Saturday, November 15, 2008

Resistance 2 and Valkyria Chronicles

My latest 2 PS3 games. hardly brought any PS3 game ever since i got my Eternal Sonata and now most of the time i still spend on playing SRWZ. This 2 title Resistance (R2) and Valkyria Chronicles (VC) can really tell you the style of Westerner and Japanese game.





R2 is a typical FPS game for PS3, it is the sequel to the PS3 launch title Resistance 1 Fall of Mankind, develop by Insomniac. Graphics does improved frm the first game, and certain upgrade has also been done to the controls and play style. You now get to sprint by holding down the L2 button and you can carry only 2 weapon instead of having them all on your back.




The manual book for R2 has a 50-60s look and does remind me of the recent title Fallout 3..... anyway those are less important.


Insomniac did a great job with their online play, now it can have 60 players competitive and a maximum 8 player online cooperative. As for the offline cooperative you get to have 2 players games but it aint the Story mode 2 player co-op


Cooperative mode.... the offline game aint the single player campaign

It is now some sort of alternative view point of the war frm some other grunts. But i really miss the single player story mode coop like the first game.... that was the best coop game i had.



Now lets have a look at VC, this is an innovative SLG + FPS + RTS type of game. First ever in the market. It has those beautiful Japanese design character great voice over and for those Europe or USA region game you get to choose the voice over as JP or English. The JP voice over senyuu for Alicia is Marina Inoue (known to be the senyuu of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's Yoko & Kana Minami from Minamike). VC is also gonna be produce into an anime next year by A-1 Pictures.


The install function which will increase your loading speed but required 4gb HDD spaces

Anyway lets talk back about the game Valkyria Chronicles. It was develop by Sega and it was one of those PS3 exclusive title (yah exclusive title just like Resistance 2 up there). The style of the art is like those cartoon 3D (like Okami or Dark Cloud 2 frm PS2). The game story is play through a book, where you get to watch those nice animated character doing the story telling.




Alicia, Isara and Welkin (from left to right)


Unique art style

VC is really unique in its own way, the battle system is like what i said earlier SLG + FPS + RTS, you get the standard JP SLG style of choosing and planning your move at every turn, but once you choose a character you need to move him/she in real time mode which enemy will shoot you and you need to dodge them and take cover, when you choose to attack then you will enter those FPS mode where you need to aim the gun yourself.


FPS mode? This is some type of hybrid game....

Superb game and definitely one that most PS3 gamers that like Japan anime and games must own! Strongly recommended.

This two game are really a good comparison of Westerner and Japanese games. And if you said i were to choose between this 2 game, my first choices will go for Valkyria Chronicles.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Malaysia Most Reliable Post Service

Today I really want to start this topic.... Malaysia Post Service.... I think most of the the ppl here in Malaysia tat orders figure overseas like frm PA, HS, HLJ and bla bla bla, likes to used those Free Shipping or SAL rather than Fedex or EMS (and all those expensive but fast choices), got to admit that i am one of them.






So the problem with our local post service are just un-predictable, they tend to let your parcel or letter to be seriously delay until you thought that they were lost. I recently just receive my PS2 SRWZ (Super Robot War Z), it was late for 6 weeks (received date 4th of November), and it was based on the date release from the local Custom (27th of September).


Although it wasn't a registered mail but taking such long date to deliver an item locally seems to be a bit too ridiculous. From my experience such parcel usually takes 7-14 days to arrive. So i send an Email to complaint their poor service and i had receive 2 replies so far, the last one was about they have pass this issue to their State Manager and will let me know the outcome..... but i dun think it will make any improvement.....




Finally i can play it with my PS3

Ordering online has always been a big risk, you get the chances to have your parcel, while typing this message my GSC Princess Resurrection HIME should already been in the local post office last week (estimating frm the date of departure frm PA), and should arriving at my doorstep today.



Hmmm when i was typing, the postman has just bought me my Hime. Seems like the box is damage during the travel frm HK to here. LOL, forgot to mention this is also one of the risk. Damage box!






hmmm not only the carton is dmg, the box of the kits is also slightly squash


The fastest and safest way of getting your stuff is always using Fedex, UPS, DHL or others courier service. EMS is also one of the safer way but since the parcel still end up with Malaysia Post Office (POS Laju service), you still get chances of lossing it. Bare in mind that using this service also means that your stuff will come with a higher cost.