Last time I played the game was still in closed beta, tested out some of the features and I got hooked, though the same with perfect world (which is also the developer -- correct me if I'm wrong -- of the game) revolves around quests. and I mean, a lot of them, It's the players main means of leveling. But it's not boring though, there are still a lot of features I wasn't able to test and a lot of quests and instances that I haven't had my hands on yet. I'm planning to continue playing, but that's until I get my own computer -- breaking down and all -- so I can test all the games I've been posting here.

Open beta for BOI (Battle Of Immortals) started December 6, 2010. Battle of Immortals is a Free-To-Play Fantasy Themed MMORPG by Perfect World Entertainment and it is published here in the Philippines by Cubizone. It is a very easy game to play and it uses a point-and-click system to control your character. I created a slayer (known as Executioner in BOI.ph, which is the localized name for the class) back in the closed beta stage of the game... I liked the graphics and all, but kind of disappointed, due to the lack of action and effects, not to mention the limited camera angles.

I know I've posted about this a while back, but heck... I missed the closed beta of Shaiya Philippines when my PC crashed (and I still don't have a computer to test the game with -- no computer shops here in my location offers the game yet -- and it sucks).

Shaiya Philippines is now on it's closed beta stage and nearing open beta, which will start on December 16, 2010. I just hope I can play the game by then. I really liked the graphics and I hope I would like the gameplay as well, I'm still looking forward to testing this game out.

And to end this post... here's the official video taken from Amped website's Shaiya Online:

Finally, I was having a bit of second thoughts about making this review because I found the game unappealing for myself, but I as a gamer, I thought, I should make a review of every game I play. So here it is, I made this less biased to the best that I can, please bear with me.

Assassin's Creed 2 is the second installment of the series, a third-person action-adventure from Ubisoft. Players will still be controlling the same old Desmond Miles, but this time, he escapes from Abstergo together with Lucy Stillman, and will be using a different Animus, the Animus 2.0, and will be reliving the memories of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who became an assassin right after his father and two brothers got hanged due to a betrayal from a family friend.

The gameplay this time is more complex than the first installment -- definitely a big enhancement -- and has more emphasis on free-roaming. Although, there is a bigger enhancement on non-player AI, open-conflicts -- battles outside of the missions -- are still pretty much dull and easy to deal with. Players will be spending more time playing due to the large arsenal of side-quests, and puzzles:

Getting Altair's armor will be the easiest puzzles of them all, while glyphs will be such a pain -- not to mention the creepy Subject 16 -- to find and solve.

There are a lot of NPC's in-game which will be available for hire and will make your gaming experience a lot easier. Mainly they are thieves, courtesans, and warriors. There are also a vast array of blending options, not just limited to monks, players can swim to break the line of sight, and can also blend with groups of people and walk along with them to be unnoticed. Players will be entertained as they see familiar people in history as being part of the game.

Over-all the gameplay is quite easy and beating the game will be a breeze but if you're a hardcore gamer, completing the game 100% would be eating your time and patience.

I'll be posting my own gameplay in the future...

I just had a flash back of when I was still pretty much an arcade gamer. The days when tokens are the real hype. And then I remembered the only "fighting game I played -- next to Tekken -- which is Dead or Alive. And now I present to you... Hitomi!

Hitomi is a German-Japanese High School girl and a karate expert from the Dead or Alive series, debuted in Dead or Alive 3. She has been practicing the art of karate under her father's tutelage since she was a child.

Hitomi entered the Dead or Alive Tournament either to prove her skills and/or to see Ein. It is unclear  whether she actually knows that the amnesiac, martial art prodigy that she once knew was actually Hayate, a shinobi master and leader of the Mugen Tenshin clan.

Although Japanese, Hitomi has a more western appearance than Eastern overall: she has bright blue eyes and shoulder-long brunette hair, which is styled with long side-bangs and a front fringe, normally pushed back with a pink headband. Throughout the series, her height and bust measurements have change, through only by a couple of centimeters: In Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, she's 161 cm tall with a 89 cm bust; in Dead or Alive 4, she's 160 cm tall with a 90 cm bust, and in Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, she's 158 cm tall with a 89 cm bust.

Her clothing also bears a western-feel, consisting mostly of jeans, tank-tops and denim jackets, complete with protective fighter's gloves. A running detail on her jeans is that the back label always bear the initials of the game she's in; for example, in Dead or Alive 4, the ladel reads "DOA4." Hitomi also sometimes sports her own embalm, mostly printed on her top or the back of her jacket. The embalm, in its simplest form, is the shape of an eagle with fanned-out wings. More detailed versions of the emblem show the eagle in greater style, holding a banner in its talons with Hitomi's name upon it. Phrases like "Thanks for the fight" and "My fists are on fire" may also be printed on it.

Hitomi can be considered the successor to Ein, in terms of fighting technique and statistics. However, Hitomi is slightly faster, compared to Ein's strikes being somewhat more powerful than hers. She has the strongest punch techniques amongst the females characters.

