Long Time No Rumble

It’s been quite some time since I’ve blogged about RF2. Haha, stepped back into Jubilee arcade after having not been there for months (iirc). During the reading week, Clarence and Yida informed me that Jubilee ZoneX has finally unlocked the boss characters for RF2, though I didn’t go down until yesterday.

Since I’ve already completed Hazama some months back, I was more eager to complete Greed and Beatrice to make my completion almost full, with the sole exception of Bazoo. Haha. I also realised that I haven’t updated the RF2 page. Perhaps I’ll update it with a few things here and there since I didn’t really experiment with those 3 characters anyways.

It would seem that the AI level has increased in general, making it harder to get high score for normal story mode liao, I think. Wonder if it has anything to do with unlocking boss characters, or the staff went to tweak the difficulty settings since they were at it unlocking the boss characters. Haha, doesn’t matter since I could still complete story mode quite comfortably. Hee hee.

Oh, I also tried survival mode. It’s quite interesting. Every 3 or 4 stages you’ll battle a special version of one of the characters who will have some kind of special property, easily identifiable by their black and dark colouring that’s definitely very different from all their possible costume colour sets. The first one has a “lightning” strike every now and then, which essentially breaks whatever you’re doing, unless you’re faithfully blocking. 2nd one has insane damage after it turns red (from black). My furthest was until stage 21, where Orville is essentially like Mech Zangief who essentially cannot be knocked down, nor combo-ed close range. Haha. Didn’t take much notice of those in between. Was busy clearing to my best abilities, and whee I’m top for survival mode too! Aran ftw! Hahahaha.

However, the main purpose was really to try out a new game there. Yeap, the logo is at the side. Another cheem 2D side-scrolling beat’em-up game by IGS. Ya, the makers of games like Knight of Valour series. Well, this time this game has an optional card system which allows you to retain your level, items, armor, weapons, and whatnot. Why do I say cheem? Cos the possible paths remind me of D&D games back then, and what’s more many items and stuff need to go so super specific (and sibei tough) paths just to have a CHANCE in getting it. Crap. Lol. Only managed to try once though, since all the pros (they alr >lvl55 liaoz) were chionging. Haha. I’m at a measly level 7 by kio-ing exp in completing stages where most of the work is done by this guy with a near-lvl 60 二郎神. Lols. Well, at least I did see how a few of those pros use 紫衣, see if I can try those out next time I play, which is I dunno when. Hahahaha. This one will take a long time to learn siah~~~

Hmm, off I go to update the RF2 page. Should see it being updated soon enough.

27 Dresses

Rating: PG
Running time: 110 Minutes

Some info:
1) Wiki Article
2) IMDB Profile
3) MovieMistakes Profile
4) Official Site (English)

Actually, back then when I saw trailers of this movie either through the advertisements in cinemas, or just summarised ads on tv/tv mobile, one can easily tell roughly what’s the story gonna be about liao. Haha, for those who have no idea what this show is about, you can go ahead and read the wiki article since it’s pretty nicely written. Haha.

Well, the nicer parts of this show is that it’s actually quite funny at times, though it may seem a little exaggerated and simplistic at times. At least it’s entertaining and enjoyable, which is very important for any movie. I mean, that’s why most people watch movies anyway what…haha. What I couldn’t foresee from the trailers was the minor story “twists”, which aren’t really twists, but the way it developed to finally reach the predictable ending. Ah well, at least not everything is predictable (at least for me) else it’ll be quite boring liaoz. Lols.

On a side note, the editing style of the initial part of the ending credits is also quite interesting. Nice idea of using newspaper article/report style of introducing the main cast, of course with pictures and all. And in fact, looking at the words (the ones that seem to make up the article content) apart from the cast’s names etc, the content actually makes sense, and it’s in a manner that actually tries to provide reports/articles on the wedding between the leads. Quite interesting siah. At least the words make sense and is relevant to the movie at that point in time, rather than just some random sentences or something. Heh.

Overall, it’s somewhat a simple and predictable show, but at least it’s somewhat enjoyable. Haha. My take: 6.5/10

Sakura Taisen: New York

Japanese title: サクラ大戦 ニューヨーク・紐育
Number of episodes: 6

Some info:
1) ANN
2) Wiki Article on the Sakura Taisen title and franchise
3) Official Site (Japanese)

Honestly I have not watched any of its other OVAs (or movies or whatnot), nor have I played their games (I think I haven’t done so before… iirc), so I thought no harm trying to see why this series can keep going and going. At least I get to see new titles being released under the name of Sakura Taisen, so it must have some sort of merit. Heh.

Well, I guess this OVA is set after some major event, be it referenced from its game counterpart, or continuation of some other OVA. Also, it’s set in an era where it’s supposed to be quite “old school” (judging from the people’s dressing and fashion sense) but at the same time, the main characters do have access to some super high tech robots and stuff. Really kinda weird. Ah well, just treat it as some fictional timeline that the creators came up with. Lol.

Anyway, this short OVA is about some pharaoh that was released from a deep sleep (or something) and intends to complete his mission to save and help his people (dated some 3000 years or earlier) by doing some ceremony to make the land a better place. So well, you can expect the main aim for the main characters (aka the people featured in that picture) to stop him, and protect New York (yea well, they are in NY mah…).

Then again, the actual face-off between those guys and the pharaoh isn’t that much. Most of it are just “unimportant” stuff with many parts with the guy cross-dressing for a character he’s gonna play in their play (wow, what a use of words) titled Cleopatra. How coincidental right. Yeah well, it is of some use though, since the pharaoh sees someone he knew back long, long ago, in this character. Yah, you can see where it’s heading liaoz. Lol.

