Year In Review 2015

Another year has pass a lot of things happen... Here are the highlights of 2015.

Games

Shield : 1
Vita : 17 (↑ 1)
PS2: 3
Wii U: 1
NES: 1
PC: 2 (↔)
Genesis: 4 
PS4: 1 (↓ 1)
PS1: 18
iOS: 3
GC: 1
Wii: 1

Racing : 7 (↑ 3)
Shooter: 3
Platformer: 10 (↑ 6)
Adventure: 2 (↔)
Action: 11 (↑ 7)
RPG: 1
Fighting: 11 (↑ 7)
Music: 3
Puzzle: 1 (↓ 3)
Sport: 1 (↓ 1)
Endless Runner: 3

Game Played : 53 (153) (↑ 27)
Finished Game : 38 (125) (↑ 14)

Steamworld Dig (100 Game Played)
Batman Arkham Knight (100 Game Finished)

Game of the Year

3. Real Racing 3

This was the first game I've played in 2015 and it was the first game I fell in love with. This Android title kept me busy for months. I think I have spend hours upgrading cars, playing the racers and winning tournaments. It helps in the fact that, I just got my new Nvidia Shield. So playing with a controller makes it much more awesome

2. Mario Kart 8

The second racing game that made my list. This was the first game I played when I got my Wii U. I even bought all the DLC ( I rarely buy DLC for anything, let alone anything Nintendo made). Turns out the DCL made the game even more epic. My wish one day is Nintendo will released Mario Kart with all the stages and that will be the last Mario kart ever

1. Batman Arkham Knight

I played this game on PC. This is the only game that I forked out my money on the first day of its released. Even there were numerous reports that the PC version was buggy, I could play it without any issues whatsoever. I refunded that game when WB was giving refunds last month. I'll will probably wait till the game of the year edition to get it again.


Series

Total series I've watch this year have decline. Due to the fact I've played tons more games that I've done before

1058 shows (↓ 198)

Memorable shows

• DCTV Arrow and Flash
• Mr Robot
• Person of Interest S4

Movies

26 movies for the year. Including items that I've watched for this first time.

Movies of the year

3. Mission Impossible Rouge Nation

2. Star Wars The Force Awakens

1. Avengers Age of Ultron

Unrelated = 40 :)  (↓ 6)

Even More Unrelated = 162 :(

NEW STUFF FOR 2015

1. My new ILLGEAR S5 laptop. I use it to play PS2 games... And batman so far

2. A Wii U which is used for one game so far

MEMORABLE MOMENTS FOR 2015

1. Finally got a job in April and I am still loving it.

2. Went to see Russel Peters

3. Got suprise party for my Birthday and threw a couple for others 

4. Made a new friend which I figure in my age would be nearly impossible. The only one who reads this blog.. (He should get a wordpress so he can comment on stuff)

New Years Resolution

1. More games, more movies, more series, more comics

2. Try to lose at least 10kg... Need to start eating right

3. More new blog post about other stuff (there are some stuff in the works)

Happy New Year 2016

Super Smash Bros Brawl

Since I've done the Gamecube version. It's the Wii's turn



Game no: 125
Genre: Fighting
Platform: Wii
What's Good:
- Smash ball (like limit break for each characters)
- Improved graphics (its looks a bit better than the GC version)
- More stages
- More challengers



Gone: Pichu, Mewtwo, Young Link, Roy

Pit: Dual welding, arrow guy.
Meta Knight: Overpowered and people's choice
Pokemon trainer: Charizard is always the best
Ike: Strongest smash power
Snake: Projectile specialist
King Dedede: Hammer of justice

Wolf: Rehash version of Fox with slower move sets

Locario: Pokèmon version of Ryu

Sonic: Damn fast 

Wario: Got a bike to move around

R.O.B: One hit kill

Olimar: Strategic player

- FMV cutscene with adventure mode

What's bad:

- bosses are still cheap

- there a lot of things to do

- fighting feels a bit nerf compare to Melee 

Status: played 100 + hours of it with 300 trophies to boot

Score: A rare gem. Worth to be played multiple times 

Super Smash Bros Melee

I found my old memory card of GameCube games. The GameCube was a device I had from 2001-2005. A lot of good memories and a lot of good games. I've already finish this games so here are the reviews 

Game no: 124

Genre: Fighting

Platform: GameCube

What's good:

- Best smash bros ever.

