The Force Unleashed

For those of you who don’t know, I am a Star Wars fan and quite a gamer (those who know me will know that I can get quite hardcore at times). So when The Force Unleashed was released 3 days ago, I finally grabbed a copy after months of waiting. Non-gamers, this post may bore you so feel free to pass Go and Collect $200. Uh... forget about that last part.

The Force Unleashed is a 3rd-person Action game which takes place in between the events of Episode III and IV. You play as Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, and are tasked to mop up the Jedi leftovers of Order 66. For those of you who don’t understand a thing I just said, here is the layman-nutshell version: In Star Wars: Episode III, a bad guy called the Emperor has plans to rule the galaxy. In order to do this, he must first remove the Jedi, a group of peace-keeping good guys. He achieves this by passing a decree called Order 66 which involves a Jedi holocaust. Another bad guy called Darth Vader dispatches his secret apprentice, Starkiller, to seek out and kill the remaining Jedi who managed to escape Order 66. With the Jedi out of the way, the Emperor establishes the Galactic Empire, an evil totalitarian faction, and eventually rules most of the galaxy with an iron fist. These turn of events give rise to another faction – the Rebel Alliance (i.e. the good guys) – who oppose the Galactic Empire and aim to bring an end to the tyranny, which brings us to Star Wars: Episode IV, where war between the two factions is already taking place. The game’s story is pretty straightforward for the beginning, but takes a twist towards the end and ultimately, it serves as a fitting filler between the two episodes.

What is thy bidding, my Master?

As the name implies, The Force Unleashed allows you to harness and unleash the power of the Force, except that it’s magnified 10 times, on Steroids, Stimulants and Red Bull. When they said ‘unleashed’, they weren’t joking. If you’ve watched the Star Wars movies, you may have seen Obi-Wan or any of the other Jedi using the Force to lift and push objects or foes away. In The Force Unleashed, you don’t just push things away – you push them as if they were hit by a giant invisible punching glove going at hypersonic speed. An ability called Force Push in the game allows you to pick up any objects lying around (e.g. rocks, giant boulders, steel frames, wall panels or even trees) and use them as ammo to throw at your foes. A giant boulder flying at you is not very nice. No ammo? No problem. Force Push also allows you to pick up enemy soldiers (e.g. Stormtroopers) and fling them towards their squad mates. Talk about teamwork.

Need a push?

One thing worth mentioning is the game's physics engine, which allows objects being thrown to  really fly like rigid bodies and act accordingly to the surroundings (objects fall to the ground after hitting a wall, or roll down slopes). Like objects, enemies also exhibit similar behaviour to the surroundings, especially when they are being flung across a room like ragdolls. To illustrate this, let me introduce you to another ability called Maelstrom. When activated, any nearby foes and/or objects will start to levitate and float around Starkiller, who gathers power before emitting an invisible shockwave explosion which causes everyone and everything to be forcefully flung outwards at breakneck speed. Ouch.

Maelstrom - the calm before the storm

Besides Force Push and Maelstrom, there are other abilities which range from nifty-looking Lightsaber combos to sizzling Force Lightning attacks. With the large variety of abilities, raw power on hand, plus the fun and de-stressing factor (one of my favourite antics involves using Force Push to fling enemies off Cloud City, a floating city in the clouds), I’ve been really enjoying myself. There are certain points in the game where I just went, "Wow." after seeing moves which I didn't think possible. It's also funny to be flaunting your Force powers here and there while a hapless Stormtrooper standing nearby says in a resigned (Singlish: sian) voice, "How the hell are we supposed to defend against that?". Other than that, there are some certain issues and gripes in the game which I thought could have been done better, but hey, nothing’s perfect right? 

Andre Rieu - Waltz 2 from Jazz Suite No. 2

Here is one of my favourite waltzes - Waltz 2 from Shostakovich's Jazz Suite No. 2, performed by violinist, Andre Rieu and his fellow musicians.

Boy, I bet everybody's really enjoying themselves in the video. I hope you do too.



FOR MOTHER RUSSIA!

What a night...

Those of you who have played any of the Grand Theft Auto series of games should be familiar with the term 'Wasted', which appears when you die in the game. That was exactly what happened to me on August 29, 2008 - except for the dying part. What was initially supposed to be a mini pre-birthday gathering at Jazz@Southbridge eventually turned out to be DrunkFest 2008.

