Killabilly... Defeated!

Whew... finished Lollipop Chainsaw today. The final boss wasn't really that difficult, getting to him was a lot worse. I still got a few things to wrap up in the game, mainly uncollected trophies. I also wanna farm platinum medals in the Prologue to buy up all the costumes, music and artwork I didn't unlock. Maybe I'll revisit the earlier stages and try to set a high score now that I have the ultimate combo - Holy Chainsaw. 

Seriously, Holy Chainsaw is effing cool! Square, square, square, square, triangle, triangle. In effect, a full non-upgraded pom-pom bash combo to stun zombies directly in front, followed by two 360 degree horizontal heavy swings and ending with a super huge range and damage version of the Chainsaw Full Swing (the most powerful single chainsaw swing). I see a lot more 3 and 4 zombie sparkle hunting now, even 5 and the occasional 6. For the Sparkle Hunting Master trophy (acquired by performing a 7 zombie sparkle hunting) though, I had to retry several times since Juliet's chainsaw sometimes auto-targets single zombies rather than groups. But I got it in the end. 

Lollipop Chainsaw: Tips & Tricks #2

The Gondola in Stage 4

My biggest advice is: don't rush. Take your time and be cautious of window panes opening and closing. Stay on a lane without a zombie dropping swords on you if possible. The blue discs will stop moving and drop a cow on your lane if you stay in 1 lane too long. Use this to your advantage. You can trigger the cow drops and falling billboards by coming within range, and then quickly moving out of the way. These drops are one-time drops so you don't have to worry about them once you've triggered them. Unfortunately, swords and cars dropped by zombies are randomly timed so you just have to be patient if an unlucky drop happens. Fire your blaster to destroy swords but avoid cars since those need more than 1 shot to destroy. Near the goal gauge the timing of the opening and closing window panes and move quickly when the first pane is closed.

Lollipop Chainsaw: Tips & Tricks

I'm in Stage 5 in Lollipop Chainsaw at the moment, and am very lose to finishing the game. Here are some parts of the game I found very difficult and had to retry over and over. 

The Cake-bomb in Stage 1

The aim of this part of the stage is to protect the dynamite-rigged birthday cake from coming into contact with the fire zombies. At first, this may seem easy since you're dealing with slow-moving zombies, but once running zombies come into play, things heat up considerably. I played this on Easy, and you have 3 chances for fire zombies to touch the cake (that means once 3 fire zombies reach the cake, GAME OVER). The trick is to dropkick the early zombies and decapitate them with normal chainsaw swings. Then when the big star pops up, take the big star to charge your sparkle meter. If you think you can handle it, don't use the sparkle mode just yet (it won't last the entire part). When you think you can't handle it or a stray zombie touches the cake, enter sparkle mode and kill all the remaining zombies as quickly as possible. Once you finish, a cutscene occurs and you have a small time limit to reach the exit. Ignore the spawned baby zombies and make a mad dash to the exit to complete that part of the stage.

Zombie Baseball in Stage 2

You don't have to kill all the zombies, just make sure Nick's health bar doesn't reach zero. Sparkle mode is not needed here because the zombies that appear here are weak 1-shot kills anyway. Stand on the bullet refill spawnpoint so when the bullet refill spawns, you don't have to move to take it (it automatically fills your ammo). Hold L2 and shoot with R2, then let go both triggers and repeat. This makes the crosshair automatically snap to the nearest zombie without needing you to aim manually. This occurs only if your aim is AUTO in the options menu so check it before starting this part. Once Nick finishes his second run, zombies will spawn faster and in larger numbers. At this point, focus on killing the zombies that are closest to and in the path of Nick. Don't panic, as I said, as long as Nick survives to finish 3 runs the zombies will all despawn.

Back in Business

Hello~ Sorry I've been inactive for a while. I got involved in a car accident last Saturday and as a result, 6 of my knuckles were broken (thus the inability to type). My knuckles haven't fully recovered, but have sufficiently regained some motor function. I also suffered fractures on my right knee, deep lacerations on my right arm and palm, severe bruising on my thorax and a possible fracture on my right shoulder blade. So please bear with the delay of new posts, okay?

How to Toggle Assistive Touch on iPad 2

iPad 2 comes along with a little known function called Assistive Touch, which is basically a shortcut icon (displayed as a white circle in a small transluscent black box at the side of the iPad 2 screen) that pops up when selected to allows 1 finger touches to replace more complex finger gestures. These gestures are shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Assistive Touch 

To toggle this feature on/off, proceed with the following steps.

1. Go to Settings from the Home screen.

2. Select the General tab.

3. Scroll down and select the Accessibility tab. Note: the Accessibility tab is located near the bottom of the General tab options and is easily overlooked.

