Fun with Oblivion

Ah the best part about Oblivion for the PC is definitely the mods. So what mod did I use now that I've got the game running against it's will? Well, Jessica Alba of course! This has got to be one of the strangest things to do with a game, I gave my character here Jessica Alba's face thanks to those Face Gen guys and on top of that I gave her "BAB's" hot body mod to replace the mannish one they all come with. I just got started with the modding fun so far, but fear not as I get deeper into the game there will be more mischief. For now...it seems Alba needs to hunt some deer...

The other guys like Sean Connery are harder to make look decent as they require facial hair mods and that sort of thing. This works best with the clean faced individuals it seems.

*For some unknown reason Bethseda deemed it necessary to allow you only to take screencaps by modding the ini file...and on top of that it only works without full scene anti-aliasing on so Alba looks a bit rough on the edges.

The Hunt Will Last FOREVER!

http://kotaku.com/photogallery/monterhunterwonderfest/

Thus far this has got to be the most wonderous of Wonderfests as it looks like there's a TON of Monster Hunter collectibles about to hit the market soon. Here we were on the Blacksmith just talking about how cool it'd be to have poseable MH figures with removable armor and out of the blue it seems there's going to be Microman/Kamen Rider style cast off armor figures. What the heck is up with the girl with the gun and the Destroyah model? lol

*Update! Where do Hunters go when they grow tired...why Pinky St. of course!
http://blog.yam.com/akros/article/11224453

Alerted to the presence of colored scans of Pinky St. : Monster Hunter I dug up a chinese blogger who happens to have said scans. Man even though the LAST thing in the world I thought of buying is Pinky St., these are highly tempting. I'm sure the resident Queen of Blacksmiths already has her sites set on the entire set...

Playstation 3 Unkillable According to Kotaku

http://kotaku.com/gaming/console-of-steel/the-ps3-is-unkillable-288962.php

Unkillable? I hope the folks at Kotaku realize what they stumbled upon. I hate to say this but if this state of matters proves true, then the Zombie Apocalypse Rating Index may just go straight to high. Unkillable? Zombies are unkillable. Are you saying that the Sony Playstation 3 is in actually one of the living dead!? Troubling times indeed...

Maybe We Need a Cheaper Sword and a Newer World?

Granado Espada was released in North America under the name Sword of the New World : Granado Espada. Though the software is $20 only, it cost $8 per month to maintain your account of which I chose not to. Instead I went to Singapore's release of their english version of Granado Espada which was still in free beta until recently when they announced that they will charge you as well for an account though the details are much better (about $5.20 a month) and they offer you differing packages to suite your gameplay style. I guess .50 a day is kind of cool, think of it as sort of an overextended arcade game?

So is Granado Espada worth your money? I had previously mentioned this as an alternative to World of Warcraft because of it being free, but now that the charges are out what would draw one to play this game? Honestly, it is no WoW. The point and click controls are infuriating at times however it was necessary to allow all 3 of your characters to have quick keys for their macro bars. The graphics are certainly better than most MMORPGs, but I guess it's expected from Asia where style always beats substance. There are some problems with this game that I would like to avoid in games altogether.

For one thing it's a grind fest. Sure there's quests to do, but most of them are "kill 100 of these!" or "stop 200 of these from going to x". The combat is fast and furious as most creatures take about 1 to 2 hits to knock down, but they respawn faster than you can pick up your drops at times. Leveling was easy until level 15 where it just slows to a crawl and we're back to archaic times when killing random beasties equals a good play experience.

I have noted 1 interesting dilemma about this game. I've been grinding out random mobs in an area called Al Mor-something. Anyway, I noticed that every now and then I'll pass a room where a player has his group parked in a convenient corner and set on "patrol mode". What this does is causes the player's characters to stand in place and attack incoming enemies much like in the old Blizzard RTS'. The problem here is it's just about the same as botting, so I'm running around busting my butt when all it takes is to leave the game in the background while the computer kills these creatures? Granted I'll die once or twice thanks to a roaming boss spawn but then I just pay 100 vis to the waypoint, run back and bam I'm in business again.

Still I do like the game's fast pace action, it's ability to allow for multiple character controls, the costumes and the RNPC hunts (these are the NPCs you can recruit into your team). It's fun enough every now and then but don't go grinding out this game as it'll give you bad memories of Lineage II.

* Update : The pay to play system in Granado Espada International Edition is actually pretty awesome now that I understand it. Apparently your monthly subscription is refunded to you in game in the form of Gold-points which you can then spend in the cash shop for fancier items and possibly RNPC cards. Pretty darn good deal there.

