djkr and friends take on Life

i completed bioshock 2, which is the first game of 2010 i have finished playing (and also the first on my ps3) (band hero doesn’t count: you can never finish playing band hero)

the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2k game, bioshock, bioshock 2 is more of the same old goodness. there were a few technical  changes from the original game: the ability to dual wield plasmids and guns, and hacking from a pipe puzzle to stopping a needle at the right time. but the main draw (for me at least) of bioshock has never been the gameplay, it has been always been about the story.

bioshock 1′s story blew me away. the writing was solid, something i rarely encounter in a video game (even more so in first person shooter!) and the setting of rapture, an art deco inspired underwater city, was stunning.

essentially, bioshock 1′s story touches on philosophical questions of self and the pursuit of excellence. andrew ryan, waiting to rid the constraints placed on him by government and religion, recruited the best minds from around the world and built rapture, a supposed underwater utopia. ryan didn’t take into account human nature, and with the discovery of ADAM, a chemical that could modify genetic material, this so-called utopia turned into a hell hole. the enemies you face in rapture are mutated and scarred caricatures of humans. and to think that these people were the cream of crop when they were invited to come to rapture, now reduced to violent, hideous addicts of ADAM.

even you, as the player character, play an essential part of questioning the philosophy rapture presents. in an incredible twist to the story, you are revealed nothing more to be a mere pawn to the main antagonist of the story. what makes this twist so powerful is the fact that something gamers take for granted in every game, guidance, was used in an effective and stunning revelation.

while bioshock 1 was all about self, bioshock 2 is about the converse. bioshock 2 talks about community. the sacrifice of one’s self for the betterment of the whole. the main antagonist in bioshock 2, sofia lamb, sees you as a threat to her ‘family’ and hence of course, you must be purged. as the story slowly progresses on, the theme of sacrificing one’s self for the overall good comes out clearly.

the theme of family is further emphasized as you play as a big daddy. as a big daddy, you can choose to adopt little sisters to harvest ADAM for you, protecting them in the process. strangely, i felt strong paternal feelings during this process (should i be afraid?). this father-daughter bond presented in the game also serves as mirror to the cult like influence of the antagonist.

bioshock 2 does suffer from ‘sequelitis’ though. the story is not as strong as bioshock 1, which led it to become slightly tiresome towards the end. however, the philosophies it presents are nonetheless intriguing and it is a game worth playing.

i have ffxiii and god of war 3 in my sights next. i am particularly hankering of some good only bloody god of war action. it has been a good 3 years since the last edition and the demo cannot satiate my thirst for it. bring it on!

i am not sure if i have entirely qualified to write about singapore soccer. after all, i don’t keep close track of the national team or the s-league. i even went to sleep before the jordan vs singapore match ended. but as a singaporean, i suppose i have full right to write about my own national team.

once again, singapore football has disappointed. you would think that a berth in the asian cup would be incentive enough for the team to play better. but no. passes went no where, we lost the ball easily and there was no ‘hunger’ in the team. granted, playing in windy unfamiliar conditions could have been a huge deterrent. granted, head coach raddy complains that singaporeans do not show up enough to support their own local team. but with constant dismal performances like the one last night, the singapore national team has to prove they can perform before they will receive the support and help they have been asking for. remember the game against thailand at the national stadium? there was so much hype in trying to get singaporeans to come down to support the team. all it ended in was a bitter 1-3 defeat. hell, thank goodness someone up there had the common sense to drop goal 2010 when they realized no way in this generation were we ever going to to go to the world cup.

yet, there are a few fans that support the national team fervently. i really admire these folks, for they can take the pain and agony of their team losing and letting the nation down time and time again. the pain of a loss is not easily displaced, and to constantly experience this pain in the minute chance of victory is excruciating. this are the fans who would trot down faithfully every week to catch their favourite s-league team play, something i absolutely cannot fathom, especially with the poor standard of play.

its like the S&M (minus the kinky bits) you know that it is going to be hurt, but you still watch it and hope it will be good. unfortunately, you don’t feel happy most of the time after.

singapore football better pray these fans don’t lose their belief. because if they do, there will be no hope left for local football.

8 fractured thoughts (because i think in fleeting moments and hey, because its CNY):

1: i am getting older. and i have accomplished nothing.

2: i enjoy chinese new year the most among all the other holidays because a) i get a chance to meet my cousins, b) i get to eat my grandma’s awesome cooking c) i get money d) i get to gamble

3: i need to push myself harder.

4: recent events have shown the dark side of singaporeans.

5: my legs are tired every night. as in fatigued tired – for whatever strange reason.

6: i can’t wait till i finally get a ps3 (which i will be once god of war 3 comes out).

7: this space is intentionally let blank.

