Starcraft II without LAN!

I don't know if this is a bad news for the fans, but It certainly is a bad news for some, i'm probably one of them

Before online gaming exist, there was LAN (Local Area Network) gaming, where every computer that's on the same network can play the game with each other without the internet. Widely preferable in cyber cafe or at home with multi computer and laptops.

And then internet gaming appear, i agree that it's far more convenient because of the fact that you don't need to go to a cyber cafe or have mutiple computers at home to enjoy multiplayer games.

Seems like the next upcoming blockbuster game will NOT include LAN capabilities base on Blizzard's game-designer Rob Pardo. Yes Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty won't be able to do multiplayer with LAN, online online using Battle.net. According to him, LAN wasn't famous anymore in the 90's, huh? Starcraft in Korea was made famous with LAN! and LAN is certainly not dead yet. What's the big deal if you include a simple LAN capability for the product you sell? Is it hard? The word LAN Party are widely used I think he got it all wrong, it seems he only plays game alone at home through the internet all the time, don't compare internet multiplayer and LAN multiplayer, they are different, so now anyone who wanted to play the game also needs an internet connection eh? I'm sure everyone has internet now, but what's the big deal if you include LAN anyway, this is probably due to pirates. Look at Demigod, they can even sell the game with LAN capability. This is just wrong..

Now Blizzard has made a big mistake, what's next, all Starcraft II series will have no LAN and worse yet Diablo III with no LAN, great...just great..very nice, everyone on the same network still have to connect to the internet and servers to play, doin unnecessary bit transfers, server down, internet down? No game? I like to rely on my network and my PC for multiplayer fun, I have bad experience with online gaming anyway, everyone's been complaining how laggy the experience was, not everyone has good internet connection and with 1 bad apple in the group, everyone will not enjoy the experience, further more I like playin' with my peers than someone else.

I wonder how many will pirate this game.

If it helps, please sign the petition regarding this stupid move at:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/LANSC2/ Read more »

R.I.P The King of Pop..

Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

Michael Jackson one of musics' popular icon past away last night due to cardiac arrest, he was 50.

One of my childhood favorites, the king of pop is known throughout the world. Some may know him since the Jackson 5 days when he was still a kid, some may know him since Thriller, everyone knows him as an icon of many generations.

I still remember the first I bought his music in a form of a cassette at the local street market, I didn't know that Thriller was one of the best at that time but I did know I want that cassette because of his other single "Bad". I remember watchin the mini series about his life as a child with his brothers as Jackson 5, it was one of the greatest journey of a musician. I remember listening to "Liberian Girl" with my childhood neighbor. Doin' the moonwalk at school, spinning like him, imitating him..Billie Jean, the song he performed alone on stage live at Motown is one of the most memorable for me.

Thinkin back now, his great music, his one of a kind dance moves that everyone seems to try doin'. I'm gonna miss all that tremendously. I still till today imitate the legend from time to time, he will be remembered as one of my generations' king of music. A flashback of all his music started playin' in my head..

No doubt we lost one of the greatest superstars in music history..

Rest in Peace Michael..

Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

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Windows 7 will dominate?

So what's all this Windows 7 hype? Will the next OS be better than Windows Vista, I would agree Windows Vista did scare a few loyal Microsoft fans away to Apple, or just stick to Windows XP, so rumor has it that the life of Windows XP will end in the year 2011, so where will they go next? I'm sure Vista is not an option, maybe they will up using a Mac, I think the success of Windows 7 is very important to Microsoft. So what do they have up their sleeve?

I never get a chance to download and try it out when it was available for download, another great move for users to try it out and install on a wide variety of system, so when problem arise, Microsoft knows and will fix it, so far it's been all good.

Here's how the startup looks like in the Beta and RC version, look like Vista

One of the big difference is the quick launch, pointing at it will give you a preview.

There's a lot of new features which I didn't get in, but what is it so different from Vista? Back in the day of Windows 98 moving to Windows XP, a system upgrade is necessary, and from Windows Xp to Windows Vista another system upgrade is recommended, I would say a 2GB RAm would be ample to experience Windows Aero and such, so do you need an upgrade for Windows 7? That would suck now would it?

