A Game: Warhammer Battle for Atluma (PSP)

Yep, it’s yet another CCG for the PSP while I’m still waiting for a new gaming rig. This one is based on the War Cry card game by Sabertooth Games that was in turn based on Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy miniatures game. The license means that existing fans of the table-top wargame will find the factions, characters and units in this direct port of the CCG instantly recognizable. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to save it from ultimately being a very mediocre video game.

The CCG mechanics are robust and appropriately enough, borrow significant elements from wargaming. Each player builds two decks. The Army deck holds only characters, troops and weapons while the Action deck holds special strategies and tactics to be played to change the outcome of battles. Each match actually consists of three battles and each battle begins with a muster phase. During this phase every player is assigned a set number of points with which to alternately play cards from his or her Army deck onto the table, drawing a new Army card after each one played until both players have spent all of their resource points.

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A Book: Anansi Boys

“You shouldn’t say that about your father!”

“Well, it’s true. He was crap. A rotten husband and a rotten father.”

“Of course he was!” said Mrs.Higgler, fiercely, “But you can’t judge him like you would judge a man. You got to remember, Fat Charlie, that your father was a god.”

“A god among men?”

“No. Just a god.” She said it without any kind of emphasis, as flatly and as normally as she might have said “he was diabetic” or simply “he was black.”

– Neil Gaiman in Anansi Boys

Anansi Boys may be the sequel to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods but where its predecessor was dour, tragic and epic in scope, this sequel is light-hearted, humorous and family-centered. In place of the hardened ex-convict Shadow of American Gods, the protagonist of Anansi Boys is a regular guy stuck with the unfortunate nickname of Fat Charlie. Not that Charlie is really fat, mind you, just somewhat rounded around the edges. Charlie’s father has a knack for naming things and having the names stick, you see, and as the reader soon learns, that’s just the least of his father’s talents.

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Living in Kota Kinabalu

Well, I’m been offline and out of touch for a lot longer than I anticipated, but I’m back online now. I’m working in Kota Kinabalu and will likely be staying here for a while. KK turns out to be a surprisingly vibrant, yet picturesque little city. As my brother-in-law says, you can get nearly everything that you can find in Kuala Lumpur here, but there are plenty of stuff here that you won’t be able to find in the Klang Valley, such as great beaches, clean air and fantastic scenic views..

The place I’m staying at is near the University Malaysia Sabah campus towards the north. It’s some way off from the city centre, but that’s more than made up for by the mountain views available here and the fact that the newly opened 1 Borneo, the biggest shopping mall in East Malaysia, is within walking distance of where we are. Mount Kinabalu is theoretically within line of sight from here, but it’s always covered in clouds so it’s not actually visible. Even so, the sight of the mountain covering the whole horizon is mighty impressive, especially so when the sun shines directly on it.

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Prince Caspian and the Fickleness of Deities

My wife’s first reaction as we walked out the cinema after watching Prince Caspian was “Aslan is such an asshole.” Indeed he is, and in the same way, so is the personage after whom Aslan was clearly modelled, Jesus Christ and the Christian God.

This second installment of the Narnia series based on the novels by C.S. Lewis has been marketed as a harmless, big budget, family-friendly, action adventure fantasy flick. So harmless and family-friendly that no blood whatsoever is shown on screen even as Gentle Queen Susan perforates countless enemies with her arrows and Magnificent King Peter hacks and bashes his way through the Conquistador-like opposition. But I can’t help but wonder how many of my fellow Malaysians who sat with me in the same cinema were aware of the Christian agenda behind the novels and the films it has inspired. In a country so paranoid about religious sensibilities that The Passion of the Christ was banned in cinemas and the word Allah was, initially anyway, forbidden to be used by a local Christian newspaper to describe the Christian God, it’s a wonder that Prince Caspian is being shown on Malaysian cinemas with an “Umum” rating.

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A Game: Marvel Trading Card Game (PSP)

My Magic: The Gathering playing days are long gone and even if I do sometimes cast a nostalgic eye on an exciting new release like the recent Shadowmoor, I know in my heart of hearts that I will never again have the patience and freedom to buy entire boxes of boosters for the thrill of opening them one by one, build up networks of friends to trade cards and play games with and spend countless hours fine-tuning decks and analyzing strategies. So when I bought my PSP, it was with the knowledge that there are a number of well-received collectible card games available on the platform, and the Marvel Trading Card Game was at the top of the list to try out.

The Marvel TCG is a direct adaptation of the card based equivalent that uses Upper Deck’s Versus system. I’ve heard of this system but I’ve never actually learned to play it before this, so I had to go through the included tutorials not just to learn the interface but to understand how the system works as well. The tutorials do a decent job of teaching the fundamentals, but it’s likely that the average player will still need to actually jump into a game proper and learn about the quirks and subtleties of the system by playing the game and observing the available options.

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Visiting Singapore

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I haven’t been able to update my blog or even do much of anything connected with the online world since I’ve been in Singapore for a job interview for the past few days. The job thing didn’t turn out so well, though I’m still holding out some hope that I might get some freelance from these folks Still, since my wife and I had planned on it being a short sightseeing trip as well, at least it didn’t turn out to be a complete waste of time. As always, whenever I visit Singapore, the most striking thing is how orderly everything is. For example, even pedestrian footpaths closed for construction have signs saying, “Footpath closed. Please do not walk on the road. Use the footpath on the opposite side of the road instead.” It’s as if every little thing in Singapore, no matter how small or insignificant, is filed in a huge database somewhere and assigned under the responsibility of a specific bureaucrat. It’s an amazingly efficient way to run things, but in a way, it’s also a bit scary as well.

On the other hand, because we stayed in a dingy hotel in Geyland to save money, we got to see the seamier side of Singapore as well. I’ve known about Geylang’s less than savoury reputation of course, who doesn’t, and I even warned my wife about it and told her that we could pick a more expensive hotel if it bothers her to stay in a red light district. All the same, I was surprised, after having checked in to the hotel and going out in the evening for dinner, to see dozens of scantily clad prostitutes lining the road right in front of our hotel. I expected something, but not that many of them wearing so little clothes standing so brazenly out in the open.

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A Film: The 11th Hour

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Courtesy of my friend Kien Boon of Boonuhkau, I had the opportunity of watching The 11th Hour at the KL Pac in Sentul on Sunday. It was my first visit to the KL Pac or even anywhere inside the new Sentul development zone and I have to admit that they did a great job in making the area look like an oasis of serenity in the middle of busy and dirty Kuala Lumpur. The price to pay of course is the prominent advertising everywhere on behalf of YTL Corporation, including brightly illuminated banners on both sides of the stage that remained lighted throughout the film and that we felt detracted from the experience of watching it. Nevertheless, it’s heartening to see a new addition to the cultural scene in Malaysia and my wife and I will be paying attention to what performances are going on there from time to time.

The film itself is a slickly produced documentary on environmentalism, focusing on global warming, that was apparently a personal project of Leonardo DiCaprio. As a long time skeptic on environmentalism, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I strongly disliked the film. Not only is it an example of hysterical scare-mongering of the worst sort, it ends up being inconsistent in its message and ultimately contributes nothing new to the subject. Worst of all, it preaches straight to the choir of the green movement, shying away from perspectives and solutions that could be beneficial but are controversial and unpopular among green groups.

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The unexamined life is a life not worth living