- Variety of Characters 

Dr Mario & Mario: Same move sets, Dr Mario can shoot pellets.

Luigi: Can fly like a rocket

Bowser: Damn slow and strong 

Peach: Hardest character to fall

Yoshi: Shoot eggs

DK: Strong and fast 

Captain Falcon: Falcon Punch can knock you off the stage 

Ganondorf: Slow version of Captian Falcon

Falco and Fox: My personal favorite, have deflectors to repel projectiles

Ness: The bat is damn powerful 

Ice climbers: The blue is the important one

Kirby: Fan favorite due to the fact he can fly and eat up people

Samus: Very technical 

Zelda: 2 characters in 1 ( Shiek)

Link: Also a fan favorite due to the alla rounded skills

Young Link: Faster version of link. Also weaker

Pichu: Faster version of Pikachu

Pikachu: Lighting Attack

Jigglypuff: Hardest character to use. sleeping attack is one hit kill

Mewtwo: One of a kind

Game and Watch: 2d sprite 

Marth and Roy: Strongest among the rest 

- Throphies 

- Adventure mod is awesome 

What's bad

- in balance of characters 

- the boss is super cheap

Status: 385 hours spend (no kidding) that's where my handle comes from.   

Score: A rare gem. Worth to be played multiple times

Day 152: Another 6 days off

Today I worked half day. Only today I didn't do much work. Finish my claim and went to have lunch with my best friend. After this I am finishing my last 2.5 days off... Until next year...

Lara Croft Relic Run

A cool endless runner

Game no: 123

Genre: Endless Runner 

Platform: iOS

What's good:

- dynamic stages (Jungles of Cambodia, The Sahara desert and the Tibetan mountains)

- customizable weapons

- vehicles 

What's bad:

- the bad guys are cheap

- to advance we need to get the relics which is kinda of hard

Status: went to Tibet and finish level 90.

Score: Great way to waste your time 

Will keep it for 2016.

Day 151: Im back...

After a long extended holiday. Well is actually on Day 150, my sickness apparently got worse.. I mean way worse. Like hospitalize worse. I was admitted to the hospital for 3 days and got another 2 days of medical leave. So basically the week I was not able to come to work. So holiday start early for me...

Anywho... today was my first day of work after 17 days off. I came back and was greeted with open arms. My boss and everyone was interested in my well being. Which is very touching for me. So I spend the better half of the day doing my claims and catching up on emails.

The things that happen for me today that I can highlight

* I was going to the toilet and at the same time I entered my CEO walked out... Gave me a heart attack. We both laughed it off...

* One of my friends brought his wife to the usual hangout place for lunch.

* I got the Death Star of all project. This is big.. .Very big...  I am scared

Pac Man 256

I An interesting take on pac man

Game No: 122

Genre: Endless Runner 

Platform: iOS

What's good: 

- Pacman stages just go on and on 

- Hitting 256 will cause all the ghost to disappear 

- Tons of power up to help Pacman go further 

- each ghost colours with different attack patterns 

What's bad:

- It gets to repetitive over time. It doesn't test your skill like crossy roads but more testing your luck

- in app purchase makes it a drag.

