I had put GS on hold for the last few days - exams, TV and most importantly anime!

Bored with gaming and with no good books to read, I turned to anime to satisfy my craving for a good story (and some inspiration for my new literary venture).

I wouldn't say I'm a big fan of anime. Yes, I was crazy about Dragonball Z (note was because it started going downhill after the Frieza arc) and recently I was bit by the Naruto bug. For the last three years I've been on and off Naruto, waiting for the anime to move forward significantly so that I need not wait for each episode every week (I don't like stories broken into so many small and slowly progressing chunks). But I was quite sure I'd never fall for another anime... and yet, I fell for it ---

---Code Geass took me by storm. For the last two days I've been watching both parts of Code Geass and have just finished all the 50 episodes. What can I say? The series left me trying to figure out what I actually felt about it. The only thing I can say for sure is that it was an awesome 50 episode ride.

Okay, the setting is not very original (mechas anyone? ) and same can be said about the plot. However, the the one thing that the series managed to hit right on spot were the characters, or to be more precise, a character called Lelouch. If not for anything, the anime should be watched for Lelouch alone. Of course, inspite of a few irregularities in the plot, it showcased some brilliant execution, which again has a lot to do with Lelouch's portrayal. It leaves you in the dark on what Lelouch's next move would be without the cheap dramatics(of course, there are dramatics, but it doesn't grind you as happens in a number of other anime).

The character philosophies here(standard fare of every anime) aren't actually praiseworthy because it's not something everyone would accept and moreover they are weakly presented.

I can easily say that (with some normalizations applied) that Lelouch is one of my most favourite characters across all forms of storytelling - books, games, movies, anime...

Oh and maybe I might be writing a comparative review of the animes I've watched after I finish Fullmetal Alchemist, which I'm moving onto next.

I'd like to know what you guys think about CG. If you haven't watched it, I suggest that you do... and then of course comment here.

Yep! Tomorrow's gonna be D-Day for me. Tomorrow I'll be writing the exam that could grant me admission into some of the most prestigious B-Schools in the country - the IIMs (Indian Institute of Management). It's almost a year's worth of preparations going to the test, though I admit that I could have done a lot more for it. Anyway, time's up and here I am, on the threshold. Wish me luck!

It's been almost a year since my last blog post and here I am with a new one. What have I been doing so long? Ah, busy with college and bad net connection. The same old story.

Okay, firstly I made it to the 8k posts mark. I know it's no big deal, but I wanted to post a blog and it co-incided with the 8k post 'achievement' and here it is. Have a cookie.

GAMES I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO

My interest in gaming as such has been waning of late. I'm no longer as interested in gaming as I was a couple of years. But then, there are a lot of games in the pipeline that I'm looking forward to, would love to try at least. I got this idea for the blog from khoofia_pika. And here they are:

Diablo 3

The game I've been waiting for really long time. Blizzard surely is taking its own sweet time with all its teasers and trailers. They've been trying to build up a hype and I admit that it's working. I'm looking forward to try the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. The Witch Doctor may be the replacement for the Necromancer class, but I gotta say that the Necromancer looks cooler of the two.

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

Blizzard surely how to ramp up the hype and make you wait long. If it were any game, I'd have condemned the hype and blasted the company for building it up for so long. But somehow I can't say that for Bliz's games. SC2 WoL was my first Starcraft game... I have played the original Starcraft but I was just trying it out without much interest. But SC2, I was hooked up to it. The storyline was awesome and the game does wonders with the seemingly simple gameplay. Oh, I can't wait for the next installment. But the price is too steep and waiting time too long

Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age was a solid story driven RPG. I really loved the game for what it had to offer - great storyline, nice isometric view, decent combat, a good RPG system... but the game was also ridden with glitches and suffered from long load times and I mean painfully long. Bioware's said they've ironed out the issues with DA1 and I surely hope so. Because if they have done, then it will certainly be one hell of a game

Mass Effect 3

Now this is in the works and not much info is available on it. But who wouldn't love to step into the shoes of the invincible Commander Shepard and go on a wild ride around the universe. Well, the storyline in both the Mass effects have been simply superlative. They're definitely worth a good novel. Ah! I can already see myself zipping across the universe in a brand new Normandy.

Assassin's Creed 2 Brotherhood

If there's one thing that you gotta love about AC it's the freedom to explore. The protagonists movements are fluid and the combat top notch. I finished AC 2 about a couple of months back and it was an awesome game. If ME was a wild ride across the universe, then AC 2 was a wild ride across Italy. The developers have also ramped up the combat and added a few features that should make the game even more exciting. The only drawback - It's a Ubisoft game! May Ubisoft rot in hell!