People were sayin that Windows 7 works very well on netbooks, a smaller version of a notebook, it probably won't mean much, it's a modern device anyway but not as powerful as a notebook, some people have been reviewing and testing Windows 7 to see how fast it works on some application and games, which all seems good so far with the next generation of DirectX; DirectX 11, of course you don't require to upgrade your graphics card, DirectX 9 and 10 and 10.1 will still work with it, thank god.

But I believe testing how slow it can go is also has a strong point, what I meant is can a slower system run Windows 7, since it can run on a netbook, I guess people is curious to find out. And it's true, some people get it to run on a Pentium II system with 96MB-128MB RAM, that's right.

Here's the screen for a user running it on his Pentium II 96MB system

Here's the screen for a user running it on his Pentium II 128MB system

So if you have Pentium II with 128MB RAM, you can't even run Windows XP let alone Windows Vista, but you can run Windows 7? now that's one strong point, Microsoft did a good job in this area. Now everyone can use Windows 7 without upgrading their system like Windows Vista required. Read more »

Movie timeline tells a story

Click for larger version

There's a lot of futuristic movie out there and most of them mentions the year of the event, but it doesn't matter that much, what matters is it's in the future, that's all we know and important perhaps, but have you ever keep track of the year? How realistic you think it is? For instance the movie Back to the Future 2 is set at year 2015. You think we're 6 years behind hover boards and flying cars? Hmm guess not..

But here's an interestin' find, someone manage to create a list of futuristic movies and arrange them in order, for me, lookin at it I get a sense of how our future will go ahead ;) We are gonna be ruled by apes then our world will look like a scene from Dune with mutated giant earth worms, great....just...great
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Linkin Park - New Divide [Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Soundtrack]

Here's a look at the latest single by Linkin Park, the song New Divide is for the upcoming blockbuster movie Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen, if you haven't seen it in a better quality (I recon), you may see some small unseen footage for the movie, or just wait till next week and watch the movie anyway :) here it is.

Linkin Park - New Divide

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Will Microsoft *BING* Google?

As you all should know by now, Google is the king when it comes to search, some may argue it's not useful and some worships her, but the fact is, it's the most widely used search service in the world.

A lot has tried to compete with it but deep down inside, they know it's not easy, people is so use to Google that anythin else will just slip their minds, sounds like Google has manage to embed da G in our thoughts, I think it's just a habit thing.

Compare to Yahoo, Microsoft atleast were tryin to do right with it's search engine, and tried they did, with names, from Live searches, to Kumo, all just doesn't seem to keep customers to stick with it. The latest of their efforts is call Bing, I believe it doesn't meant to mean anything, my guess it's the sound *bing*, you know....the sound when someone has an idea and a light bulb appears on top of their head..

Here we use Linkin Park as our search term, looks quite similar to Google. On the left column, there's some suggestions.

On the right side of all results there's a small orange circle which when you point at it, will give you a preview text of the site before you decide to go there.

One notable difference is the video results, if you click on the video results, a few suggested videos will appear, somethin' similar with Google, but this one actually plays if you point at it.

Bing has it's own page on Images, Videos, etc just like Google, here's the Image section, just like Google you can choose what results to show, over here we select wide version of any image.

And here we will get a poster like size if we select tall. Many of other things to try out like color and resolution too.

Again one of the unique features of Bing is the Video results, as seem here in the video section, all results can be previewed by pointing your mouse at it, it sounds like it's gonna be heaven for underage kids and porn, since you don't actually have to click to view anything, no trace can be found too I believe ;). Left side you see some options similar to Google, but I kinda like this better, it's cleaner.

It's actually not bad coming from Microsoft, there's not much comparison done by my, whichever is better is searches, Google will still be the first people go to, it's in our blood, Bing's front page is also more pleasant, with some pretty random picture everytime. And it looks like Microsoft is also planning to integrate all Windows Live account in it's searches, just like iGoogle, it's a start, but hard.

