And then?

And then my Girlfriend and I broke up.

For the better part of almost 5 years she was the most wonderful part of my life, and through an act of carelessness on my part it ended. I miss her dearly and right now I wonder if I'll ever meet anyone who can be as good a friend and partner in crime as she was for me. She supported me through everything I took on, she was my best friend and I never dreamed of being without her. But as Mr Harrison had said; All things must pass. :( 

... Moving on.

I also got to check out Malaysia! which was pretty farking awesome. I've never been that far away from Fiji before and Malaysia was a country I've always wanted to visit.

It was such a great experience, particularity the size of Kuala Lumpur. Just this massive city with so much to do. Of course I hit all the malls looking for video game shops and books. I found a massive book shop at the KLCC towers and spent hours and hours there just going through the many books. At the end I only bought like three books. My boss is going over there soon (To Malaysia) and I've asked him to pick up some the books I'd left behind.

I also bought Dead Space 3 and I'll be doing a separate update on that later.

What I miss most about Malaysia though is the food. I would spend hours every night hitting the food stalls on the street sometimes eating 2 or 3 meals a night. The food was so awesome and freaking cheap as and it breaks my heart to know I won't be tasting those delicious flavors anytime soon...  not authentically anyway.

I have however picked up a Malay cook book... so lets see what that brings.

Funny thing is I felt KL was a lot like Fiji but with bigger buildings. The people there were nice and the street culture was very similar to the way things happen here in Suva.

Visiting the China market was a trip as well and so was the Indian market. Again the items there were pretty cool... but I spent so much on the fruits there. Just so many stalls with fresh fruit ready top be consumed. 

So yeah it was a great trip. And I never knew I would get into food so much. But I think it's because I farking love a good curry and all the chow there were curry based. They did have like BBQs and such ... but mostly I had the spicy stuff.

And I did a lot of mucking around. To the point where I was coming back to the hotel room at like 3 in the morning.

Though the food and such was pretty cheap, I found booze a little expensive, esp coming out of Fiji and the clothing stuff was a little on the other side of the budget. Mostly because a lot of the malls only had designer wear. I was itching for a thrift shop somewhere to see what I could find.

In case you're interested I was in Malaysia for a workshop on Ozone Depletion and it's relation to climate change / Global warming. The next part of my involvement with the project is to create an awareness on the subject.  So that's what is taking up most of my time right now... that and Dead Space 3.

What else...

I have been going out a lot recently which hasn't been nice to the wallet. Most of these night outs have ended with me stumbling home at like 4am and then hitting the office at 8am. But I think this is all part of the grieving process... and I will phase this out. Eventually.

I will however be giving up on beer before anymore of this beer belly takes effect. I'm thinking strictly vodka, tequila and rum for the night outs. Plus since I just got out of a long relationship, a lot of these night outs are kinda slow until I get at least a little bit tipsy.

And how come all the interesting ladies already have dates? What's up with that?

So yeah... that's kinda what I've been up to recently. Well that's the kinda the high lights at least. With the first 1/4 of the year almost done, it's been a pretty "hit and miss" start... but I'm sure things can only get better from here.

Routine Q&A

Routine is the up coming exploration/ horror game from indie English developers Lunar Software. Routine is a Steam "Green Lit" game and is frankly one of the better looking game that's part of the line up. With a strong sense of exploration  and discovery over straight Horror, the game brings a fresh new take on the genre I think.

Recently the Dev crew requested some questions for a Q&A video they were going to put together and I was lucky enough to have some of my questions addressed in the video.

Check it out - my Questions are at about the 3:44 mark

I'm really looking forward to this game as I am a sucker for exploration and sci-fi horror. Lunar Software is looking for an April release for Routine - I can't wait to get my hands on it.

And then?

And then I had a great day off yesterday. Chowed all over town, did a bit of working out, caught up on my reading.

All in all it was a very productive day, though it did get a little depressing when my PS3 died. After corrupting my 250 hour Dark Souls save last weekend, the Piece of Shit 3 finally decided to give me the finger and call it quits. Luckily one of the retail outlets here has a reasonable price on PS3s and give them out on hire-purchase, so I'm hoping to pick up a new one next week. I need to get one because if I don't play the Last of Us I'll die. (That's right Kayla - I will)

But thanks to the awesome Steam sale that's been happening since last week, my gaming fix won't be lacking any time soon.

Since Sunday I've been mucking around with Deadlight which has to be one of the better takes on the zombie apocalypse for video games. The only travesty with Deadligth is me taking so long to buy it, but thanks to the wait and the sale I managed to get it at a great price. I was actually hard out for this game for some time, ever since I saw it release for Xbox Arcade back in July. As far as story and atmosphere goes, Deadlight is a trip to play, and the ending actually left me sad and moved.