Deadspace 2

Intense! DS 1 was intense and atmospheric. One of the best horror games ever made, and the combat system makes it stand out from the rest of the survival horror games. Dead Space 2 promises more interactive(and destructible) environs, new enemies, new weapons and slightly more combat adapted Isaac. One of the main selling points of the game was its novelty(the combat system), so I hope that the changes to DS 2 are worth it. Don't wanna be disappointed playing the same game all over again.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit

It's been long since I have looked forward to a NFS game, given the direction it's takes since Most Wanted. the last game in the same that I bought was Carbon. It was a good racer, but didn't quite make the mark that NFS MW did. But now that the guys behind the Burnout games have takes over the development of the game, I'm more positive. And btw, NFS3: Hot Pursuit was my first racing game for the PC. Maybe there is some sentimental value attached to the name too.

And yeah, I'm talking about the PC versions only. I don't own a console, nor do I plan on buying one in the near future.

Before I finish, I'd like to post the link the reviews I've written. I have been on a review roll, writing 3 reviews within a week. So here they are:

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Scribblenauts

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The Scribblenauts review is my first for a DS game. Please comment and if you like them, rec them.

My net's once again giving me too much trouble. For the past two days I've hardly had more than half an hour of active net connection(with all those 1 minutes and 2 minutes put together). So I'm finding it hard to be active on GS. To make matters worse, Dragon Age is keeping me occupied for most of the time.

UPDATED IMPRESSIONS

Dragon Age's been a bittersweet game so far. There are a number of flaws and yet the game manages to keep me hooked. The torture!

As I said in my previous blog, the game is glitched enough for me to say that Bioware decided to put out a half-finished product. Glitches include:

1. The enemy attacks going way off mark and still being able to damage my character.

2. Characters getting stuck at the corners of even small obstacles

3. Random drops in frame rate

4. Sudden freezing and crashing

5. Unresponsiveness to orders in tactical mode

...and a few more minor and rare glitches.

However, the storyline is very good and the missions are interesting. A number of side missions are close to the main story and hence you don't get the feeling that you're getting side tracked.

Overall, the game is good in almost all aspects, but minor flaws in every aspect prevent it from being the best in any.

I find myself comparing the game often to other games as well as a few books. Comparisons are as follows:

Oblivion:Inevitable! The previous(and perhaps even now) pinnacle of open ended RPGs(the un-hack n' slash type) has a few things in common with DAO and yet there a are so many things completely different too. The most important aspect is the open endedness - DAO isn't half as open ended as Oblivion. You can't travel on foot between towns or areas, and thus the very aspect of exploration is limited. A lot of 'explorable' places are also restricted early on and obviously the game is more plot driven.

Mass Effect:The last time I played a game with such an awesome storyline and detailed universe was Bioware's own Mass Effect. However, I feel that DAO still falls short of the ME storyline, which was totally epic... worth a novel. I'd say DAO has a great storyline, but I wouldn't call it novel-worthy. ME had a more engaging plot with more suspense and twists than your average mystery novel.

The Witcher: The tactical mode and the combat view in it reminded me of The Witcher, even though the isometric view was introduced as early as Dink Smallwood.

Fable-The Lost Chapters: Character interactions look like those from Fable. The character is shown as a dumb(in the sense speechless) dopey looking kid in Fable and I find the same expression in DAO. Couldn't they have done something better here. At least the accompanying characters express their views occasionally, which kinda breaks the monotony.

Eragon: The whole Grey Warden thing and the dealing with the different races - it reminds me so much of Eragon. And then there are dragons in both.. tho the portrayal of dragons is different. There were a few instances that made me feel that I was playing a scene out of the book. I can't tell you the scene because then it'd be a spoiler.

Lord of the Rings: The mother of fantasy novels! Naturally I always tend to find something from LotR in any fantasy novel that have humans, elves and dwarves in them.

I actually hoped that I'd be writing a review by this time, but the game is so large that I feel that I've hardly breeched the surface. So the review will have to wait.

Yes, after much waiting and anticipation, I finally got my hands on the game of the season - Dragon Age Origins, thanks to one kind vendor who had managed to ship it down. I started the game and yesterday and it's been 10 hours of game now. What do I think of it? Well, so far it's not quite the game the hype made it to be.

The game universe is quite large, not very different from the Oblivion or Fallout games. It's the basic fantasy role playing game, with all it's machinery. The storyline is darker and more engaging than Oblivion and the game seems more story driven than Oblivion... In a way, I think it's a good thing, since I can enjoy the storyline and not be distracted to hell, like I got in both Oblivion and Fallout 3. The combat system is much better than Oblivion and allows for more satisfying battles, rather than the half hearted attempts in Oblivion. Also, the inventory management and Quest/Information management feels more comfortable.

