in-a-century date which could translate to 666, it’s enough to scare some people into believing that perhaps today would be the day that would see the birth of the spawn of evil. Well, it’s enough to worry some expectant mothers from giving birth today.

As for me, I don’t think I’ll be watching the remake (unless persuaded otherwise by the hubby). I generally don’t like remakes (can’t they think of something original?) and the new one is panned as worse than the original anyway.

One horror movie I’d really like to watch is Silent Hill, based on the Playstation game about a haunted and fog-shrouded town which is now home to some pretty creepy creatures. I played the video game just to know the story and actually thought of getting the Silent Hill collection (which includes sequels 2,3 and 4). Anyway, the movie was shown a couple of months ago in the US but won’t be shown here till August. Gahhhh, why is it that movies and TV shows are always shown late here in Australia?

Going back to The Omen, don’t believe the hype. According to the Australian Catholic Film Office, the real sixth day of the sixth month in 2006 actually occured in 2002. Wonder if something momentous happened that day?

Ok, I’ve spent most of the weekend playing some more Sims 2. Well, I didn’t get to actually play with some Sims characters but was busy building a replica of our house in Simlandia. With hubby’s help and armed with the floor plan, we’ve built the basic structure. I’ve downloaded custom objects from the Mod the Sims, The Well Dressed Sim, Sim Resource and the Sims Zone. The original game and some of the expansion packs feature some objects that the Sim characters could interact with but the number of objects are limited. Some very talented people at the aforementioned forums have created various objects to share with fellow gamers. As an example, the facade of our house is made of yellow bricks but the game only has red bricks. Thank goodness, I was able to download a free wall covering object made by Starrats and used that.

To the curious ones wondering what our place looks like, this is a good look-alike although not really accurate. Although some objects could be obtained online, not all objects are available, as you can imagine. As such, our garage door doesn’t really look like that but I haven’t had the opportunity to trawl the Sims 2 websites yet to find a rolling shutter garage door. Also, objects in the Sims 2 are not really proportional to each other (a telephone would take up 1 square, the same as a dishwasher for example. Imagine if your phone is as big as your washer, wouldn’t that be freaky?) Anyway, the resultant replica is close enough to how our house looks like and here it is, dubbed Palabok Place. Click on the image for a bigger version.

Up next, a virtual tour inside? Hmmm… maybe? Hehe.

My fun meter was pretty much depleted last weekend, it felt like I was burnt out from work and my brain won’t cooperate. I was so exhausted that the only urge I had was to vegetate in a couch and space out. I guess it was a long time coming as I haven’t really had any “me” time for quite a long while. I was always off somewhere - working, going out with friends and doing chores.

Last Saturday saw us watching X-men 3 (which was good, better than expected) and went to the mall about half an hour before closing time. I have been thinking for the longest time to get the Sims 2 PC game (I’ve previously rented it out from a video store and I know that I like the game. We even created our own avatars!) The new Open for Business expansion pack has rekindled my interest in purchasing my own copy.

It was sold out at EB Games and we comparison shopped between Big W and Kmart. Kmart had the cheaper price and is selling the Sims 2 Holiday Edition at the same price as the original so we opted for the holiday edition for $88.84 (too bad there wasn’t a Myer near our place as we later found out they are selling the basic game at a discounted price of $74).

After rushing back home and installing the game in both our laptops, we spent the remainder of the weekend creating Sim families and having them live their lives. My Sim family is loosely based on the characters off Stargate SG-1 - Daniel Jackson, Teal’c and Vala forming one family while hubby created the Griffith family based on Peter, Lois and Grandpa from the Family Guy. Yup, could you tell we watch a lot of TV?

I chose a single storey house for my family and had them get jobs that were similar to those they have in the TV show - Daniel took the science track, Tealc got into the military track while Vala had a career in crime. I’ve been playing every night after coming home from work and the Jackson family has now significantly improved their status in life. Daniel is now a theorist (one level away from mad scientist), Vala has turned out to be quite a thief to be elevated to smuggler level (one shy of a criminal mastermind) and Teal’c an astronaut (one step away from being a General). The Teal’c character started out with a tendency to like other men than women - which wasn’t my intention, I wonder if the developers at EA Games equate cleanliness with a tendency to be gay?

Anyway, the Teal’c character was getting it on with a male co-worker but that soon soured when another man whom Teal’c invited over slapped him for flirting with Guy number 1. My guess is that Guy 1 has a thing going with Guy 2 and had Teal’c on the side. Teal’c soon turned his attention to housemate Vala who was initially engaged to Daniel but was gutted when Daniel turned his attention to Regina, a lab assistant who got into the habit of going home with Daniel after work.

With Vala pregnant with Teal’c’s child, I’ve moved the family from their 2 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom house to a 3 bedroom, 2 baths abode. Vala is on maternity leave and both men only working a few days in a week. Good thing too as they now have more time to enjoy their new home with the expensive furniture and a good-sized pool out back. Unlike at the start of the game when money was tight, the family is now quite well off with almost 100,000 simoleons to their name (all their hard work, no cheats).