- 6 credits and then we have to wait 1 hour to reload. Which is good since you won't get too hooked doing this

Status: got all the 16 power ups then they released another 4 which I then stop

Score: a great way to waste your time 

Will be deleted from phone since I rarely play with it anymore

Crossy Roads

Is that time of year where I review the apps that are keeping me busy in my phone. It's a bit different then reviewing a game. I'll make it up as I go along

Game no: 121

Genre: Endless Runner

Platform: iOS (also available on Andriod)

What's good:

- Lots of 8 bit characters. More than 200. I was in this game for a couple of months. Almost got all of the characters. Until they decided to release a patch. Which made it difficult to grind somemore

- stages include: day, night, themed, Korean, pac man, rained, disco

What's bad:

- you need coins to get more characters. Or just pay 0.99 cents. I draw the the line for paying for apps unless is a full game

Status: high score 800. Can't seem to get it back again

Score: A great way to waster your time

Will not be deleted for 2016. Kids seems to love this game 

Bushido Blade 2

One hit kill

Game no: 120

Genre: Fighting

Duration: A couple hours

Platform: PS1

What's Good:

- No health bar, realistic combat. One hit kill. Timing is used to predict attacks

- Multi leveled stages. Interactive environment 

- Great story mode. Each character has their own story with other characters helping in the middle.

- 5 different weapons with 3 fighting styles.

What's Bad:

- The bosses are cheap. One has indestructible armor and one more has some kind of shadow attack which makes getting a shot at him nearly impossible.

Status: Finish one tribe and played the other. Once the boss become to cheap, I decide to stop playing

Score: A great way to waste your time

Dilwale

Got dragged watching this movie with the whole family. I notice that in a Hindi movie there are 3 constant things happening 

1) The laws of physics disappear and the laws of awesome comes in 200%

2) There seem to be no police in the area

3) The hero always gets the girl but after the obligatory drama

This is my first Hindi movie. I can say that, this movie is enjoyable. Got a couple of characters that make the movie dumber than it looks. Which is kinda a buzzkill. Would I watch it again. Probably not. 

3/5

Bugs and Taz Time Busters

A surprisingly good Platformer

Game no: 119

Genre: Platformer

Duration: 9 days 

Platform: PS1

What's good:

- Storyline is funny and good

- Platform mechanics

- Tag teaming to slove puzzles (is better to play with 2 players)

- Stages

- Variety of gameplay (there is at least a sport section, running on rails as well as puzzles)

- Will never be game over. Since there is always a reset point if you die

What's bad:

- Targeting could use a bit of work

- Progression... Lots of backtracking 

- Some puzzles are confusing unless you use a walk through 

Status: Finish the game with the end credits 

Score: Worth to be played at least once

Hush

Comic: Hush

Issues: 12 issues (Batman 602 - 614)

Story:

A new threat has come to Gotham and is targeting the Dark Knight. He starts by targeting his enemies and then crippling Batman himself. After he was saved, the person then killed his friend. At first, Batman though it was the Joker, then Scarcrow. But it turns out it was Jason Todd. The second Robin... But in the end... The real mastermind behind it was... Hush... Aka Two face 

Overview:

Well technically is only one face since the other side of two face has been fixed by plastic surgery. This story is one of the best Batman stories I have read in a while. This is even better than Arkham Knight. Jim Lee did a fantastic job in drawing the Dark Knight. The whole plot came together around book 11 so it took a while to understand what the heck is going on. 

Star Wars the Force Awakens

The seventh chapter in the Star Wars saga. All I can say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is basically a new hope but reskinned into a new franchise. There are new characters that we are rooting for. Old characters that we love. Every bit of nostalgia to bring the fans back. Basically is a good Star Wars movie. The story is fairly simple. A lot of the characters didn't get that much screen time. Probably they will in the next sequel. Lightsaber battles are not choreograph. So it looks more seedless. X-wings now come in black. The best thing that happens here is the new driod BB-8. Would I see it again? Probably not. This movie is still not as epic as Episode 5. The movie fall flat by having a whiny bad guy. It doesn't have the menacing effect as Darth Vader or even Maul has in the previous movies. Overall, a must watch if you are a Star Wars Fan

4/5

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Comic: Ctrl+Alt+Del 2002-2012

Issues: 3 Volumes (368 pages each)

Story:

The story about a crazy gamer name Ethan McManus that lives with his best friend Lucas. Together they are joined with Lilah, a female gamer and Zeke, a sentient Xbox robot. Hilarity ensure when they are on their adventures

Overview:

I love this when it was a web comic. Now after 10 years, reading their adventures is damn awesome. The end was quite of sad since there are still more stories to be told but I can see 10 years of doing this was enough. 