8: punoftheday: I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

i was bumbling around the internet when i stumbled upon a blog of a student at the miami ad school, one of the foremost advertising schools in the world. and he has a few sensible words for all advertising students out there.

talent does not play a part in whether you succeed in advertising. its the quantity of work you produce for each campaign. invariably, there will be crap in there. but the more you produce, the higher the chance that you will produce something outstanding and brilliant.

mount sophia is a rather nice place, if you discount the fact that you have to climb 139 steps every morning. it has a pretty serene environment, the lighting in the toilets is film worthy and timbre is outside my office.

week one has been rather kind to me. i have been eased into the process rather painlessly. work has come in slowly; i only had to do a writeup on a toolkit thus far. my supervisors/colleagues (they are the same) are quite nice. i got nothing much to complain about (maybe my $600 pay)

but oh, those 139 steps. it is an uphill struggle to drag yourself up those steps.  i guess its just one of those employee health benefits they don’t mention on the contract. climbing 139 steps every single day, that is sure to get your thighs into shape.

one week of internship has gone by.

for our first week, the interns from the 4 companies of alchemy, kult, nerf and avenueone met at alchemy for a week long boot camp, where alvin had arranged some of the staffers to come to talk to us, giving us a quick lessons on the industry. we even had an excursion to a colour separation place, a photography studio and a digital imaging place – which was admittedly very cool.

but i guess what i can be most proud of is the fact that one of our ideas that we worked on during boot camp has been actually submitted for consideration to a client. that met a burnt weekend (saturday 6pm to sunday 7am in office), but that is the motivation i need to keep going.

welcome to advertising, baby.

poor ris low. fresh off singaporeans mocking her for her poor english, it has to come to light that miss ris low yi min was once convicted for credit card fraud. her plight curiously mirrors that of carrie prejean, the dethroned miss california, who first raised the ire of the LBGT community with her statements during the miss USA Pageant (‘i think i believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman’), which she credited to her faith. eventually, topless pictures of her were dug up and displayed on the world wide web for all to see, leading to furore (‘which good christian woman would pose topless?’) and her eventual fall from grace.

credit card fraud is no small matter. unlike miss prejean, whose only offense was speaking her mind and posing topless, what ris actually did was criminally wrong. stealing credit cards that were left on the counter by absent minded patients, she went on a shopping spree, pampering her self with gold chains (loud i am sure) and luxury meals.

by keeping quiet on the issue, ERM World Marketing, the organisers of the pageant, have done nothing help their own cause. if ris did not declare to ERM that she was once convicted in a court of law, ERM should speak up now to avoid further bad publicity. by not saying anything now, their silence is an admission of knowledge of her past. absurdly, in the straits times today, one ERM employee was quoted to have said “singaporeans did not pay for her’, in response to being told that Singaporeans were asking ris to be stripped of her crown.

it is a slap to the cheek really; while is true that we did not pay a cent for her, she is going to be representing singapore at an international event. we definitely have a stake in her and ERM should respond to the public appropriately. it also insinuates that ERM has a certain ‘control’ over the selection process; something which questions their intelligence. really? you let a person convicted of credit card fraud to join the pageant and even let her win it? you paid for this to happen?  naturally, i foresee a negative impact on the next edition of the pageant.

to be fair to ris, if razor tv did not run the embarrassing expose on her poor english, none of this might have happened. but in today’s day and age, especially with the rise of social media, one cannot expect to hide any details of one’s life, even more so if you are a celebrity. she (and the rest of the contestants) should have expected this to happen when she joined the pageant.

eventually, the biggest losers in the entire saga might actually be Singapore. with local pageants losing the public’s interest (that was once a time when mediacorp used to sponsor the pageant, i think it all went down hill after they pulled their sponsorship), poor results on the international stage, this farce might be a hammer blow to the ailing scene.

not that i actually watch TV anymore or care for who wins really.

IPPT. i always dread the time when i have to actually take it. maybe it is walking back into a camp again (i am one of those lucky few that don’t get called back during my holidays). maybe its just the pressure of having to pass the stations (stupid yes i know). or it could be just i really hate running 2.4km (don’t you?)

having been in san diego for 6 months and thus missed the opportunity to do ipt (for those of you that don’t know what ipt is – it is sort of like a get out of jail card; you don’t have to pass ippt if you attend ipt), i was really dreading doing ippt. actually no. i was really dreading the aftermath if i failed my ippt – that is remedial training, where you spend 20 sessions of 4 hours in camps training for IPPT. in fact, today while i was in bedok fcc, seeing those nsmen train for rt make me doubly determined not to go for rt. it seems like such a waste of time.

i do have to make a point that i feel standing broad jump is completely useless in IPPT. in fact, many fit people fail their IPPT solely because they cannot jump 216cm. my achilles heel has always been standing broad jump and for this IPPT i made sure that i trained for it.

to ensure that i didn’t have to attend the horror that was RT, i made it a point to train myself 2 months before my IPPT. i had help too. amin, my adm friend who i made while in san diego willingly helped to train me for IPPT, forcing me to run fartlags and timing 2.4 runs with me. he even brought a measuring tape to school to measure how far i could jump.