4. Toggle the Assistive Touch tab to show or hide the Assistive Touch icon.

This function was implemented by Apple to make browsing easier for users with disabilities that prevent them from making complex finger gestures. However, in recent months, it was discovered that selecting Home from the Assistive Touch icon instead of pressing the external Home button (resembles a square button in a circular indent) at the bottom of the iPad 2 significantly prolonged the lifespan of the iPad 2's external Home button. It is still unclear whether the external Home button malfunction in most Apple gadgets (iPad, iPad 2, iPhone, iPod Touch etc.) is due to hardware or software problems. But better to be safe than sorry, right?

So Bad, it's Good

New research is proving many age-old assumptions wrong. For instance, pornography has been said to lead to sexual violence, but according to a recent report it may actually reduce such desires. - Playboy, October 2011, p. 26.

Sem 1 2012 HUP3801 Internals

Shoutout to all HUP3801 students at Monash University Sunway Campus for the batch of Sem 1 2012. The internal marks are now up on Moodle 2. Internals contribute 50% to the overall unit grade. The other 50% comes from the final exam. Note: keep in mind that if you fail the exam (i.e. score less than 25/50), you automatically fail the unit because your total grade will be capped at 49%, which is a FAIL. I think I crashed on the exam so my internals are irrelevant. I wanna cry. ='(

By the way, my internals are 43/50. You can calculate your own internals by using the formula ?/130 X 50, where ? is the Unit Total right at the bottom of your Moodle 2 HUP3801 Grades tab. 

Blog Update: Sidebar Fix

Added new features to sidebar (search box and labels) to allow easier access to specific posts.

Slightly reshuffled layout. 

Renamed some features.

Tales of Graces f: Review

Gameplay

The battle system is a bit difficult to adjust to (especially if you have never played any Tales games before), but once you get the hang of it, battles become really fun. Basically, you have skills which you can chain into combos. Each skill has a cost of Chain Capacity (CC) which must be charged through moving, guarding and a variety of different ways. these skills are acquired through the course of the game via titles. Each title has 5 bonuses (either new skills, skill upgrades, stat boosts, CC boosts, special character-specific attributes) that are earned by gaining Skill Points (SP) by winning battles. Titles are gained via minigames, cutscenes (called 'skits' in Tales games), sidequests and as the story progresses. And later as the game progresses, more and more complex aspects of combat are introduced such as Mystic Artes (equivalent of Limit Breaks in FF games), Accel Mode etc. The battle AI for your party members is competent, but sometimes they are slow to respond to healing and reviving fallen party members. This isn't a big problem because later in the game there are a lot of damage reduction titles, skills and equipment that compensate for the increased damage from monsters. By that time, you also would have learnt how to evade attacks efficiently (the AI is very good in blocking and evading by the way).

Tales of Graces f is filled with puzzles and minigames. Every dungeon right from the start has puzzles specific to that dungeon. Some of these puzzles are quite difficult, but not entirely unsolvable even if you don't use walkthroughs. I pride myself as a decent puzzle solver and even I had to check online for help on how to pass one or two puzzles.

Minigames are abundant here to. There's even one which longtime Tales fans will enjoy (it involves recognizing characters from past Tales games and matching them based on voice-to-picture). I can't really comment on this as this is my first Tales game so it is practically impossible for me to finish that minigame based on blind guesswork. But the other minigames were all well though out and equally enjoyable. 

There is a restricted linear path in the early stages of the game but as you reach midgame, you get to explore the world on your own. If you get lost and forget what you were supposed to do to proceed with the story, holding the L1 button makes your current objective appear to remind you. Trust me, you will get distracted from the story. There's simply too much to do once you get full freedom of exploration.

Graphics

Tales games are known for their anime-style 3D ingame graphics. But I don't particularly like this kind of mix (anime and 3D) because it's a bit conflicting. However, that is just me (I'm used to CG ingame graphics from FF games). The FMVs are in full 2D anime graphics and are quite artistically drawn. The normal skits are all full 2D anime (colourful and cell-shaded-like).

Longevity

I clocked in my first completed run through the main story for normal ending at roughly 102 hours, and none of that was grinding EXP or SP or even item farming. When you finish the main story, a bonus chapter will be unlocked. Finishing the bonus chapter will give you the true ending (which is definitely worth the extra hours of gameplay). My total playtime taken to finish the main story and the bonus chapter: a whopping 145 hours. To put it in perspective, that is equal to 7 individual playthroughs from start to finish for FFXIII-2 (my initial playthrough for FFXIII-2 without any DLC chapters is 20 hours). The 145 hours of Tales of Graces f doesn't end there. After finishing the bonus chapter once, you unlock a bonus 10 floor high level dungeon with yet another optional final boss. I'm stuck on floor 2 of that dungeon, and my party is LV 74. That should give you an idea of how hardcore that dungeon is. The maximum LV in this game is 200.    