Well, the 3D animation is pretty not bad, though at some parts it looked kinda weird lah. Don’t know why though. Hic. The mecha action isn’t say very exciting, but still passable lah. Lol, I wonder if the game is more “exciting” in that sense. Overall, it’s an okay show only lah. Probably will not bother with future series/OVAs of this liao. Yeap.

A No More

Yeap, I finished my last exam for this sem, but I think I’ve also busted my chance in getting A for any module in NUS. Heh. I was initially quite confident about econs, plus the midterms did show that I still can do all these stuff, but a conceptual error that I made today made me think otherwise. Lol.

The same thing was tested something like 10-15% of the paper, phrased in various ways, until I think almost all the scenarios have been drained liao. Of course, a “wise” way might be to split the answers into 2 camps since I was unsure, but the thought of losing half the marks if I indeed had the right concepts is kinda… painful. Turns out splitting is a better move for me. Ah wells, hopefully I’m not the only person out there who gets all that string of questions wrong. Bleah. Hope can get B+ or something liaoz. Sighs… fated not to get A maybe. Hehz.

Now that my exams have ended, it’s time to piah!!! Loads of stuff to clear. Hee hee. To those who still have a paper (or two), persevere and it’ll be over soon! Good luck for your remaining paper(s).

Little Datapath FTW

Ok lah, it’s not like I’ll be getting an A or A- or anything, but at least I didn’t really get slaughtered by today’s 2100 paper. A total of 7 marks (out of 100) that’s directly related to datapath, which happens to the most clueless topic for me. I actually was mentally prepared to see somewhat significant amounts of that topic since it didn’t really come out during term test 2.

Well, of course I can’t put aside the fact that this module applies the Mr Bell Theorem, so me finding it manageable and do-able will probably mean lots of other people will find it so too (based on term test results 1 and 2). Will probably end up with a B or something. Good enough for me I guess. Lol, set so low target one. Haha.

Perhaps diving into 1108 hell made me somewhat happy after seeing today’s paper. At least the questions do not look like alien or some foreign language to me, and I could actually do almost all the questions, though no doubt I realised I made a few mistakes here and there. Hee. Still have to pray for 1108’s passing. Haiz.

Tmr’s last paper liao! Econs some more, which rightfully *should* be my most comfortable exam paper this sem. Hopefully it truly turns out to be so, though 80 mcqs in 2 hours is still cannot play play one. I can clear backlog soon. *looking forward*

p.s. to those who have finished their papers. congrats. have fun.

KOF Clips Vol. 9

The series continues, and it’s already the 9th entry now. :O Well this time it’ll be more of a mixture of various types of videos.

First up, a speed bug combo done some years back. The bug involves Yamazaki, and how it is being done is also showcased somewhere near the middle of the video. Well basically, just whack Yamazaki until he’s dizzy, then he’ll do his HCBx2 A/C DM while calling out his other player (you can do that in team play mode in KOF 97/98 and other years to knock away your opponent while you’re dizzy. go find out more if you’re interested) to hit the opponent away from his DM motion. Then Yamazaki’s opponent will be “speed up”. Yeah, so that means probably some cheat was used to restore Yamazaki’s HP to full so that you can see all those fanciful combos that aren’t anywhere near possible under normal game conditions. Haha.

Speed Bug Combo Video

The next video is an addition to some of the videos already featured in my earlier entry featuring LJC and Skill99. As usual, his combos are still nice to watch, though a couple of them used a minor cheat if I’m not wrong. Well, experienced players (or at least CMV watchers) will be able to tell which are the ones, though it’s not like it’s easy to do those combos either =P

LJC CMV 4

This 3rd video is yet another bug-propelled combo video. Yeap, this time it’s using screen lock, and the featured game this time is kof2002. Some of the set-ups are really quite interesting (during its premiere), though I think by now it’s really not that special anymore. Such is the harsh reality of combo-making =P. Well, enjoy the CMV, discounting the overly-used background music. =D

Screen Lock [KOF 2002] CMV

The 4th and final video in this entry will be a KOF97 combo video. A nice KOF97 CMV containing many nice variations and improvements of classic combos in KOF97. Of course, there are a few [relatively] newer set-ups, and flow of combos. Overall, it’s quite a nice video to watch, though it’s really hard to revolutionise a combo video of a game that’s more than a decade old.

KOF97 Forever [FMCU]

Stay tuned for volume 10!!

16 Blocks

Rating: PG
Running time: 102 minutes
Now out on DVD/HD-DVD

Some info:
1) Wiki Article
2) IMDB Profile
3) MovieMistakes Profile
4) Official Site (English)

During the course of watching this movie, one would realise that the movie actually takes place on an almost real-time pace. I guess it’s one of the unique things that this movie has to offer.

At the same time, because it’s sort of “real-time”, some parts can seem a little, erm, draggy. Of course, it sometimes also help to create an atmosphere of tension and anxiety, since Bruce Willis has to get the witness across 16 blocks to testify in court. Well, this movie shows the incidents that happened while travelling across these 16 blocks. The wiki article has a detailed summary of the show, go on and read it if you wanna know more about this show.

Hmm, while I was watching this movie, I noticed 2 areas which seemed kinda puzzling to me, and after looking at the MovieMistakes profile, I realised they were classified as mistakes. =D Lol, no wonder I found them very weird lah. Namely it’s Bruce’s gun at the earlier part of the movie as well as the bus that can rush off even though at least 2 of its tyres were punctured earlier. Heh heh.

Overall, it’s a pretty nice watch. Such a type of movie seems quite ok once in a while. My take: 6/10.