Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. This springs to mind at first instance because it does actually keep a count of how many people you have murdered during your adventures. At the moment of writing, I have slaughtered 949 people, 358 animals and 12 bunnies. 880 of those were sneak attacks, I’m not about to let you know you are about to die am I?

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The tough silent type, Adam Jensen is the best there is in the killing department. Security bots can be a pain to take down but all those poor Spec Ops soldiers stood no chance against a snipe or Typhoon ordnance in the face.

Shogun 2: Total War and Civilization V. I bundled these two together because to be perfectly honest the kill count here is in the thousands and if you are a warlord like me then reaching the millions. Entire clans and civilisations got wiped off the face of the Earth; I did not like those Christian heretics on our sacred lands so they were first on my list. And no Happy New Years for Gandhi either, I dropped a nuke on Delhi.

Borderlands. Skaag down! At one point there were so many Skaags and other alien life forms that I actually ran out of ammunition, on all of the guns I was carrying.  And believe me when I say I was carrying enough ammunition to destroy the population of Slough. If you are a Brit, you will understand why I chose this town in my example.

Resident Evil 5. Those blasted Lickers, good grief. You would think multiple shogun wounds to the cranium would do the trick but oh nooooo they just keep coming. Dagger fights against such things can be a bit, life threatening.

StarCraft 2. For the Swarm, everyone must die. Kerrigan doesn’t let anybody live, that would just be very unswarm like. Protoss Zealots for dinner or maybe Terran stew?

Left4Dead 2. Zombies, more zombies and yes you guessed it more zombies. I particularly hate Tanks and Chargers. For the ultimate killing spree, I suggest the Helms Deep map in Survival mode. As you approach the halfway mark, it gets ridiculous. Screams of “WHERE THE HELL IS GANDALF” happens very frequently.

Mass Effect 1 and 2. For the past two weeks, I have been going through these back to back. I would say the Husks are definitely the ones I loved killing; insanely annoying at critical moments. Upon reflection, I saved the galaxy from the Reapers but the number of people I had to kill to get there was borderline genocide. I also shot some civilians as well, such as that scientist I forgot the name. Kill and move on.

And finally…

Portal 2. I add this because I killed myself on many occasions. Too much testing is bad for one’s health. But there is always cake.

P.S: Can I just say that the only reason the Mayan calendar stops towards the end of 2012 is not that they predicted the end of world. It is most likely they either ran out of room in their calendar and couldn’t be bothered to chisel another stone tablet, or the guy responsible for compiling the calendar was too lazy to keep going and went to make a cup of tea.

Muse Limited Edition 180 gram vinyl – The Resistance. Muse is without a doubt one of my favourite bands, if not the favourite band. Why have vinyls these days, what with the digital age securely upon us? Well, vinyls has a special charm and nostalgic feel that even if you don’t listen to it, this LP is great to have for a Muse fan. We have a Technics SL-1200MK5 record player at home; my significant other used to be a DJ during his younger years and he still has an affinity for this music format. To paraphrase from his words “This is how music is meant to be heard, the natural sounds including the imperfections”. Admittedly, it does sound excellent and includes all the lyrics from the album.

Stone Pestle and Mortar. This is a perfect accompaniment for any kitchen and I will be using this for all manner of Chinese cooking. This is good for things such as making Black Bean sauce; Black Bean can come preserved that will need grinding down before making the sauce. It is one of my favourite dishes and this ancient yet effective device will do just the trick.

Jacob’s Creek Shiraz Rose with Lindor Truffle and wine glass. A nice little gift and more alcohol, I won’t be saying no to that.

Yashakiden novel series. I love Hideyuki Kikuchi; his famous writings include the awesome Vampire Hunter D which also turned into an anime series. The master of vampire story telling with strong influences from Hammer Horror movies and actors such as Peter Cushing, the horrific machinations of these bloodthirsty beings are brought to life on every page.