The Jackson family was too intent on making it up their respective career ladders that they haven’t even gone out to one of the community centres yet, haven’t even thrown a successful party (I tried throwing a party once but it was deemed a snoozer!) or be saved from death successfully (I tried several times but always had the Grim Reaper taking the Sim anyway so I had to reload from my last save point). Then there’s still the body shop where I could create more Sims with unique features and the Build feature which I’ve only used for extending the kitchen of the Jackson’s old house, never for building a house from scratch.

Overall, I’d say there’s still a lot of gameplay left on this game from me what with all those options still waiting to be explored, modifications to be downloaded and used and cheats to try. My fun meter has significantly gone up and I’m already plotting when to get the other expansion packs.

Some say that the attraction of the Sims series is the ability to control lives and feel like a god. Maybe. For me though, I find the Sims to be more like interactive television with characters who have stories to tell and care about and to remind you that sometimes, the most important things in life are the simple ones.

Microsoft’s next generation gaming console, the XBox 360, has been available in Australia since its official launch last March 23 of this year. Ever since, I’ve started rethinking my position on the whole next generation console wars.

In case you don’t know it, there are three next generation gaming consoles fighting a three-way war for consumers’ pockets: Microsoft’s Box 360, Sony’s Playstation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii. The Box 360 is already out and sells for around $650 here, while the PS3 and WI will both come out some time in November. At the moment, the 360 has the advantage in that it came out first and it’s cheaper than the upcoming PS3. The PS3 is rumoured to cost $999 here when it comes out. The WI will be the cheapest of the three at a predicted launch cost of around $300.

I currently own a PS2 so my loyalties are slightly skewed toward Sony and the PS3. The PS3 is touted to have the best hardware from the bunch. The games coming out for the console at launch date seem to be very exciting and graphically superior to current 360 titles. There is also the added bonus that it is fully PS2 backward compatible, meaning all my existing PS2 games will be playable on the PS3 if I decide to buy it. The only problem I have with it is its hefty price of almost a thousand dollars.

Because of that, I started considering the Box 360. I should say that I’m also considering the WI but only because of what I’ve seen on the E3 reports featuring its unique controller and very cheap cost. But, I reasoned to myself that the Box has been known to be the must-have console for First Person Shooter aficionados so maybe it’s about time I make a switch.

I planned to buy the 360 during this year’s nationwide stocktake clearance sales that happens around June. Well, it’s June now. After much searching, I found that the 360 sells the cheapest at Myer for only $629. Not only that but most of its accessories and games are discounted. So, for a Premium Box 360 package, a charge and play kit, an extra wired controller, Call of Duty 2 and Dead or Alive 4, it will only come to just over $800 total. I say “only” because buying this set elsewhere will be dearer. In the end though, I have no intention of buying these at Myer. I only need their catalogue to show as proof of the price at EBGames, Dick Smith Powerhouse or Harvey Norman so they can beat it. Any of these three stores are okay as they usually accept returns for problem products.

I tried the Box 360 controller while playing the first person shooter game, Call of Duty 2, at a JB Hi-Fi demonstration Box 360 in shop and I love its responsiveness. The 360 controller seemed to be better for FPS games than the PS2’s (and by extension, the PS3’s because they share the same controller form factor). More and more I’m getting myself convinced that the 360 is the console for me.

I even got to the point where I had my old PS2 listed on eBay for $100. At EBGames, you can buy the 360 for effectively $150 off if I trade-in my old console plus 7 games. So if I can sell my PS2 on eBay for at least $150 without games, then I’ll come out ahead. I can then trade-in my 7 games at EBGames and use the credit to buy 360 games.

I didn’t want to include the EyeToy PS2 accessory that Raquel gave to me for my birthday with the PS2 package I was selling on eBay. After looking around the Web, I found the drivers I needed to get it to work on my PC as a webcam. It works great. So, even without a PS2 I can still make use of my EyeToy.

However, in the past couple of days, I got to thinking again. I looked at gaming sites on the Web and compared the games for the next gen consoles and even the PS2 ones. The PS2 seems to have lots of great games in its line-up and the PS3 looks like it’s going to get awesome games when it comes out. Also, the FPS game Unreal Tournament 2007 will be coming out for PS3 and since I’m an Unreal Tournament fan, that’s something I’m definitely looking forward to.

And so, I decided to back out on my buying an Box 360 this week. I also canceled my listing on eBay for my PS2. I decided to just wait for the PS3 release in November before committing to any next gen gaming console. By then, I can properly compare the consoles.

I’m also afraid that when the PS3 comes out, I might like it better than the Box 360 and thereby regret my Box 360 purchase. But if it turns out that I actually like the Box 360 better anyway, then it’s still good as it will probably sell for less than $600 by then to compete with the cheap WI. And who knows? I might end up actually buying the WI instead.