Return of the blog!

I'm back after a long time again! It's been a while since I wrote on my blog.



Today I want to talk about the newest offering in the Final Fantasy saga: Final Fantasy XIII. The main story revolves around a woman named Lightning who's a soldier in the city of Cocoon. The city is ruled by deities called Fal'Cies that roll out their rule through the government of the Sanctum. As the story unfolds, we find out that the Sanctum and its leaders aren't exactly for the people's wellbeing as they wage war against the lower world of Pulse with no regard as to who gets caught in the crossfire. Another character named Snow is the leader of a rebel faction called NORA. Other characters eventually join in the story that intertwines each of them in a way that only the storytellers of the Final Fantasy series can do. No spoilers here, you just have to play the game yourself.

They put back the old turn-based battle system with a new twist. You only get to control one character at a time in a party of 2 or 3. But the real meat of the system is that you can change the role/function of your lead character and the other characters in your party on the fly. This system is called the Paradigm Shift. Each character can be leveled up to specific roles such as Commando (physical attacker), Ravager (mage), Medic (cleric), Saboteur (casts status ailments), Synergist (casts status bonuses for party) and Sentinel (provokes and takes damage for the party). This leveling up is done via the Crystarium, a system similar to the Sphere grid in FFX. Weapons can be broken down or upgraded as needed. There is a lot of depht especially in the battle system where you can gain 2 or more ATB (Active Time Battle) gauges.

One thing that disapoints especially die hard fans of the series is the linearity of exploration. I have only been 16 hours into the game as I write this and I really don't mind. The story is pretty engrosing that moving seemingly "on rails" doesn't hurt the experience. This is out on both the XBox 360 and PS3 but from what I've heard the PS3 looks better while the XBox 360 version is spread across three DVDs as compared to Sony's single bluray disc (I smell fanboyism!)

All in all, FF XIII is an outstanding game and a real showpiece that only SquareEnix can deliver. This is a must buy!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Prince of Persia Rocks!

As I have stated on an earlier blog, I was working on finishing Prince of Persia on the PS3, one of Ubisoft's monster games so far.  I was able to finish it a few days ago and it so totally rocks!  Here's why.

Forget your other ideas of earlier PoP games.  Forget the mild-mannered Prince we got to know on Sands of Time and of the other succeeding titles that were really not that good (they're Two Thrones and Warrior Within I think).  The unamed Prince comes back this time as a grave-robbing, tomb-raiding, smart-mouthed thief, that's right, a thief.  But he's not alone because he joins a runaway princess named Elika for the ride.  The objective: to ride the kingdom of the corruption that covers the entire land.  Hmm.. sounds like the government to me.

As expected from a PoP game, there is a lot of platforming and crazy acrobatics/gymnastics when moving from one point to another in this open world game.  The controls are spot on and wall running and other off-the-wall stunts (literally!) are easy to accomplish.  Battles with the creatures of corruption (this really sounds like the government) is one-on-one with a little help from Elika and her magic attacks.  For completists out there, you can spend a lot of time collecting each light seed from every nook and cranny in the kingdom.  Light seeds, by the way, are used to unlock more areas for you to heal of the corruption.

The game tends to be gentle on the player though as it tells you when to block or what technique to use (sword, gauntlet, or Elika's magic).  Elika's compass acts as your GPS when you tend to get spun around.  In this game, you can never die as Elika always catches you when you miss a jump and saves you when you get your back end kicked by the corruption.  The penalty though is that the enemy's life bar goes up when you were supposed to "die" and Elika saves you.

Over all, this is one game I highly recommend for fans of the PoP franchise or adventure games in particular.  This surely makes up for the other episodes in the franchise that felt empty and mediocre.  This new Prince of Persia will definitely be on the throne of your Playstation 3 adventure game list for a while.

Typhoon Weekend

It's a stormy Saturday morning here at home.  I'm all alone since Jel has to be at work today.  There's no practise for the band either so I guess I'll have time to play Prince of Persia on the PS3 a little more.  It's a really fun game since you get to run across all sorts of environments.  They say the game holds your hand a little too much by feeding you tips a lot of times throughout the game but for me, I sometimes like that especially when my brain feels tired after a week of stressful work.  And one of the best things about PoP is that you can save anywhere, absolutely anywhere.  Even in the middle of a fight you can save the game.  This is a great feature when you need to drop the controller and go to sleep.  I'll probably write a review of this game once I beat it.