Hello Kitty – I love Nerds lunch box. I love this so much I want to take it with me everywhere; this was a present from @girlygeekdom and she sure knows what kind of things I like. I shall be taking this into work with my packed lunch, but perhaps I shall keep it out of view during those important and serious business meetings.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet. I wanted an Android based tablet and a smaller form factor than the iPad, and my wish came true. This is a very nifty device and I love how it holds in my hands, perfect for manga reading. Suffice it to say, it has not left my side since I got my mitts on it and I have installed Fruit Ninja so there goes another two hours of fruity abuse. The book type cover I got with it fits snugly around and does not add too much dimension or weight to the device. The only drawback is that you cannot close the lid when it is on charge since the cable is in the way, but this is a small gripe. The screen is lovely too and the UI seems fairly responsive what with Dual Core NVidia Tegra 2 processors inside.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 – Classroom In A Book. I recently bought Lightroom 3 during the Black Friday sales on Amazon and this book will hopefully help me unlock the power within. A photographer’s first aid kit, this piece of software is very powerful and will make your life a lot easier. I have always liked the Adobe books and each section is arranged so that it is easy to follow.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White. This book has been revered by many in writing circles to be a definitive guide on brushing up on your writing skills. Everyone has their own style, but this book will aid you in refining the structure and composition of your written pieces. I wanted to write more and hope that this path will lead me to some exciting projects in the coming year, and this little book is a nice reference to flick through.

And finally…

Steam Sales! The festive holidays would not be complete without the obligatory Steam Sales for the gamer inside us all. It is the perfect way to send a gift electronically and there are plenty of bargains to be had every day throughout the past week. Big hitter games can be picked up for a mere £1.50 and you can get many more for less than a fiver.

Doom Bar 5L Beer Keg. I pre-ordered this straight from Sharps brewery and it arrived a few days ago. All 5 litres must be consumed in five days upon receipt and I have been struggling to make it last that long. Having beer of this quality on tap at home is too… convenient. It has been very merry that’s for sure! And with that I bid adieu, I need to exercise my right arm to pull another pint for myself. Merry Winter Solstice!

The main thing is that the gift portrait that came with the BlizzCon pass is now active and available to select on the rewards page, the PanTerran Marine, paying homage to the new Panda class in Mists of Pandaria for World of Warcraft. All I need now is a matching bamboo stim pack upgrade and we will be ready to go.

A full list of patch notes are given here:

Anaheim Convention Center

If there’s one thing that Americans do best (apart from massive food portions which I love) it would be hosting conventions. To say The Anaheim Convention Center was big is an understatement. After conquering the jetlag and collecting our pass and swag bag the night before, we started day one of BlizzCon. Where to begin! You are greeted with three huge sections representing the three Blizzard games being showcased; World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3. Each section had hundreds of PCs with the latest expansion packs installed for you to try, with Diablo 3 being a hands-on beta version. Not only that, but you also got to play on some rather nice hardware, such as the Razer headset, keyboard and mouse set for StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 gear as well from SteelSeries. There were many other sections as well for competitions; World of Warcraft PvE matches and the highly anticipated GSL finals for StarCraft 2, where players from South Korea flew all the way to Los Angeles to participate. If you weren’t into any of that, there is plenty to do such as the artists stage where real art was being drawn and auctioned off on the day, and many upon many talks about game lore or developer discussions on game mechanics.

The amount of thought and effort that went to the event was simply amazing, with everything looking fantastic. I particularly loved the giant statues that were dotted around the convention center. My favourites were the rather menacing but seductive Kerrigan from StarCraft 2 and the mighty Tyrael from Diablo 3. StarCraft 2 dominated day one for us, with many matches being played out by some of the very top eSports players.