Battle Arena Toshinden 3

Better than before

Game no: 118

Genre: Fighting 

Platform: PS1

What's good:

- More characters, combos, super moves

- Stages are more box type than right out

What's bad

- 10 characters are locked

- the arcade mode needs to fight everyone in a row. That's close to 40 mins

Status: Played arcade mode. That's about it

Score: A Great way to waste your time 

Batman and Robin

The concept for Arkham Knight but this is wayyyy off

Genre: Action

Platform: PS1 

What's good:

- Open world exploration

What's bad

- Controls. You need to hold a button to run and hold a button for fighting 

- Batman walks slower than a snail

- The batmobile handles like jelly

- Man this game sucks

Status: Played 5 mins and then I'm dead 

Score: Delete this game and never speak of it again 

Battle Arena Toshinden 2

Good times

Game no: 117

Genre: Fighting 

Platform: PS1

What's good

- Weapon based fighting 

What's bad

- This game didn't age well

- Tank controls 

- Bosses are cheap

Status: Finish Eiji Story mode 

Score: You'll be bored after 2 to 3 hours 

Aladdin Nasira's Revenge

Man... This games suck

Genre: Platformer 

Platform: PS1

What's good

- CG storyline

- Voice actors

What's Bad

- Slow gameplay

- the mechanics doesn't seem to work 

- limitation of hardware cause the game to have some issues 

Status: Played it for 1 hour

Score: You'll be bored after 1 hour 

Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere

Best simulation ice played in a long time

Game: 116

Genre: Action

Platform: PS1

Duration: 6 days

What's good

- Gameplay is fast paced 

- Multiple variety of mission

- Multiple aircrafts 

- The feeling of hitting a bullseye 

What's bad 

- The storyline is not compelling enough

- The bosses are damn hard 

- Controlling the plane takes a while to master 

Status: Finish all 35 missions. End credits

Score: Worth to be played at least once

Batman: The man who Laughs

Comic: Batman the man who laughs 

Issue: One shot

Story:

It's the origin story of how the joker met batman. Batman was not known to the public and commissioner Gordan is just a captain. Joker is killing of the top people of Gotham and its up to Batman to stop him.

Overall:

The plot is your typical Batman plot. There are no twist and turns. In the end Batman stops the Joker as expected. In the end he got the Bat Signal

Day 150: It turns out I'm sick

I was coughing today. I thought I was just a normal cough until I found out that I was sick. So got to go home early. Sucks. Since being sick is not great. One more week till the long holiday

Level: +1

Current Level: 30

Day 149: Not that much work done

Yesterday morning I went to the meeting that I went the day before. Around 1 arrived at the office and went for lunch. Around 330 I started to do some work. And around 430 I left. That's a typical day for me...

Day 148: Leave approved

This morning I went for a meeting. When I got there I realized that the meeting was tomorrow. Such a klutz. Anyway, got back to the office and it was business as usual. That evening, my boss and I were discussing about the current new project that we got. After looking for the specifications, we realized that we were not capable to do it. After the boss say to back down from the project. He said... Your leave has been approved. Great news to end the day

Y the Last Man

A very good read 

Comic: Y the Last Man

Issues: 10 Volumes 

Story:

Yorrick Brown is an escape artist who all of the sudden became the last man on earth. Now he and his pet capuchin monkey ampersand have to travel around the world to find a cure. Along their journey they are joined by Dr Allison Mann and Agent 355. They will battle, soldiers, Amazon women and ninjas 

Overview:

This story is great. There are a lot of boobs in this book. A couple of sex scene and a lot of fighting. The story has a lot of plot twist. The end of the book was a drag. It was not the happy ending that we hope. It was kind of a depressing one. The hero didn't get the girl. Well Yorrick sisters name is Hero and she did get the girl.