On the flip side however, the game scales much less. Frames rates dropped at 1280x1024 resolution with no bells and whistles and it still looked worse than CoD 4 at the same setting. I could even crank up CoD4's setting with x2 AA and x2 AF and still enjoy a stutterless experience. The textures were incosistent - there was smooth texturing for most part, but there were places where the bad texturing became an eyesore.

The game is also pretty glitchy. The character would get caught on the edges of obstacles, like logs or rocks. You wouldn't even notice that there is an obstacle there and yet find your character stuck. I found the other obvious glitch when I was fighting a large monster. The monster would strike the ground long after I had moved away from the spot and yet I would lose HP... or it would do a headbutt and I'd easily dodge it; the monster would ram into the wall, but still my character took the toll. Pretty irritating that.

Overall, except for the combat system and a more streamlined storyline, I find little that stands out in the hype fest. Of course, it is not bad... in fact far from it, but then it's not all that revolutionary or stands-out-of-the-crowd kinda game, either.

I'd give it somewhere between 8 and 9. However, I have to play the game more to actually find out how good it. Storylines are an important factor for such games, and a good one can surely sway my opinion... just the way Mass Effect did(having little novelty and not a very deep gameplay, but an incredibly awesome storyline)

How did you find the game?

See you next time... probably with the review.

My vacation's begun. Actually it began a week ago, but my net decided to give me the run when it went bust on the second day of my vacation. Took a week to get it ready and here I am. I've been playing a few games at this time, especially revisiting older titles, that were gathering dust in the shelves. And I finished Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts(which I started exactly a year ago, right down to give or take two days last year)

And here's the review of CoH: OF. Read and comment. Rec it if you like:

Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts review

More news soon! :)

I've decided to make a weekly blog... just to keep my blog updated. Actually I had planned to do it yesterday but forgot, as I was busy writing a review for Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords which you can read here. Read and reccomend it if you like it. It is quite long and objective but I've quite a lot of info into it.

Games

I've been playing Dead Space for about a week now and I'm nearing the end. And what a game! It surely takes the top honours of its genre.

Books

Got the Inheritance trilogy(Eragon series) the day before yesterday and have started reading the first book Eragon. The plot's delving deeper but I've hardly grazed the surface. I also bought another book 'One Night at a Call Centre' by Chetan Bhagat... an Indian author. It's supposedly a good book but I don't know how many ppl have heard of it.

Movies

Now what did I watch last week... ah yes! I watched Departed. Great movie. Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon literally smoked the scenes with their great acting. Even though Di Caprio was good, I felt he could have done better as he is capable of more.

Gamespot and E3

No, this is not a detailed E3 analysis, so don't cringe. I watched the Microsoft and Nintendo press conferences. Nintendo's wasn't very interesting(God, some of their presenters looked lioke they were in terrible pain) but MS sizzled. I've got high hopes for Modern Warfare 2:D and I'm also intrigued by Project Natal. Good going MS, but get your consoles fixed first before you go for new ventures.
Accursed GS has not given me the Nintendo emblem yet and I wonder if they're even gonna give it. Maybe they'll eat it just as they did for my Best of Gamespot 2008 emblem.

In other things, my college has begun as I said in my previous blog and is taking a toll on my time. I also joined a new union... Bookspot(and they've already made me an officer. Not good news, is it? :P)

See ya, next week

... and that includes vacation. Yup! My summer vacation is over and I'm once again busy with college. To make matters worse it looks like I'll be having a more hectic semester(if that's even possible). This means that I'll be having very little time to afford on the internet and even lesser time with this glitchy slow-loading site called Gamespot. I'll drop in as much as I can especiaally during the weekends but it's rough to stay around for long during the weekdays.

In other news, I watched parts of the Microsoft and Nintendo press conferences. It was really a great experience especially watching a telecast live with a slow-as-snail internet. Too bad I couldn't watch Sony's PC or Gamespot's live as I had college. I've already got the MS E3 badge and I'm waiting for the Nintendo badge. It should come soon (if they didn't forget me :P)

In gaming... I'm playing Dead Space. It's gotta be the best the survivor horror genre has too offer. I'll write a review as soon as possible

See ya

While surfing the big bad world called internet I came across an interesting site called MyBrute. It's a game where you don't actually control your player. Yeah you read that right, you DON'T control the player. Can't understand? Check this one out and you'll see.

MyBrute

By clicking that link you'll be challenging me

I've been playing Battlestations Pacific on and off for sometime now, alternating it with Diablo 2. BS: Pacific's quite good, but definitely not the RTSer I believed it would be when I bought. It compensates for that with its intense action and beautiful vistas.

Check out me Battlestations Pacific review

Read and rec it if you like it