everything was going swimmingly to plan till 3 days ago, when i caught a throat infection. it certainly wasn’t  the best time to get one. struggling with the infection, i popped a pandol pill, took a red bull shot and headed to bedok fcc, still woozy.

i must admit it was quite daunting since doing my last IPPT one year ago. its just tests and the sort; you feel a sort of pressure to achieve, and if you failure, you feel miserable.

luckily this time, i cleared my pull up, shuttle run and situps (even though i had to push myself a little) quite easily. when it came to standing broad jump, i hesitated a long long while on the machine before taking the jump. i just had to get myself mentally ready. i swung my arms, tucked in my knees and launched myself forward. when you do a good jump, it just feels right. this one did to me. it is obviously not excellent, but considering the fact that last year i only jumped a palsy 207 cm, 221 is a great improvement.

my legs became slightly heavy before the 2.4km run. i speculated that it might have been the panadol; after all, i had never taken panadol before exercising before. it felt that my legs weren’t really there, which was obviously worrying. added to the fact that the weather was not on my side, i was not looking forward to the run.

the 2.4km run is something i really dread. your feet have to continuously pound the track at steady pace or you lose track of time. you must have the mental strength to keep going or you will fall behind. ignore the pain in your thighs and don’t give in.

as i ran around the track, my mind progressively went blank. the first few rounds i still could think coherently. as it went on, however, all i could think about was getting off the damn track and going home. actually no, my mind was like a white sheet of paper.

looking back, i don’t really know how i have been doing it, since my ns days. i managed to clear my 2.4 run in 11:52, which was definitely a nice surprise.

for the first tme since i ORDed, i passed my ippt, with a grand total of 15 points. however, i am most glad that i don’t have to go RT. that would have be an utterly horrible waste of time.

i wonder though if red bull and panadol has any weird side effects. oh well, i guess the $100 i will get for passing my IPPT will cover my medical fees if need be.

everyone who has been on the internet over the past few month must have seen them; those ads advertising for the latest online game evony. after seeing (for the umpteen time) another one of those ads boxed into a small square on the webpages i frequent today, i realised that the ads have actually evolved.

if you have been actually been living in a cave the last few weeks, evony is (supposedly) an online browser based game that the advertisements tout you can: 1. save the queen!, 2. play ‘discreetly’ 3. and will be free forever. and oh yes, the advertisements feature boobs quite prominently.

after doing a wiki and google search on it (ah, yes what would i do without dear wikipedia), i realised that the ads did evolve as time went by. i won’t post the pictures here but you can see for yourself here.

to be honest, i did not really notice them when they featured just the knight; it looked too generic and boring. who wants to play a game where the feature is a boring rusty stale old knight. the next ad with a sword pointed at a vulnerably posed, well endowed computer generated maiden DID capture my attention. you can’t really ignore phallic advertising can you. but no, still not interested.

not working?  lets put up real women on the ads. so now we have stock images of the generic model wearing a white dress staring longing out at you, asking you to ‘save’ them. no, still not catching my attention.

this is when the makers of evony decided, well, %)@# it, lets just put a pair boobs there. surely that will entice people to click on the link! they are boobs after all!

–

evony’s advertising campaign reeks of desperation. there is plenty more i can go into (like how they are apparently run by a china WOW gold mining company) , but lets just focus on 2 aspects here: advertising and gaming.

from an advertising standpoint, the ads are actually meant to capture attention, and quite successfully so, even though there might be a  misrepresentation of what the game actually is. from what i have read online, there is no actual queen in the game. the official faq also writes:

How do I get my queen?
There is no queen in this game, the ad you saw is for marketing purposes and seems to be highly effective by the number of times this question has come up.

curious (or horny) individuals will feel compelled to click on the link to check out what it offers. if it has done that, the evony ads have done their job, as it is up to the main page to further sell the game. however, but using increasing amounts of cleavage in their adverts, they have earned the scorn of bloggers worldwide for their extremely distasteful ads that have nothing to do with the game. also, the adverts are becoming increasingly more and more like those web banners advertising for adult services.

i once read in the new paper (of all places) that neil french called ‘bad publicity’ the ‘holy grail’ of advertising. while it is true bad publicity (like that of the phallic burger king ad) will drive consumers to try your product, your product must be strong enough to sustain this interest.

this is where i delve into the gaming viewpoint of the game. and rip it apart to pieces.

i am gamer and i take pride in playing good games. and from what evony has shown me in its advertising, i can tell that the game is going to be of slip shod build. if a gaming developer cannot take pride in creative advertising for its games, what is to say that the game will be good? it is insulting to any decent gamer by propositioning the game like this. you don’t want to force dribble down my throat if i don’t want to play it. if you do so, i will reject it even more.

from ripping off the font AND gameplay from civilization, i expect them to get sued pretty soon.

/end rant.