Music

The music score is one of the best I have heard in a long time. Every town, dungeon and battle soundtrack is a masterpiece and sets the mood nicely. Special mention: the normal battle theme is now one of my all-time favourite battle themes. The theme song 'White Wishes' ('Mamoritai' in the Japanese version) sung by BoA is one of the most beautiful theme songs I have ever heard (the last being 'Melodies of Life' from FFIX).

Replayability

If you completed the game 100% (which does require you to play New Game +, unlocked by finishing the main story once), there really isn't anything left to replay. But that 100% completion goal will most likely take you more than 200 hours. And after that, you might even wanna replay the entire game from the start. Yes, it is that awesome. 

Story

It's NOT only about love. Tales of Graces f's story focuses more on a story of friendship and how true friendship will persist through times of betrayal and hardship. That's something you don't see everyday. The plot is unique, for the lack of a better word. 

Trophies

PS3 trophy hunters will expect to get more than 10 bronze trophies by simply finishing the main story once. There is a silver trophy for just finishing the bonus chapter. For the gold trophies though, expect to put at least 175 hours as they are linked to 100% completion of some parts of the game such as gained every item, defeated every monster and boss, etc. The platinum trophy is for 100% completion of the ENTIRE game.

Conclusion

An excellent RPG by Namco-Bandai that ranks among the top 3 Tales games of all time (according to what I read on the forums). I dare say I enjoyed Tales of Graces f even more than the post-FFXII games by Square Enix. I am now a Tales fan. 

Blog Update: Timestamp Fix

Fixed the timestamp to appear in Malaysian time (GMT +8).

Yo Ho Ho, it's a Pirate's Life for Me

This post will give you an idea of what to expect, seeing as this is not one of those mainstream blogs that review stuff and leave it at that. I just finished re-watching all 4 Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC) movies just 5 minutes ago. Here I present to you my ranking of the PotC quadrilogy in order of enjoyment I got (from highest to lowest). Note: I hold all 4 PotC movies in high regard and the difference in the amount of satisfaction I got from each was extremely marginal (with the exception of the 4th placed movie).

1. PotC 3: At World's End 

I still maintain that this is the best one of the quadrilogy. All the main protagonists and villains appear here, and there are many cameo appearances too.The final battle scene between the Flying Dutchman and the Black Pearl on top of a giant whirlpool is to me, one of the best all-time battle scenes ever made on film.

2. PotC 1: Curse of the Black Pearl

The movie that started the craze. As with almost everything in life, the first will always be remembered, be it good or bad. Luckily, in this case, it's good. Introduction of each character is well balanced and given enough screen time for an epic movie.

3. PotC 2: Dead Man's Chest

I wasn't particularly satisfied with this one as much as the PotC 1 and 3, but it has one of the most epic cliffhangers in movie history. Overall a great film, mind you, just not *as* great as 1 and 3. But close.

4. PotC 4: On Stranger Tides

Watching this a second time in 2012, I do not recall much of this movie at all even though it is the most recent. That's a bad sign, ain't it? Personally, I attribute this to the change in cast. The absence of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly hit this movie particularly hard. I'm not saying Penelope Cruz was bad (she tried her best to meet an insane standard set by Keira Knightly), but the audience will always compare a subsequent actor/actress to the initial one. But still a good movie (in comparison to the crappy movies we have nowadays), just didn't meet the standards set by the 3 previous movies.

A Little Introduction

Okay, now when I said this blog is casual, I mean it. A little bit of joking at someone else's expanse is okay, but NO FLAMING/TROLLING/HATING. You are entitled to your opinion as much as I am entitled to mine. But swearing is okay if used in the right context (i.e. not insulting). =D

What will be in this blog? My opinions/thoughts/musings/comments on any and all kinds of stuff! Movies, games, music, you name it. However, I simply can't be bothered to do a daily diary post (though I will mention certain interesting events I encountered in daily life).

Rebirth

Hi! I'm back in blogging business. Some of you may remember me as the author of Void of eternity, a blog I used to have approximately 3 years ago. Due to some bitter experiences and hostility created by that blog, I decided to shut it down. But if life has taught us one thing, it is that we must all learn from the past and pick ourselves up and try again. So here we are.

I have decided to keep this blog a casual one. Therefore, my updates on this blog may be sporadic and do not follow any standard periodicity. I'm still working on cleaning up the layout so please bear with me. Okay, gotta go. Be back later to tell you more. <3