Starcraft 2 GSL and BlizzCon Invitational Finals

The Global Star League, or better known as GSL, is the most famous StarCraft 2 league in the world. Normally held in South Korea, the GSL finals were for the first time coming over to Stateside and to BlizzCon along with our favourite commentators such as Day 9 and Tasteless. It was just by sheer luck that the one time I wanted to go to BlizzCon was the year the GSL was happening there. Also on the cards was the BlizzCon Invitationals, whereby some of the very top players were invited to play to be the BlizzCon champion. The players that stood out for me include GamaniaSen as Zerg, a great guy and he even signed my StarCraft 2 game, with Dignitas.Select as Terran. But there are three players in particular that had the audience screaming and gasping at every turn as the night unfolded. For the GSL finals, it was IMMVP as Terran (or MVP for short) vs SlayerSMMA also as Terran (also known as MMA). Looking at the match statistics for both, MVP comes out on top by a mile and based on this I thought he would win. But MMA caused a massive upset for the favourite, with the last game going down to the wire and MMA coming out on top to take the GSL crown.

The last game was… ridiculously insane. The amount of Ghosts/nukes deployed was too many to count, the shouts of OH MY GOD and NOOOOO!! from the crowd created such a cacophony that even the WoW players had to stop and look. MMA played a superb game and his last play was mind blowingly good. He was basically playing how MVP SHOULD have played, but didn’t. A great win thoroughly deserved, edge of the seat stuff.

The second final was the BlizzCon Invitationals involving IMMVP again vs NesTea as Zerg. NesTea is the King of Zerg; the best Zerg player in the world by far. His macro skills are inhuman and the same can be said for his micro. MVP on the other hand wants to redeem himself from the GSL upset and again be recognised as the best Terran player. If you think the GSL finals was amazing, then this match up was unbelievable. More so in terms of NesTea’s tactics; at one point he had over 100 Banelings at his disposal with a double digit count for Broodlords. Again, the last game went right down the wire with neither player wanting to commit to the final assault. The key things that slowly swung the tide was a) MVP doing mass medic marine drops into NesTea’s bases which caused a lot of harassment and track back, b) the ridiculous amount of Ghosts and nukes produced by MVP wiping out NesTea’s crazy Hive base count and c) NesTea’s indecisiveness at certain times and mistakes such as Nydus tunnel placement.

To be fair to NesTea, it was an impossible situation to be in; both players had so much arsenal that if they were destroyed in one rash move then it would take too long to reproduce again. Having said that, he had more income than MVP by a factor of a hundred so he would have had the upper hand in that respect. Either way, NesTea committed his Zerg Baneling deathball and then his Broodlords were crushed by MVP’s defences. Tactically, MVP played a superb game and had the right mix of units at the right time. The Broodlords from NesTea were a mistake without being accompanied by other units and the lack of scouting meant he could not see the Ghosts early on. But Ghosts against Hive tech is just not balanced at all in my opinion but you cannot take anything away from MVP as the winner. If he played like that in the GSL finals it may have been a different story.

I have some videos I need to edit from the GSL finals so I will upload that shortly. Suffice it to say, it was awesome to be there.

I heart Heart Of The Swarm

The new upcoming StarCraft 2 expansion, henceforth known as HOTS, was exciting to play. New units for all three factions and additional abilities for some units. The most notable for Terran players is The Shredder; an AOE unit (Area of Effect) for mass radiation damage within a certain radius  But personally I feel the key units here are with the Zerg and Protoss. The Zerg have the Viper which has an Abduct ability to drag enemy units into harm or friendlies to safety. I have seen this in action and it can drag a Collossus, even with the sheer size of the latter. I am assuming that it can also drag a Siege Tank even in Siege mode ala Phoenix for Protoss. Coupled with the Swarm Host which can produce an instant swarm of units and it can be an interesting mix. Burrowed Ultralisks is also a welcomed plus, I for one am looking forward to this.

This leads me onto Protoss. They have more flying units now but the one that rings alarm bells is The Oracle. It can halt mining production, unit production and spy enemy buildings to see what tech is currently being researched. Basically, it will know everything in advance and stop your macro and economy in the process. A very dangerous unit in my opinion and one to watch out for in multiplayer games. Mark my words, it’s going to be a pain in the ass unless you have ample air defence.