5/5

Day 147: More of the same

Today work was as usual. I saw the tender that I was working on. My holiday will be determine on if we are doing it. By the looks of it, it doesn't fit our business model but anything can happen. Here hoping. I got a meeting today. That was fun... Tomorrow got a seminar in the morning I need to attend to.. Yay...

Day 146: This sucks

Monday is here and that means another week. Today is a sucky day. First for I got a tummy ache from eating too much chilli (well that's partly my fault). After spewing shit all over my HR manager told me that my leave may not be approved since there is a tender coming in and the boss can't let everyone go 😓. Sucks... Well I could carry forward my leave but I would rather have a week off. We'll see how it goes since the boss didn't see me yet for this matter 

007 The World is Not Enough

Finally a good James Bond game

Game no: 115

Genre: Shooter

Platform: PS1

Duration: 6 days 

What's good: 

- Actual cutscenes from the movie

- Variety of gameplay. You don't shoot everyone on every stage

- Actual actors do voice over. But I'm not that sure about James Bond 

- Lots of weapons 

- The theme song

- The casino stage where you play blackjack

- Auto Aim

What's bad:

- This game is hard. If you die you restart again. Even in the easiest setting

- Bosses are tough as nails 

- Sometimes you get loss of the stages

Status: Finish the whole game. 

Score: A great way to waste your time 

007 Tomorrow Never Dies

Apparently this game is more than enough

Genre: Action

Platform: PS1

What's good:

- cutscene from the movie

What's bad

- Controls are wobbly 

- Aiming is horrendous 

- The game is rage quitting-ly hard 

- It is not first person like the game after this. Probably they learn from their mistakes

Status: 25 mins with cheats to sample the levels. I wasn't impressed 

Score: You'll end up rage quitting 

Day 145: Meetings upon meetings

I think that the way of karma balancing my work and life balance. I've been leaving early for 4 days and yesterday I was awarded with 4 meetings. It was supposed to be just 2. But the last meeting went extremely overboard since there was a another HOD present at the meeting. There was a time that the HOD said "I think by 10pm the meeting would not end"... Hilarious. Anyway by boss ask me to present something. I said give me early January since everyone is always on leave here and its almost the long holidays. Yeay... weekend.

Level up: +1
Current Level: 29

Day 144: I finally get it

Well it took a while but I think I finally understand the business. My colleague is going to be expecting soon so he was trying to handover his job scope to me and my other friend. But mostly to me since my other friend was busy during the course. Another wired thing happen today. My boss not at the office today but around 750pm I got a call from him. Tried texting and calling back but no response. TGIF 

Day 143: That was weird

My boss came to me and ask for a slide that we need to present to someone. But when I ask him when. He said later. Probably it was not that important yet. Anywho... work as usual. Nothing much to talk about. 

Day 142: Great day today

I'm still on track doing the thing that I am supposed to be doing. It was all good. Around 12, my colleague assigned me something to with my other friends hovering around me. They want to go for lunch but I wanted to finished the work before heading off. Just to mess wit them, I did my replying of email very slowly. It was hilarious, well one  of them got a good laugh at it. The other just felt annoyed. After lunch my boss called me in his office. Apparently, the team dynamics is still not done yet. So there is a bit of feedback I need to give, in saying how for him to be a better boss. Like I state all the time in this blog. My boss is awesome, there is nothing I want him to change.

007 Racing

An precursor to spy hunter

Genre: Racing

Platform: PS1

What's good:

- Actual movie voice actors 

- Lots of cars and gadget 

- Need for speed engine. The gameplay is smooth

What's bad:

- Need to pickup weapons on the road to activate it on the car 

- The car needs health packs like most of the time.