Jazz@Southbridge is this established jazz joint situated at Boat Quay just next to Elgin Bridge. With a live band playing everything jazz from mainstream to bossa nova, plus a nice cosy atmosphere, it has been my favourite haunt for some years now and I thought it'd be the perfect place to have the above-mentioned gathering to celebrate my upcoming 24th birthday. The gathering started out well with some light beer and finger food, the usual banter and an unexpected mini celebration courtesy of the band, for which I'd like to thank Alemay, Eddie, Bruno and the drummer (didn't catch his name). And did I mention the great music they played that night? Wave by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Awesome.

Everything was going real well... then the Flaming Lamborghini appeared. I thought, "What the heck, it's my birthday." I conquered it and started to feel my engine revving up. Ok, no problem man. On with the gathering and chit-chat and live music and hmm, what do we have here... WHAT THE. 5 x Tequila shots. WHO THE. Oh man. By then, I was feeling a bit high from the Lamborghini and also infused with some bravado so I gulped down the 5 shots almost consecutively. A few minutes later, I was almost at the gates of La-La Land. I was now really high but could still converse although my do-you-know-what-the-hell-is-happening senses were at like 25% efficiency. The gathering carried on and with my impaired senses, I eventually lost track of time - and didn't notice the Waterfall. At this point of time, I was already flying into La-La Land. Even while typing this sentence, I can only vaguely remember downing that Waterfall. I don't even know what it tasted like. Everything after that was just a barf- I mean, blur.

The next thing I remember was waking up at 5:30AM on my bed. My throat was like the Sahara and I kept trying - and failing - to piece up the missing void in my memory. I somehow managed to get up, walk to the kitchen, and grab a glass of water. And barf. I then made my way to the toilet, brushed my teeth (I took 2 tries to put the toothpaste onto my toothbrush) and took a nice hot shower before KO'ing on the bed.

I woke up again later at about 10:30AM and realized I was in a total shit condition. I was totally WASTED. So this is what a hangover feels like.

I made my way to the toilet and saw toothpaste sprawled all over the sink. Oooh... so that's why I took 2 tries... Anyway, the rest of the day was just rest, recovery, more barfing and the shocking revelation of the night before (after finding out about it from my friends) which I shall not go into detail haha...

What a night. What a celebration. What a hangover.

Friends, thanks for coming down to celebrate. I really hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did! (post-Waterfall period not counted)

Thanks a lot for the presents too; the chocs, B-Wing and running gear are all AWESOME!

Music

Can you imagine what life would be like without music? Yeah, it'd be pretty quiet. And boring. Personally, I feel music is very much a part of our lives. It is necessary. It may even be in some way responsible for giving us 'life'. And I really thank God for creating music.

They say music is the universal language and I agree. Music has this power to transcend beyond the borders of gender, race, nationality or however you want to differentiate the people of the world. It conveys feelings, thoughts and emotions, for example, by inspiring us, cheering us up or making us feel happy - or sad. It is solace for the soul. It sets the mood, whether it be the pride and pomp of a National Anthem being played during an Olympic Medal Ceremony, the laid-back tropical tunes of Bossa Nova on a lazy afternoon, or the mega-uber-bass-killing Trance beats at a club. We all understand it and it bonds people together.

Scientifically, music is the product of varying frequencies of sound at different timings brought together to create a combination of melody, rhythm and harmony. This combination is picked up by our ears and transmitted to our brain where it is eventually interpreted as music. These varying frequencies of sound are more appropriately known to us as the notes used in music (A to G). For example, middle C has a frequency of 250Hz.

When I was in Primary 5, my mum, after seeing me efficiently using my time to play and laze around, decided to enrol me at Yamaha Music School in the electone course. For those of you who don't know what an electone is, it's a modernised version of the organ. Details aside and fast-forwarding to the future, I've never regretted taking that course (or more like I've never regretted mum signing me up for the course). Thanks mum! Being able to play the electone has given me another avenue to connect to music. It is a medium which allows me to musically convey my innermost feelings, my reflections on life, or my joy, sadness or whatever mood I'm in. Ok, that's a bit farfetched - I'm not really at a level where I can play and sweep people off their feet or make them start crying; only true musicians can do that. But frankly, playing music on my electone does give me joy and it helps me to de-stress. It is the practical side of enjoying music as compared to the aural side. Recently, I've also picked up the violin and that is one hard instrument to learn! I'm enjoying that lots but the usual screechings do not always ensure the joy haha...