PS3 For Christmas

i know someone who probably wrote this song.. check out this link..

http://www.youtube.com/?v=Yi2RLLHG5T0

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It's here...

PS3 Hardware Specs

CPU: Cell Processor
* PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
* 1 VMX vector unit per core
* 512KB L2 cache
* 7 x SPE @3.2GHz
* 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
* 7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* * 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS

GPU: RSX @550MHz
* 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
* Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
* Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines

Sound: Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-base processing)

Memory:
* 256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
* 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

System Bandwidth:
* Main RAM: 25.6GB/s
* VRAM: 22.4GB/s
* RSX: 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
* SB: 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)

System Floating Point Performance: 2 TFLOPS

Storage:
* HDD
* Detachable 2.5” HDD slot x 1

I/O:
* USB: Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
* Memory Stick: standard/Duo, PRO x 1
* SD: standard/mini x 1
* CompactFlash: (Type I, II) x 1

Communication: Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x3 (input x 1 + output x 2) Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b/g Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)

Controller:
* Bluetooth (up to 7)
* USB2.0 (wired)
* Wi-Fi (PSP®)
* Network (over IP)

AV Output:
* Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
* HDMI: HDMI out x 2
* Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
* Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1

CD Disc media (read only):
* PlayStation CD-ROM
* PlayStation 2 CD-ROM
* CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW
* SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD
* DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)

DVD Disc media (read only):
* PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM
* PLAYSTATION 3 DVD-ROM
* DVD-Video: DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW

Blu-ray Disc media (read only):
* PLAYSTATION 3 BD-ROM
* BD-Video: BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE

a new gamestop shop has opened at park square 1. i'm not sure when but i think they're kinda new, there isn't even much on display yet. but as far as i was concerned, they had all that they needed to display: a brand new playstation 3 with a 60gig hard drive for only Php25,000! i want one! i found myself staring at the display box for about 5 minutes and i haven't even noticed. sheesh! the xbox 360 looks cool too but i'm still more inclined to getting the ps3. if only they would break the ps3 a bit faster..

yup, it's finally gotten to me, the time to make a crucial choice: should i get a playstation 3 or an xbox 360? and believe me, this is one TOUGH decision!

first of all, i am a sony fan. i owned an original playstation, i own a playstation 2 and a playstation portable and i must say that the sony system does have a well rounded list of games ranging from rpgs to adventure games to puzzlers. sony does have something for every kind of gamer there is. for someone like me, the next step would be obvious,get a playstation 3! it's not that simple though. the playstation 3 does have a rather steep price as compared to (here it comes!) the xbox 360 from microsoft. i would normally not even think of shelling out money for an xbox 360 over a ps3 but the 360 is much cheaper.

i don't have an issue with power, both machines have displayed jaw-dropping graphics and sounds with their current roster of games. what?! did i just hear roster of games? this is where it all boils down to, what games does each system have to offer the millions of eyeball hungry gamers out there? here is what i found out.

the ps3 (which i would really like to get) does not have a killer app. none. zilch. nada. at least not at the moment. the xbox 360 does have a killer app in the form of halo 3 which really made gaming history according to numerous review sites. my problem is, i don't particularly like first person shooters (which the halo series actually is). first person shooters make me dizzy for the lenght of time that i play them until about an hour after. on the xbox it has always been halo this and halo that. i'm more of an rpg, adventure, survival horror, and action gamer. i also noticed that a lot of the xbox 360's line up consists of games that you would find on the pc platform like elder scrolls, command and conquer, not to mention a horde of, you guessed it - first person shooters! based on these, the xbox does not sound that appealing to me.

the ps3 however, promises a lot of upcoming games along the genres that i like. titles like devil may cry 4, silent hill 5 and final fantasy XIII are really going to make this a clear choice for me. however, these titles have not been released yet. and my biggest questions cometh: is it possible to modify the ps3? are there modified ps3 blu-ray games that are out? if the answer is "no" on both questions, the ps3 would be useless to me. what a bummer! this would be enough to drive me to buy an xbox 360 instead. but what if, after i buy an xbox 360, a modded ps3 shows up with matching blu-ray games to go with it? that would be really, really painful.. choices, choices, choices..