Month: May 2005




  • So I got a chance to go to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)
    this year, thanks to a friend of mine. The last time I got to go was in
    1999, back when the Dreamcast was going into it's first year, and the
    PS2 was just showing demos at that point.  Now, I get to go again
    on the dawn of the next generation in gaming of the xbox 360,
    PlayStation3, and the Nintendo Revolution (and the Gameboy Micro too).

    But here's the thing...
    Because of work, and E3 being weekdays only this year, I only get to
    attend Friday; which is the last day.  So that's one bummer. 
    Another would be because of work, I don't even get to take advantage of
    all of Friday and only have about five hours available to me. Not to
    mention that I only got three hours of sleep just so I can get those
    five hours in the first place.  To top it off, parking is
    $20!  Alright, those are pretty much the only real negatives of
    the whole thing.

    At E3 itself, I went straight to the main hall that has the majority of
    booths.  For whatever reason, I was quickly drawn to the Sega
    booth, and ended up in line to see some behind the door footage of
    future next-gen Sega games
    . The presentation was awesome and really
    showed off what's to come
    in the next-gen consoles.  Some of those
    graphics look practically CG as it is. After that, I decided that it's
    best for me to just roam around and try to get as much of the exhibit
    halls in my five hours there.

    To rundown the things I experienced...
    1) Booth babes - I didn't see that much, and there weren't that many I liked to have taken pictures of.  Tecmo provided some popular girls though.
    2) With that in mind... the ratio of guys to girls is ridiculously
    lopsided. Heck, the Anime Expo and the Comic-Con had a MUCH better
    ratio of guys to girls. The only girls that were at E3 where either
    exhibitors, booth babes, and girlfriends of the boyfriends that took
    them there.
    3) There's also soo many people with video cameras geekily taking video
    shots of the latest games on display.  Personally, I'd rather just
    wait for the official high quality releases than watch a video camera
    capture of a game.
    4) The best games on the exhibit halls were behind closed doors! 
    This is primarily true to several xbox 360 games, where it seems that
    the best games to represent this upcoming console weren't even being
    shown outside on the floor. The PS3 and the Revolution weren't even on
    the floor.  Ridiculous.
    5) Speaking of behind closed doors, the lines to get in them were hella
    long.  The Sega booth and the xbox 360 ones were the only ones
    that I had time to get in.  I didn't have time to get in Sony's
    and Nintendo's presentation at all.
    6) Since I got to experience the xbox 360 the most in the show, I'll
    say this... The games for it are very promising and good (especially
    the stuff behind closed doors).  The console itself is smaller
    than I thought, and the controller is remarkably well made (smaller
    than Controller-S).  Microsoft just dropped the ball in their
    pre-E3 press conferrence, because they didn't show their best games.
    7) While Microsoft had a huge presence in the main hall, Sony &
    Nintendo were relegated to fighting each other in the secondary hall.
    8) General consensus of the people I talked to over there:
    a) Microsoft's xbox 360 is GOOD
    b) Lots of skepticism with Sony's PlayStation3
    c) Huge disappointment with the lack of info on Nintendo's Revolution.

    At the end of the show, I hang around the G4TV live broadcast.  In
    fact, I made somewhat of an attempt to try and get shot on camera one
    way or the other.  Well, just watching the first ten minutes of
    the show that I had recorded, I definitely see myself. It's funny too, because at that exact same shot, I was taking a picture
    of them from there with my zoom lens
    . If you know what you're looking
    at, you can even see me raise my camera up and all.

    So that's E3 2005 for me.  It could have been a lot better, but I did have some fun.

    oh... gamers who wanted to get into this event will probably hate me
    for this, but I only made an attempt to play ONE single game on the
    show floor.  I'm more of a spectator anyway, but I'm sure some
    people will think I just wasted a good opportunity.

    - links -
    E3 Insider
    IGN E3 central
    Microsoft xbox 360 faq
    Sony PlayStation3 faq
    Nintendo Revolution faq
    comparing the hardware of the xbox360 & the PS3

    - pics -
    scenery shots One, Two, Three, Four, Five
    some booth character/babes One, Two, Three
    The xbox 360
    The PS3
    The Revolution
    Gameboy Micro
    ...and booth babes pics I didn't take.
    and here's some more booth babes pics.

    - video -
    E3 booth babes




    edit: .... okay, I was browsing through the E3 2002 Tecmo booth babe pics, and
    YOWZA, I noticed that one of those girls is an acquaintance of mine at work. hhmmm, I
    wonder if I should mention this to her.

  • Music CDs I'm currently listening to.  A future edit of this blog will contain impressions. 

    edit: I give up.  It's gotten too time consuming for me to break
    down my reactions to the CDs.  Most of the time it's either I
    love, I like it, or I kinda like it.  It's very rare for me to
    hate an album.  I'll just link up the album's info to amazon.com
    which have an extensive list of reviewers there that are probably more
    articulate than me.




  • Well here we are, an end of an era.  Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith
    is now here. It's fascinating to see how a movie franchise such as this
    transcends age, gender, and ethnicity.  This really is a world
    wide phenomenon that George Lucas
    brought before us, and really shows what the power of cinema can be to
    people all over.  I've really got nothing more to say now that
    hasn't already been said, so I hope everybody enjoys the final
    installment of the movie series.  May the force be with you.
     
    Star Wars Horoscope for Cancer

    You may whine at times, but you've developed a thick hard shell (like that of a crab).
    You are strong willed and persistent - until you get what you want.
    You never shy away from a fight, even when things get dangerous.
    Mentally sharp, you are starting to master the elements of mind manipulation.

