Obviously, I’ve been away for a while during the Chinese New Year holidays. My wife and I spent three days in Penang with my parents. This was mostly to make my mother happy because she grew up on the island and wanted to see the familiar places and sights from her childhood again. This made this more of a trip out of duty rather than pleasure for my wife and myself, but it was an okay experience overall.
My parents were particularly pleased with the Penang food though personally I could have gone without the ridiculous crowds and extremely poor service. Other than that, we did the usual rounds of meeting friends and family while in Kuala Lumpur. The only interesting thing that I did was installing a new ATI 4670 graphics card for my nieces’ gaming computer. We’re back in Kota Kinabalu now and happy to be reunited with our dog Spidey. We’d left her at a boarding school and she’s lost some weight and has shed quite a lot of fur while we were gone. I think it was more out of being miserable at being left alone than because she was treated badly, but she’s delighted to go back to our normal everyday routines now.
Considering the number of posts I’ve written about Fallout 3 already, an official “review” of it wouldn’t be appropriate, so I thought I write a summation of my final thoughts about this game. First up, this is easily the most controversial game of 2008, at least within the gaming community itself. On the one hand, the game has been an undeniable success, selling faster than Bethesda’s previous hit Oblivion and selling more than all of the previous Fallout titles combined. Its review scores are uniformly high across the board, with the PC version in particular being widely recognized as the best across all platforms. This last part is especially impressive given how badly the PC ports of games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Saint’s Row 2 have since turned out.
On the other hand, ever since it was first announced, this game has spawned a small but extremely vocal gang of detractors. Explaining the full history behind all this animosity would take far too long, but the short version is that they call themselves diehard fans of the original Fallout games and are disgusted that Bethesda bought the rights to make this game when, according to their sense of justice, it should have been made by the group behind the original titles. It’s not like there’s no substance to their arguments, but the sheer spittle-spewing vitriol of their attacks makes them look bad, and not unlike what you may find posted on sites like Free Republic and Hillary is 44 on Barack Obama’s inauguration day.
Someone posted a link to this photoblog on QT3 and I now intend to check it regularly for updates. It’s collects examples of badly used English in situations that make it humorous. Check it out. It’s awesome.
Maybe it’s just me, but I found this article published in the Malay-language newspaper Utusan Malaysia hilarious. To recap, Malaysians are supposed to boycott products and services made by companies linked to either the U.S. or Israel due to what’s been happening in Gaza. This isn’t anything official and the government has said that it’s up to the conscience of each Malaysian whether or not to actually boycott anything.
It should be no surprise that Malaysians have by and large ignored the call to boycott. No surprise to anyone except Utusan Malaysia apparently. You can just hear the petulance in the article’s whining over how Malaysians are apathetic to the plight of the Palestinians and continue to patronize businesses like McDonald’s and KFC. Remember that “This is Sparta!” line from 300. Guess what, Utusan Malaysia, “This is Malaysia!”
Plus, extra points for trying to link this to justifying the existence of the ISA, however tangentially. Your political overlords must be proud of you!
Since I gushed over the first season of Heroes so much, it’s only fair that I take the time to write about how awful it’s become. My wife and I have just caught up with the first half of Season Three and though it isn’t exactly the debacle that Season Two was, it’s nowhere close to the greatness that was Season One. It appears that the main lesson the producers learned from the previous season was never be boring. Things move along at a breakneck pace and there are plenty of action scenes through with hardly any quiet moments at all.
I’ve been wandering around the Capital Wasteland for what feels like ages now, but when I look at the map, it’s obvious that there’s still a lot of unexplored territory left. I’m kind of beginning to feel burnt out on the game though and I think I know why: I feel too powerful. There’s literally nothing that I fear out there anymore. A Vertibird dropping an Enclave patrol? A pack of deathclaws? Sentry robots? Bring them on. Between my pack full of explosives, thousands of rounds of ammunition for my unique plasma rifle, an endless supply of stimpacks to keep me healed up and my companion helping out, it’s only a matter of seconds before all my enemies bite the dust.
It’s not just a question of turning the combat difficulty up a notch either. All that does is increase the health and the damage of your enemies. That kills immersiveness because it’s just silly to see an unprotected human head take so many direct hits without turning into a bloody pulp. No, the real problem is that I’m too rich and have too much stuff now, so the Wasteland no longer feels like a forbidding, fearsome place to me. Where once simply stepping out beyond the relative safety of the walls of Megaton felt like an adventure and spotting the bald green head of a Super Mutant was enough to give me pause and think about my approach, I no longer take any care at all travelling. I’m perfectly happy to barrel straight towards my destination knowing that whatever is in my path can’t possibly be any significant threat to me.
It seems that the President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is on a month-long holiday in Malaysia. According to the news report, his wife has withdrawn about RM330,000.00 for the trip from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the couple owns a home in the country. I wonder where it is. Perhaps one reason why they’re here might be because the travel bans imposed on them by the EU and the USA are still in effect. I guess the Malaysian government doesn’t have a problem with them spending their poor country’s money here.
It’s also worth noting that Mugabe’s wife, Grace Mugabe, has often been a target of criticism for her habit of going on expensive shopping sprees while most Zimbabweans are deprived of even the most basic necessities.