The HOTS campaign itself will take place after Wings of Liberty and reveal the true nature of Kerrigan after the events in WoL. As a Zerg player, I am dying to see this plot play out. Additionally for fan boys everywhere, Nova will play a part in the proceedings as she is ordered to hunt down Kerrigan. What will Jimmy do? Can he truly love a Zerg Queen? Or will he be eaten by Banelings in his sleep!?! All will be revealed with this instalment which has no release date, hurry up Blizzard.

Day two was Diablo 3 day

Last but not least, we have Diablo 3. I only had a quick multiplayer game but it was enough to get a real taste of what is in store. I played a Mage class which has some powerful spells, but I feel the cool down time for some of them was a bit long… especially when you are being axed to death constantly. I was using the ice spell a lot to freeze opponents in their place to make my escape. Clothies always were a bit soft for close combat so distance is necessary if you can get said distance. One of the warrior classes have the ability to chain you to bring you closer, so that yes you can get axed to death. Nice.

In terms of story, it’s all about Tyrael and the full plot is a little sketchy at the moment. Blizzard do not want to reveal too much about this are building the anticipation; again there is no release date and “it will be done when it is done”. The waiting is absolutely killing us.

In between playing and watching and listening. I got some great game posters and had them signed by the developers for each and the Battlenet staff. I waited two hours in the queue but it was well worth it. It was all too easy to drop money at BlizzCon but the swag bag contents were pretty good even if you didn’t want to spend. My Mini Tyrael statue sits proudly on my desk.

Closing ceremony

The Foo Fighters did a live concert to close out a a thoroughly enjoyable two days of gaming heaven. If I could go every year I would, but being a Brit it would be a costly exercise. I am just glad that I was able to go at least once to one of the greatest gaming conventions the world has ever seen. As a side note, Diablo 3 will be free to all World of Warcraft annual subscribers (yes I know, what about us StarCraft 2 folk). My BlizzCon 2011 flickr set can be found here.

There were a lot of fans from all over the country to see this performance, and some cosplayers too! Seeing Sephiroth at The Royal Albert Hall was quite strange at first. There were also other fans dressed as SeeD from Final Fantasy VIII amongst other characters. I cannot tell you how excited I was about this concert; I bought the tickets in January this year and they were sold out in weeks. Ten months later the day finally arrives!




It’s all about the music

After an introduction to the composer Nobuo Uematsu and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the night kicks off with Liberi Fatali. Final Fantasy VIII is one of my favourites in the series and hearing it live for the first time was simply amazing. The strong choral sections were performed by London Voices which penetrated every part of the hall. Each instrument and note was heard with crystal clarity even though I was sitting in the Grand Tier section of the hall which is fairly high. When the piece finished, I just knew we were going to be in for something very special indeed.

During each piece, a video montage is displayed on two gigantic screens to give you a full multimedia experience. The great thing was seeing actual game footage being played out which synchronised with the orchestra absolutely perfectly. An example of this was the opening sequence and Bombing Mission song from Final Fantasy VII. You know the one; the camera zooms to Aerith walking out onto the streets of Midgar. The camera zooms out and pans onto the train where your character Cloud starts off and then straight into the bombing mission itself. The graphics back then was thought to be groundbreaking at the time, of course now they look very dated but I lost part of my youth in that game and I never stopped loving it. Seeing it there before me made me want to play it all over again.

Fond memories

If you think VII was dated, we have much older ones. The concert’s aim was to play at least one piece of music from every Final Fantasy game ever made to date. Everyone will know the Prelude song, a solo harp plays with London Voices completing the piece. My favourites from the bygone era include Terra’s Theme from VI and Theme of Love from IV. To be brutally honest, it is very very difficult to pick any favourites at all, I loved each and every one of them. Nobuo Uematsu is a musical genius.