    Star wars character you are most like: Luke Skywalker

     

  • I've recently started watching the PRIDE fighting championships. So far, I'm really enjoying it.  I've never got into the Ultimate Fighting Championship
    so I honestly can't compare the two. But one thing though,
    mixed-martial arts competition is pretty brutal. There are rules that
    help protect the fighter, like referees intervening if it's getting too
    dangerous, but for the most part I'm just waiting for a guy to get
    killed.

    Just like any competitive sport on TV, iconic fighters are the norm in
    PRIDE. I myself have a couple of favorites already, like the great Kazushi Sakuraba, the quiet brute that is Igor Vovchanchyn, and the Gracie family always peaks my interest.

    The thing about mixed-martial arts competitions is that the fights
    almost always end up in two different ways, standing strikes, or ground
    grapples. Now, I like my fights standing up, but there's a lot of
    ground grapples here which I can find a little boring most of the
    times. Overall though, I like seeing martial art fights that are more
    realistic than a kung fu movie, and PRIDE delivers there.

    oh, there is one thing that I seem to enjoy doing when watching
    PRIDE.  I like announcing the fighter's names, just like how they
    do it in the show. It'll be something like "IGGOOORRRR
    VOVCHAANNCHYYNNN!!!!" or "KAZUSHIIII SAKURABBAAAAA!!!!!" yeah, I have
    fun with that.

  • Blade - Trinity, the
    last of the Blade movies? Quite possibly, but then it was kind of a let
    down for a trilogy.  But then the only decently good Blade film
    was the first one. Anyways, I can appreciate what they tried to do with
    this third film, and it showed some promise as the end of the
    trilogy.  The problem was that it didn't really excel anymore than
    the previous films, and was basically your run of the mill action flick
    with vampires.  Logic also for the most part was thrown out the
    window, so that didn't help too much.  Oh well, Jessica Biel was
    hot, and that's what was really going for it wasn't it? Movie gets a "C"

    ----------------

    Gladiator, now
    there's a movie that I didn't have much high expectations for. 
    That time period isn't exactly something that I'm a fan of
    either.  Although Braveheart
    is one of my most favorite films of all time. The intro for Gladiator
    didn't help much either, what with it's gritty dark war scene that
    mistakenly seems to run at 10 frames per second or something. But after
    that whole first act, and the talks of politics, scheming, and
    philosophy started showing up, that's when things got interesting to
    me.  The whole feel for the colloseum games was also well made,
    and the action scenes for that were a lot more engrossing than the war
    scenes.  Also, it should be pointed out that Russell Crowe impressed me in his role.  He truly is "the thinking man's action hero."  Movie gets an "A-"

  • I went to Disneyland, and boy where there a lot of people. 
    We actually only went from 8PM - 12AM, and primarily for the
    fireworks.  The fireworks was really good and had a lot of flashy
    effects that are incredible.  This is definitely one of Disney's
    best one yet.  After the show was over, everybody was either
    moving towards the exit or towards the 10:30pm showing of
    Fantasmic.  Basically it was a chore to move, and it was like we
    were a pack of sardines. It took us maybe about 20 minutes to get to an
    area that should have only took one minute.

    Besides watching the fireworks, we did get on some rides. The only
    rides / attractions that we were able to get on was "it's tough to be a
    bug," Pirates of the Carribean, Indiana Jones Adventure, and Buzz
    Lightyear's Astro Blaster. Not too bad for four hours worth I suppose.

    At the end of the night, the wait for the trams to the parking
    structure was going well over 10 minutes.  So we decided to walk,
    which apparently only takes about 10 minutes.  The funny thing was
    that when we got to the parking structure, the tram that we would have
    most likely been on didn't even get there yet. It's a good thing we
    walked.

    We finished off the night at Denny's for a late dinner, then ended back
    home. Man, for four hours at Disneyland, it felt like we were there the
    whole day.


  •  
    Face to Face (self-titled)
    is a pretty darn great melodic-punk album.  This is one of those
    albums that sets a standard to what other melodic-punk albums are
    suppose to be like.  This has the melody driven songs with fast
    paced beats and riffs, plus the lyrics are pretty thought provoking in
    themselves.  The highlight to the band though is the lead singer
    really has a passionate voice that immediately makes you take notice of
    the songs.

    1) Resignation - 2) Walk the Walk - 3) Blind
    4) Ordinary - 5) I Won't Lie Down

    --------

    Jimmy Eat World (self-titled)
    is a pretty good album.  Classified as either emo or just modern
    rock, this band has moved into the mainstream with this album. 
    Even though there are several radio friendly songs here, it doesn't
    mean that the band still doesn't produce good music. There are some
    really memorable songs here and the whole thing is definitely easy on
    the ears.  The passion and emotion in the way the lead singer
    sings makes you want to sing along too, like anthems to your soul.

    2) A Praise Chorus - 3) The Middle - 5) Sweetness
    7) If You Don't, Don't - 8) Get It Faster

    ---------

    Testament - "Practice What You Preach"
    is one of the band's best thrash metal album.  It's just full on
    in your face, driving beats, thrash around metal music.  There are
    some killer tracks here, even though the rest of the album borders into
    sounding alike to each other.  Another thing to note is that this
    isn't a highly produced album, and the rhythm guitar riffs seems to get
    drowned out by the heavy fast drums.  The lead guitar though
    shines through and it's got some great stuff there.

    1) Practice What You Preach - 2) Perilous Nation - 3) Envy Life
    4) Time Is Coming - 8) Ballad