Danny Choo gets to see EVERYTHING!

http://www.dannychoo.com/blog_entry/eng/1034/Claymore/

Man this is the luckiest Otaku-guy in the world. He gets to go to all these shows, see all these things and even probably has some kind of deal with Good Smile Company. And now he gets to see this in person. Oh my god I want this SO bad right now. I'm serious. Like Max Factory Haruhi bad. Damn...that's pretty bad. I bet if I preorder this thing and then it comes out watch them release Galatea. I'd be pretty cheesed off at that point...then again not really. Like we always say here on the blacksmith's, why Cray more when you Cray less? That didn't make a lick of sense...

Level 5 to the rescue!

Just recently I discover that my PS3 can do something more than merge into dark matter. I learned that I could actually make a Japanese PSN account without having to go through to much trouble, Thus...giving my PS3 a reason to do something other than upscale dvd's and play PS2 games.The first thing that went through my head was Japanese PS1 games, demos, videos!!!sweet Jesus scissors!! this is gonna be fun! Well for the most part I was right about the PS1 games, they had shit loads, 50 to be exact, Many of them were fighters and rpgeez. Next was the PS3 demo's, for the most part this section was sad, the Folksoul and BladeStorm demo's were the only exceptions(btw David Beckham's avatar is in BladeStorm I shit you not).Last was the Video's and the downloadable content. The content was obviously japanese and basically unusable to me (sorry no japanese oblivion high school Hime packs) and the video section I did not look at until today.


As I browsed through the first page of this section I noticed that most of the video's there were on the English PSN already, there I new that the rest of the video's probably weren't going to be anything special (aw shucks).As soon as I turned to second page I noticed right away a new video which stood out from the rest due to its busy steel looking picture box. It was a game made by Level 5 called Shirokishi Monogatari, this game I was familiar with cause most popular gaming sites have covered this under the name White knight Story, seriously this game didn't seem all that interesting at first, but believe me after watching this video on the PSN I was sold. This game has all the makings of an epic tale on a huge scale, its like a mesh of mechs, pirates, politics and huge ultraman bad guys!!(there's even one that looks like Cthulhu). The Graphics of course are phenomenal and the musical Jrock-pop that is played in the background is awesome and add's the element of hardcore chaos to the crazy battling thats taking place \m/>_<\m/. To all of you who own a PS3 get yourself a PSN japanese account(also sat speakers help) and check this game out cause its awesome, and don't go looking it up online because remember you wanna give your friends a good reason why there's a 600$ trashcan in you living room, and all though this promo video is sure as hell not a good enough reason, at least your moving toward the right direction in convincing them that you have a machine capable of playing good games......oh and at least you not folding =P

A Look Under the Hood

It's been years, quite literally since my desktop has been that empty. A quick peak at a portion of my screen however shows some interesting and perhaps perverse dealings. Anyway, like I said, it's been years and I've finally cracked. I used to use exclusively Windows 2000. I'm sort of one of those guys who's extremely slow to upgrade OS, case in point I was pulled away from Windows 95 kicking and screaming. I NEVER wanted to touch ME and when XP came out I was very wary. So now a couple of months into the sinking ship called Vista I've finally caught up with the new millennium of PC useage.

On top of upgrading to XP, the entire computer itself resembles little of what it used to. Thanks to me buddy over on the Island, I'm finally up to 2.8 Gigs on a P4 (though it's an older core) and I've broken the 1 Gig RAM barrier for the first time. The new monitor I mentioned earlier also prompted me to purchase a new graphics card to take advantage, though I stayed very cheap and got an eVGA GeForce 7600 GS. Amazingly enough though, this sub-$100 card is actually quite good, though I guess Half-Life 2, Granado Espada and Guild Wars aren't exactly PC killing at this point they did get a "new lease on life" sort of deal by having some very cool effects on now. I'm finally able to see what all this shader 2.0 stuff is about, though that screen shot from HL2 : Episode 1 really doesn't do it justice till you get to some of the later levels which abuse the dynamic lighting.

I had heard that this card can pump out Oblivion, though I haven't got the game yet I'll be trying to get a copy to see for myself. Though I imagine that with these specs I would only be able to play Oblivion on the old faithful 1024 x 768 resolution, it's still more than enough as I went a little insane playing Guild Wars (I bumped that one up to 1440 x 900) and yet it still ran pretty smooth. Guild Wars is made for those people who have some older specs on their machines, so naturally it looks good on older machines but if you're fortunate enough you end up with a pretty spectacular looking game.

Granado Espada looks really nice. I'm surprised by how well this game ran overall, though it chocked a bit in town that seems to be the expectation for any game that loads in so much so quickly. I really love how awesome the models in this game look though it is a bit much with them adventuring in those outfits. I'm guessing my Warlock there doesn't feel even a little bit embarrassed? Her boobs are basically hanging right out of her clothes there, that's just the half of it as you can see. It's a shame that this is a pay to play game but news out of Singapore is that it's a $5 per month charge so it's not too bad.