Fast forward to some of the more recent titles, and we have Zanarkand from X; everyone loves Yuna. Some of the theme songs were also performed such as Eyes On Me from VIII and Kiss Me Goodbye from XII. Both were performed so beautifully by singer Susan Calloway, flown all the way from America to perform for us. The open space of the Royal Albert Hall was no match for her voice, and I would not be surprised if it could be heard all the way into Kensington. There was some fun to be had with a Chocobo Medley, which was put together in 2010. The screens displayed some of the best Chocobo highlights from all the games.

Some of the staff at Squeenix also attended the performance; I was two sections away from them!







Wishing it would never end

The entire performance was finished in about two hours including the interval. I could have sat there all night listening but the night drew to a close, with scrolling credits of everyone that made Final Fantasy happen. Many worthy mentions include Uematsu of course and Yoshitaka Amano, who drew many Final Fantasy illustrations for the games and were displayed on the screens for some of the pieces. Of course a big big thank you also goes to Arnie Roth who conducted all the pieces and is the music director for the Distant Worlds concert tour. He apologised for taking so long to get to the UK, but he and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra more than made up for it by bringing us one of the most spectacular concerts I have ever witnessed.

However, the night did not end until the ultimate encore, One-Winged Angel – Sephiroth’s Theme. Oh My God. If you think it sounds amazing at home you have no idea the magnitude of amazingness when you hear this with a live orchestra. A truly fitting way to end. Coupled with the choral London Voices singing in perfect unison, this piece is something else. And yes, I did watch Final Fantasy: Advent Children as soon as I got home.

Mark in your calendar!!

The next Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds concert will be back at the Royal Albert Hall on 17th November 2012. In December of that year, it will be the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy so we can expect a very special performance this time around. Tickets will go live around December this year, visit http://ffdistantworlds.com/ to keep up to date on tour dates. I for one will definitely be there next year, if the world doesn’t go boom that is. If you cannot be there yourself, then I highly recommend the Distant Worlds CD One and CD Two.


“My last night here for you. Same old songs just once more…”

The great thing about Portal 2 is the co-op levels. It truly is a work of genius; not a single level can be completed without your trusted partner in crime and they get devilishly more difficult… especially once you pass the halfway mark. I actually think the co-op is better than the single player part of the game, and we had endless fun with it as we both try to solve more and more complex puzzles. Admittedly, we did get each other killed inadvertently a few times, such is the hazard of testing.

I created a montage video of some of the later co-op levels. I must warn you that it will give away solutions to some of them. Enjoy!

Everyone got an Angry Bird slingshot plushie toy which is very cool, it even squawks loudly as it fires and makes contact. I managed to get one myself as I went to the after party at LeStudio52. A lot of fun to be had there, we had a DJ with Julien from LeStudio52 taking over halfway through. I left the party too late and missed my train home; after some nightmareish wandering around Tottenham Court Road trying to get transport, I managed to head back to the party again to crash there. The night didn’t properly finish till around 4am, we even went out for bagels which stays open 24/7! It ended up being quite a night with some rather interesting dance moves.

I hope there will be another event next year!

P.S: Tequilla is nasty stuff, I can think of better things to consume if you want to get drunk quickly.

Tonight focused on this and also web gaming in general. The one thing that HTML5 relies on is Javascript. Remember the days of C++ and BGE (Borland Graphics Engine)? Well this is what HTML5 reminds me of. HTML5 with Canvas for the graphics, and JS for the backend functionality. I’m all for open source. With the games being demoed tonight, I felt like I had stepped back in time to Commodore 64 days. Having said that, it isn’t such a bad thing. I think HTML5 is definitely a step in the right direction; it opens up opportunities for practically anybody to develop on such an open platform.

Of course Quake was mentioned a few times; if you haven’t played the web version then you must. It is a joy to behold with full graphics running in your humble web browser. That is the future of gaming. Mozilla were quite generous with the booze, I’ve never seen the beer they were serving before but it goes down pretty well! I adorned my bag with FireFox goodness, I couldn’t resist.

Some pictures as always, and it was great to see some regulars. I look forward to my bed when my train takes me home tonight.