- Flimsy handling

Status: Played till mission 6 then I keep dying 

Score: You'll end up rage quitting 

Day 141: 15 days left

The office felt a bit barren today. Not that many people were in. Probably took a long leave of absence. Work was as usual. I'm waiting for another 15 days for my long awaited leave. The rain was very bad. Even by escaping the office early I was still stuck in the jam 

Batman Gotham City Racer

Ok I got a new review scoring system... Rather than 1 - 5  which is hard to quantify I got a new rating system I am using. Let's implement it on a couple of games



Genre: Racing
Platform: PS1
The good:
- Got exclusive cut scenes from the animated series
errr that abou it
The bad
- Everything else
- Time on gameplay
- The car handles like jelly
- The open world is not to open. The ambition was there but I think they bite of more than they could chew

Status: 5 Mins of gameplay and after dying multiple times.. I give up

Score: Delete this game and never speak of it again

Warpath Jurassic Park

The concept is there but the execution not so much

Genre: Fighting
Platform: PS1
What's good
- Dinosaurs fighting each other
- Moving elements in the stage (Why does a human will run in the middle of the stage while 2 dinosaurs are fighting each other??)
What's bad
- The combo are unresponsive.
- You can actually defeat a dinosaur by pressing one button
- The Raptor and the T-rex are almost the same size...
- Some of these dinosaurs are way overpowered
Status: Played it for 10 mins. Saw the novelty and there way it ends.

1/5

Day 140: Sales Meeting

Usually I blog at the end of the day but a lot of things are going to happen today and I don't want to miss a thing 

I left home at 645 since I'm scared to arrive late. When I came here I was greeted by the friendly hotel staff. This meeting room looks like a penthouse suite. 

Here are some pics to prove it

Panoramic view

They have a room outside where there serve breakfast and free flow drinks 

Had breakfast (pastries) and earl grey. Now waiting for the rest of the troops 

1045am

Meeting adjourned for morning break. 

The menu include 

Pandan cake (didn't eat that)

Tandoori Fish Sandwich (not bad)

Assorted fruit 

Steamed prawn popia (had to wait but the taste is good)

Apam with coconut chutney ( the chutney is awesome)

Banana smoothie (is like a banana split in a cup)

Now back to the meeting

It's 521. Live blogging was halted a while since I was busy preparing for presentation 

After that is lunch time. To go for lunch we need to take an express lift to the sky deck and then go up 38th floors. Here is the view from above 

And here is the menu

Here are my reviews on the food

This sashimi salad is cold and the fish taste fresh. The seaweed adds a certain taste to it

First time I ate tuna tartar. The laymans terms is tuna chopped and served raw

Chicken spring roll nothing new

Mushroom soup that goes well with bread. There is bread but I forgot to take the picture 

Sweet and sour fish. It taste like sweet and sour fish 

Roast chicken with mushroom and hickory sauce. This is yummy

Asparagus with nuts. The asparagus are huge 

Fried rice nuff said

And for dessert is pie with homemade ice cream. Not cold though 

After that I got nervous for my presentation. So I didn't eat evening tea but here are the highlights

My teams presentation went long. Like 1hr 40mins too long. My presentation went well without any hitch. People doesn't seem to interested. Or maybe they are just too tired. 

After the presentation there is one more activity. Karaoke + buffet. The buffet was good. There are a lot of variety. They also offer free booze to the non Muslims people. My observation is drunk people are hilariously funny. I did sing or more like butchered a couple of songs with my sales boss. That was fun. The weekend is upon me. Time to rest 

Level up:+1

Current level: 18

WWF Smackdown!

The first wrestling game for the PS1

Game no: 114

Genre: Sports 

Platform: PS1

What's good:

- FMV intro entrance 

- Lots of different matches 

- If you smell what the rock is cooking 

What's bad:

- Story has no imagination.

- Moves are limited 

Status: Finish the first season till wrestlemania.

3/5