Hitomi's fighting style relies on quick, medium-damage strikes, and her recovery time frame is excellent. Her tell-tale "wind-up" shared with Ein, however, is a popular counter-attack weakness for her, and the majority of her attacks lack good mix-up's, which means that most high-to-mid holds are effective against her. Her "interruption attacks" however (such as the Tsubauchi) are competent in keeping the opponent off-guard, as well as making Hitomi preferable for aggressive players.

Hitomi's Ending in DoA 4:

Tifa was named the pinup girl of the "cyber generation" by the New York Times, and since has been compared to Lara Croft, as an example of a strong, independent and attractive female character in video games. IGN and UGO.com have both repeatedly praised both the character's appearance and strength as well as one of the best female characters in gaming, while Play named her "the most adored" of the Final Fantasy series' female characters. In 2007, Dengeki Playstation named her the eighth best fictional character of all time to appear in games for Sony Playstation.

A brief fight scene between Tifa and Loz. From Final Fantasy: Advent Children.

To start off with my blog's character pages, I present to you Excella Gionne, the voluptuous antagonist of Resident Evil 5.

Here's a little E-Book for those who want to learn more about overclocking:

I would like to thank mr. appztera of pinoyunderground for sharing this wonderful e-book. This is all that I have for now... see you next time.

This is just to cover what overclocking is and what it does generally.

The term overclocking describes the process of running your CPU at a clock and/or bus speed that the CPU has not been specified for - logically that speed is usually higher.

- taken from Tom's Hardware

Which means that by changing the CPU's speed to almost it's clock speed limit, you can achieve faster performance, you will also be needing more cooling since your CPU will be working twice the recommended speed.

Graphics cards can also be overclocked, with utilities such as EVGA's Precision, RivaTuner, ATIOverdrive (on ATI cards only), MSI Afterburner, or the PEG Link Mode on ASUS motherboards. Overclocking a GPU will often yield a marked increase in performance in synthetic benchmarks, and usually will improve game performance too. Sometimes, it is possible to see that a graphics card is pushed beyond its limits before any permanent damage is done by observing on-screen distortions known as artifacts. Two such discriminated "warning bells" are widely understood: green-flashing, random triangles appearing on the screen usually correspond to overheating problems on the GPU itself, while white, flashing dots appearing randomly (usually in groups) on the screen often mean that the card's RAM is overheating. It is common to run into one of those problems when overclocking graphics cards. Showing both symptoms at the same time usually means that the card is severely pushed beyond its heat/clock rate/voltage limits. If seen at normal clock rate, voltage and temperature, they may indicate faults with the card itself. However, if the video card is simply clocked too high and doesen't overheat then the artifacts are a bit different. There are many different ways for this to show up and any irregularities should be considered but usually if the core is pushed too hard black circles or blobs appear on the screen and overclocking the video memory beyond its limits usually results in the application or the entire operating system crashing. Luckily though, after the computer is restarted the settings is reset to stock (Stored in the video card BIOS) and the maximum clock rate of that specific card has been found.Some overclockers use a hardware voltage modification where a potentiometer is applied to the video card to manually adjust the voltage. This results in much greater flexibility, as overclocking software for graphics cards is rarely able to freely adjust the voltage. Voltage mods are very risky and may result in a dead video card, especially if the voltage modification ("voltmod") is applied by an inexperienced individual. A pencil volt mod refers to changing a resistor's value on the graphics card by drawing across it with a graphite pencil. This results in a change of GPU voltage. It is also worth mentioning that adding physical elements to the video card immediately voids the warranty.

This is all the time I have for now, I'll be covering other topics regarding overclocking in the next post.

Here is the Trailer for the game:

Now to kick it off, I just got this question from a friend, who happens to want to build his own gaming rig.

WHAT PROCESSOR WOULD YOU PREFER? AMD OR INTEL?

Normally I would recommend AMD processors, but that's just me, and for me, AMD processors are built mainly for performance, but to top that, Intel processors are very stable, and can withstand the toughest beating from any gamer. So, on that note what processor would you be using?

I already tried both Processors, I would say that intel is really stable it actually lasted 2 years fully stressed. AMD on the other hand, lasted only almost a year and a half, i think I stressed it a lot... it got fried.

I'm still using AMD coz' I was really satisfied with the performance, and the price. Although, AMD is cheaper than Intel, AMD processors need a lot of taking are of, I've set up a rig with a lot of exhausts and a copper cooled heatsink.

New Dragonball Online... taweeweet!!!!

And here are some gameplay videos... with transformations

Grand Chase Season 3 is finally here.Someone posted about this, but it didnt hav any details. so, here goes.

Reference: http://game3.netmarble.net/chase/intro.asp
***Unfortunately, the website is in korean... its for those who can read korean only But, I was kind enough bored enough to translate what it says.

So sorry I was too lazy to put them in my own words so I just Copy-Pasted what he posted on the forums.