Another note is, each country has it's own preference set, I found that my country doesn't have some buttons which USA has, so it's better to set to USA to see full feature, hey if you wanna compete with Google, everyone should experience the full feature of the engine..

I just noticed if you switch to have US's main Bing page, the images might include some boxes around if you point around, and pointing at the small boxes will show information about it, hmm interesting indeed..go ahead and give *bing* a try.

On a final note, it's common people say they've googled somethin or someone, but to say you bing someone sounds like you did somethin naughty HAH, it's still on BETA btw...try it you may like it.
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E3 wraps up

E3 come to a close, here's a lowdown of what's coming in the game industry, of course the ones that i'm interested in. Here's some preview

Left 4 Dead 2 (PC)

God of War III (PS3)

Lost Planet 2 (PC?)

Final Fantasy XIII (Xbox360, PS3, PC?)

Final Fantasy XIV Online (PS3, PC)

Splinter Cell: Conviction (Xbox360, PC)

Metal Gear Solid: Rising (Xbox360)

Assassins Creed 2 (Xbox360, PS3, PC)

Modern Warfare 2

Crysis 2

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Left 4 Dead 2 coming soon!

Just as I thought, the sequel to the widely played game Left 4 Dead. Hmm let's see if my wish list is fulfill, base on the teaser that you're about to see, yea there's gonna be some new shit goin on, oh yea please include more characters, better yet, let us customize our own character, now thats' kick ass. Of course another is what everyone at least complained about before, WE NEED MORE WEAPONS!, seems like they are listenin', good job.

I had fun with the first one and i'm sure the sequel is gonna be the same, even better I hope. Lets just wait till we can actually get our hands on it NOVEMBER this year, check out the teaser



Here's the announcement

Left 4 Dead 2 is the sequel to the best-selling and critically-acclaimed co-operative multiplayer smash from Valve, creators of the Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike game properties. Left 4 Dead 2 promises to become one of 2009's top-selling games and set a new benchmark for co-operative action games.

The title adds melee combat to the award-winning L4D style of play, with items such as a chainsaw, frying pan, axe, baseball bat, and more.

Introducing the AI Director 2.0, L4D's dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played.

Finally, with new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original with more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, maps for Survival mode at launch, and more.

Supported by a $10+ million marketing campaign, Left 4 Dead has sold over 2.5 million retail copies since it was released in November of 2008. Left 4 Dead 2 is targeted for release on Xbox 360 and the PC this November, and will be launched worldwide with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign across TV, Outdoor and Online.

Setting:
Left 4 Dead 2 is set at roughly the same time as the original – just after the outbreak that turned most of the population into various zombie mutants. Players assume the role of 4 new “Survivors,” each with their own personality and new dialog. The game leads these “Survivors” through the southeastern region of the US - from Savannah, Georgia thru the bayou country, and climaxing in New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Product Features:

* Next generation co-op action gaming from the makers of Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike.
* AI Director 2.0: Advanced technology dubbed “The AI Director” drove L4D’s unique gameplay – customizing enemy population, effects, and music, based upon the players’ performance. L4D 2 features “The AI Director 2.0” which expands the Director’s ability to customize level layout, world objects, weather, and lighting to reflect different times of day.
* New melee weapons – axe, chainsaw, frying pan, baseball bat – allow you to get up close with the zombies
* Four different survivors. New Story. New dialogue.
* More game. On day one, L4D 2 features more co-operative campaigns, more campaigns and maps for the Versus game modes than L4D 1, plus support for Survival mode out of the box.
* Stats, rankings, and awards system drives collaborative play

Left 4 Dead 2 is coming to the Xbox 360 and PC on Novemeber 17, 2009.

They also release a possible campaign poster, looks like it's gonna be 4 new slayers, hmm I wonder if I would miss the previous 4, or maybe i'm sick of them already, like I said, we need option for cutomize characters and more characters hehehe, I don't care if the customized characters won't appear on the campaign poster, as long as people see me in the game, i'm cool.

Click for larger version

And here a preview of it in action, Click for larger version

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