Games

Region-locked saved game woes

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Look what I received last week! Despite my earlier comments about Freedom Unite only adding minimal stuff to the existing Freedom 2, I ended up buying it anyway. It’s my first purchase from Youbeli.com after its merger with Pcgame.com.my too. Oddly enough I thought that the purchase had failed when I was led to an error screen after inputting my credit card information but someone called me the next day to confirm the details.

Of course I bought Freedom Unite only because I knew that it had a saved game transfer function so you could bring over your existing character from Freedom 1 or Freedom 2 with all of his or her gear intact. Except when I tried to actually do it, it didn’t work. After a bit of investigation, I found that this was because the copy of Freedom 2 I’d been playing is an EU-region version while the copy of Freedom Unite I’d just bought in Malaysia turns out to be a US-region version. While the PSP itself happily acknowledges that there’s a Freedom 2 saved game file on it, Freedom Unite simply won’t recognize the file as a valid saved game to import from.

This means that I’ll have to restart my Monster Hunter career basically from scratch. This actually sounds more daunting that it really is. Even though I’d put more than 30 hours in Freedom 2 I’d only ever worked up to the Elder 3 quests. Now that I’ve developed the skills necessary, I’ve managed to reach the Elder 2 quests in just a couple of days of playing. Plus, this gives me a chance to diversify away from the noob-friendly longsword to the formidable but incredibly unwieldy greatsword.

The biggest visible change, apart from some very handy tools to make inventory handling easier, is the addition of the felyne comrades. So far, my pet cat doesn’t seem to very good at actually fighting (he can’t even kill a vespoid mosquito by himself!) but he’s proving to be a very handy distraction for the monsters. Still, it seems that I need to be careful whenever he decides to toss bombs arounds because that thing can hurt even me when it lands too close! More updates as I get further into Freedom Unite.

Games

Total War in space!

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Sword of the Stars is a game that was first released way back in 2006. Despite its promising premise and a design that initially appealed to me, I held back from buying it due to the poor reviews it received. Then there was the matter of the minor controversy it generated on QT3. One of the game’s designers had the unfortunate tendency to take criticisms against the game rather poorly and had a habit of getting into flame wars with potential customers.

But it was when the designer decided to pick a fight with QT3 owner Tom Chick that the consensus on the forum turned against it. Tom Chick, a freelance game reviewer, had delivered a less than flattering review of the game. The designer responded by accusing Chick of being biased since he was involved in writing the manual for Galactic Civilizations 2, which can be seen as a direct competitor to Sword of the Stars. You can still read Chick’s reply to that accusation here.

Continue reading Total War in space! →

Philosophy

When suicide is the right choice

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This Foreign Policy blog post chose to highlight the cost of assisted suicide in Switzerland, but what struck me most about this news item was really how dignified the couple’s choice was and indeed how touching. The wife was aged 74 and suffering from terminal cancer with only weeks left to live. The husband was aged 85, going blind and deaf (which must have been especially painful given that he was a prominent conductor) and simply did not want to live without her, after having been together for 54 years.

This isn’t terribly surprising coming from someone like me, but I most definitely would want this option to be available to me. I can imagine few other cases that would serve as a better example than this one of why choosing to take one’s own life can sometimes be just the right one.

Fun, Personal Life

I have 42 million Ringgit

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Or so Public Mutual tells me anyway. I received my Quarter Account Statement for the period ending 30th June 2009 on Saturday as you can see from the picture above (edited slightly to remove some personal information). Most of the report looks okay (actually more than okay due to the gains the markets have made in the last quarter). Then my eye wanders down to the Asset Allocation area of the statement and my eyes pop out.

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Yep, it claims that I have a whopping RM42,385,804.10 in fixed income funds with Public Mutual. Naturally, as much as my wife would prefer otherwise, it’s a mistake as I’m worth nowhere near as much. After asking around on LYN, it seems this is a common error in this quarter’s statement. Everyone seems to have an incorrect entry in the Fixed Income portion but the actual amount varies from person to person. It does make me a bit uneasy that my mutual fund company would be making mistakes like this.

Incidentally, my blog hosting company Bluehost.com had some connection problems for the past two days, which explains why this post is late. Very annoying.

Fun

U.S. healthcare chart

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This chart is the funniest thing I’ve seen so far this week. You can view the full version of it here. To be fair, it’s just something the Republicans cooked up to mock the Democrats’ plans to reform healthcare in the U.S., so it’s meant to be frighteningly complex and byzantine. Even so, it’s clear that the health care system is a huge mess that I wouldn’t want to be tangled in. I’m a libertarian, but healthcare is one of those things that I think government should provide, at least at a basic level, and for this at least, I’m glad that we have, if not exactly good, at least fairly decent public hospitals here in Malaysia.

Games

Monster Hunter is awesome

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I have a confession to make. Until now, I’ve generally detested Japanese games.

I suppose it doesn’t help their case that the Japanese games that are most likely to appeal to me, such as Dead Rising, Shadow of the Colossus or Demon’s Souls, never get ported to the PC which is my preferred platform. Still, the fact remains that many aspects of Japanese games turn me off: cutesy anime art, ridiculous hair styles, emo characters, overwrought and melodramatic plots, grindy gameplay. What’s more, the big name Japanese titles, such as Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid, tend to be the worst offenders. That they’re widely held up as the most famous icons of gaming culture constantly infuriates me to no end.

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Films & Television

Transformers is not a good film

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No, I haven’t watched the second one and I have no plans to give Michael Bay any of my money. However, I can’t ignore the huge media phenenomenon it’s become so my wife and I decided to rewatch the first film over the weekend. Another reason was that she had fallen asleep while trying to watch it when it first came out. As it turned out, she fell asleep this time too, so we started watching it on Saturday night and finished it on Sunday morning.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t like it the second time around either. In fact, seeing it again just put me in a position to run a constant commentary on how stupid the things in it are. Did Michael Bay really think it would be funny to have giant robots trying to hide in a backyard? How is it supposed to be a good action movie if we can’t tell who’s fighting who most of the time? Why would that generic U.S. soldier who misses home and family help out Sam when they don’t know each other? Does it make sense that the U.S. military’s best plan to hide the cube is in the middle of a metropolis with its millions of civilians?  And, as That Movie Blogger Fella put it, why are they trying to have Sam escape on a helicopter when Megatron transforms into a plane?

Continue reading Transformers is not a good film →

The unexamined life is a life not worth living