If you want to read the complete discussion... read it here:

**Disclaimer: The image I used here is a property of level-up-games Philippines, I take no credit for the picture. And many thanks to NeoNeca of Ntreev.net forum.

Links:

Make me a Siggy; Signature making contest.

Like Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV is an MMORPG, set in a land called Hydaelyn, mainly in a region named Eorzea. Which houses 4 independent city-states:

Limsa Lomina - the most notable among the 4

Ul'dah - The Pirate Hub

Gridania - A desert City rich in mineral wealth

Ishgard - The state atop a mountains

There are a total of five playable races as of yet:

Elezen - An elf like race divided into Wildwood and Duskwight

Lalafell - Tiny people sort of childlike in appearance, divided into plainsfol and dunesfolk

Hyur - They resemble the humans, divided into HIghlanders and Midlanders

Roegadyn - A large-built seafaring race, a male exclusive race, divided into Seewolf and Hellsguard

Miqo'te - Resembles the ever cute cat-girl (Too much anime and manga!), grouped into seekers of the sun and Keepers of the Moon. parallel to Roegadyn, they are a female-only race

This wraps up my short introduction about Final fantasy XIV Online... I'll try to make another review regarding the classes, probably noting the story and the likes.

CamStudio 2.0 can record all video and audio activity in your computer, either you can choose a region or just record the whole screen! Only downside are there is no zoom option, and no other formats than AVI and Streaming Flash Video (SWF). But unlike other commercialized video capturing software, you can record to your hearts content, and not worry about any time restrictions, or annoying brand watermarks on your recordings.

I would gladly recommend this software to those people who doesn't want to spend large bucks, just to record their favorite game, or even make a demonstration of their gameplay.

Links:

Who ever said that dance MMO's should always be cute?

One boring day of restlessness gave me a chance to try out a new game(well not so new since it has been out in the market for quite some time), playing in a new internet cafe, I saw a High street 5 icon on the desktop, and I was like "Alright why not give it a try?"

First thing that caught my attention was the graphics, it's not like the other dancing mmo's that I've tried before, not the cute, chibi-like (pardon the word... just google it if you don't know what it is), or pixel shaded anime themed graphics. It also has a wide range of avatar customization, reminded me of perfect world, in a sense. Although the tutorial part got me all confused, when some of the buttons that you are suppose to click on didn't respond, took me a while to get the hang of it too. The dancing part was fun, specially when I tried doing tricks (or was it what it was called... correct me please), the part where you where you press a different key instead of the space bar.

The dancing part was also fun to watch, and the arrows are easy to follow, or so I thought... till I got to 130bpm. I got cramps on my fingers! the beat just got to fast to follow, well that was just me, seeing that the others can still dance. It bacame kind of a button mashing for me, that's why I wasn't a fan of audition online.

For all the people who likes fast pace dancing, this must be the game for you. I can really say, it will greatly enhance your eye-hand coordination (or is it fingers?)

Time to pick your Race and Class!!

Vampires Online is a fantasy gaming masterpiece by NetDragon - a Fuzhou-based maker of online games.

Normal - wherein you dance and compete with each other, highest score's the winner.

Hunting - This is where acquaintances starts off, dance and find your partner, couple dances also has rewards, if you complete the stated mission that is.

Meeting - not implemented yet on the Philippine version

iDate also boasts of this wide array of songs to dance to (all korean songs - not really sure if they're planning on adding local songs on the playlist). Most of them, I bet, pinoys are well aware of and somehow have heard those songs.

iDate is distributed in the Philippines by GameClub, which also brought you Special Force, probably the first online MMOFPS in the country (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Links:

Nostale is distributed in the Philippines by e-games - the leading company that set up the free-to-play MMORPG trend.

Nostale's Minimum requirements to play:

Pentium 3 500Mhz CPU

256mb Memory

32mb with 3d capability Video card

800mb HDD

windows 2000/windows xp OS

That's basically my computer spec... and I could still play it decently with close to no lag at all. I've only played for about 5 hours tops and I'm still getting the hang of in-game things, but over all I can say it's enjoyable.

One thing that caught my fancy with playing nostale is it's nosmate feature and the mini land. Nosmates are npc's that you get at certain levels to be with your party, in addition, you can also capture monsters to serve as a pet, that means you will be controlling 3 characters as you level, (as of now, I only have a pet and no nosmates yet) kind of reminds me about Granado Espada (in a cute sense). The mini land feature is kind of like your in-game land, where you get to build your home and where 9 more extra pets and 2 extra nosmates lay in wait for you to get them in your party. You can also do mini games in your mini land which gives rewards. The map is huge enough and leveling is quite easy, it also has an in-game database for the players convenience (specially for those hard to find items and monsters).

E-games Philippines is distributing Nostale Global, which is an international client, which means somewhere along the way, don't be shocked to play and talk with people not speaking filipino.

For the complete background of the game visit:

http://nostale.net/ or http://nostale.com.ph

to download and try the game:

http://www.e-games.com.ph/Content/Downloads/dwl_Downloads.aspx just click the download button under nostale