 
The game itself plays like Limbo with zombies, with puzzles and platform elements pasted against a 2D design. If I had to complain about anything it would be that the jump button sometimes lags a bit, but aside from that the game is a downloadable masterpiece. Plus the Steam edition comes with a host of extras including all the promotional materiel for the game along with developer diary videos and concept art to unlock.

It took me about 4 hours to finish the game, and this was with me taking my time to find as many secrets and such as I could. The supposed game time was one of the factors that put me off buying the game right away because in terms of Fijian Dollars, a short game for $30 can be a little disheartening. But for the sale price of $15 bucks I felt the game was a great deal. But then again $15 was intended international market price. Though the story is short, to pay through it is quite a feeling. A lot of the games themes and atmosphere reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Plus I'm a sucker for survival games and even now I'm debating if I should pick up I'm Alive as well.

I think it's safe to say that Deadlight is one of the best zombie games I've played, and for a budget downloadable title it does a lot to elevate the genre over some of its AAA contemporaries.

Tonight I'll be doing some creative writing as Alan Wake since I picked that up on Steam as well this morning. This is another game that I was interested in when it first came out but for some reason or other just never got around to playing. I'm actually sort of in the mood for the whole Twin Peaks thing that the game seems to have going on.

Aside from the vidya games my girlfriend and I have been brushing up on our 80s horror movies. Since Halloween we've been digging up all sorts of 80s B movie goodness. Mostly we've been after movies that are considered "under rated" gems. Though a lot of what we found should have been left 'unseen' - a lot of it was very entertaining. I've actually  got a couple of new faves now as well. One of them being the Jeffery Combs flick From Beyond.

 To be fair though this film is already considered a cult classic, so falling for it is not too obscure, plus Jeffery Combs is like one of my favorite horror movie actors.

Another movie I had to watch was Alligator, because as a kid I had this one VHS rip of the animated feature Fire and Ice and the trailer for Alligator was at the beginning of the tape and I'd watch it over and over because I thought it looked like an awesome creature feature. I was glad to find out that the film was not a let down and was in fact very well put together. It reminded me a lot of Jaws, and it was very well acted with some great one liners. It's also one of the better "it came from below" horror movies I've seen - right up there with C.H.U.D. (or down there?)

Another thing my girl friend and I have been spending a lot of money on recently is eating out. We've been visiting a lot of restaurants and dinners that we normally pass by, just to see what kind of specialties they might have.

Last night was funny though because I've been trying to watch what I eat, especially for dinner. So I had this great Thai Chicken salad and was all like - ok I'm set. But then like two hours later I was so damn hungry I could eat a baby. Lucky there was some left over Chili- chicken in the fridge. So I guess I gotta polish my dinner options a bit.

I'm looking forward to chilling this weekend, as i had spent the last weekend at the office working on a documentary for FBC TV.

And I can't believe where are days away from kicking of December, man this year went by so fast, and I know we say that about every year, but 2012 really did just fly by. I'm hoping to use my Hibiscus trips either in late December or maybe early next month.

What have you got planned for the rest of the year?

Dead Space 3 Preview (Inside Gaming Extended)

A closer look at co-op and weapon building, as well as something even more interesting. How two players co-oping together actually see the story differently because of the "Dementia" mechanic.

Dark Souls: Back to basics

So last night I was playing through the new Dark Souls DLC with my meat headed Strength based character. This was the guy I made for my first play through. I knew nothing about miracles or pyromancy or sorcery and invading level caps and other things that i know now about Dark Sopuls - I just built him according to regular RPG rules for a warrior.

High on Vitality to take the hits, higher on Strength to dish out the damage and some Dex for speed.

Last night I came across a simple truth; Faith builds and magic spells are awesome, but noting feels as satisfying as smashing a giant axe into an enemies face. Playing through the DLC with my Faith/ Dex toon was tricky. Lots of dodging and rolling around, and forget about standing in the way of a fire breathing dragon. But playing as my first toon, aptly named "Clarence" was just pure bad ass.

Stone Giant trying to smash me? He can't even get through my Great Shield of Artorias. Is that shadow magic? Lucky my Black Iron set is built to resist and with the Great Shield Absorbing 100% of everything - good luck trying to build damage . As for the horrible new monstrosities out to get me - meet my Black Knight Great axe!

And man - don't get me started on the PVP!

At soul level 135 I had constant invasions as soon as I entered the Royal woods. But I was surprised at how well my toon held up. In fact he didn't get a single defeat the whole night, and I did some invasions too and was only killed when I came across a co-op team just in front of Artorias arena. My Faith/ Dex guy is pretty kick ass in PVP as well - he should be since I built him specifically for invading, but Clarence is just a beast.

There really is no point to this post other than to brag about how awesome my first Dark Souls toon is. The only conflict I have is wither to level him up any further because right now I'm nervous as heck walking around with 200k souls.

I leave you with this awesome art piece of Yurt from Demons Souls fighting Lautrec from Dark Souls. Sadly I couldn't track down the artist who did it -but i like the way he thinks.