I'm pretty sure most of us listen to music, no matter what the genre is. Whatever it is, just remember that it's that companion that rallies everybody together at a rock concert, or brings in the mood during Christmas, or keeps you company during those late nights.

Fine

The First Day of the Last Year

Today is the first day of my last academic year - or rather, my final year. After a 3 month hiatus, school has finally begun - again. As I was walking to my lecture class this morning I was thinking, "Jeez, it's been 2 years already?". Time sure does fly.

I made some mental notes of the sights and sounds of the day: Students sardined in the Internal Shuttle Buses? Check. Just-what-the-f***-is-going-on Lectures? Check. How-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-do-this-shit Tutorials? Check. Mile-long Subway queues? Check. The foreboding feeling that you are soon going to dive into (and probably drown) a pool of work of benthic magnitude? Check.

Ah... the smell of a new semester.

Aside from the usuals, there was something new as well - double-decker 151's! Wow, who would've thought we'd see double-decker buses plying the hilly roads of NUS. It seems that to alleviate the rush-hour problems of the 151 service in school, SBS Transit had kindly allocated double-decker buses to the service. This was actually a subject of some mindless banter I had with my friend some time back in which we joked about how the buses would negotiate the steep slopes and roundabouts of the campus. In fact, while walking down Kent Ridge Crescent today, I happened to see one of those double-decker buses making its way uphill and I watched it trudge up with no problem at all. I'd like to see that thing on full load.

Anyway, I'll see how the semester unfurls. I've got a FYP on hand, an interesting module on music, an Accounting module and some Engineering electives, plus I really need to up my grades (yes, they are pretty sucky). As me and my friend always used to say, "Next semester, I'm gonna work harder."

Yeah, right.

And I'm not being sarcastic.

Goodbye Cartel, Hello New York

It seems that every time I go to Cafe Cartel, the food always tastes worse than my last visit. This evening's dinner with mum was no exception.

Tonight's order consisted of Baked Chicken & Mushroom Macaroni for me, and Fish & Prawn Combo for mum. The macaroni had a choice of tomato or cream sauce and I forgot to specify tomato sauce. I only realized this much later on but refrained from bringing it up assuming that the default sauce was tomato and also because it'd be troublesome to change at such late notice. In the meantime, mum went to get some of the free flow bread. Back then, Cafe Cartel used to sell their bread as well as offer it free flow. Mum, who loved the bread for its crispy exterior and fluffy interior, would occasionally buy home a loaf or two. Heck, even I loved the bread. Tonight's bread however was far from its former glory. Now, I'm just gonna assume that we happened to get an old batch of bread or something and leave it at that.

Our food soon arrived and mum's Fish & Prawn Combo was looking pretty good with a large battered fish, salad side, some cross-cut fries and about 5 or 6 breaded prawns. Unfortunately for me, the default sauce for my macaroni turned out to be cream. Yay. Ok, so I thought I'd give it a try. I mean, how bad could cream sauce get right? Wrong. It turns out that it was pretty bad. The sauce had this milky-cheesy-buttery taste which was not very palatable in my opinion. They weren't very generous with the mozarella cheese either. I requested for some Tobasco sauce to try to save my taste buds some torture but to no avail. Thoughts aside, I braved through the cream sauce to eventually finish most of my macaroni. How that happened, only God knows.

Mum couldn't finish her Combo so she asked if I wanted some. I accepted, hoping that it would do some justice to the macaroni I just had. Upon closer inspection, the Fish & Prawn Combo didn't really look 'pretty good' anymore. The battered fish and breaded prawns were glistening with oil and after eating a bit of it, I just got sick with all the oil and friedness (that was the same reason mum passed the Combo to me haha). The mayonnaise from the salad and the sour cream that came with the Combo also did nothing to help me forget about that nasty encounter with the cream sauce and at that point I was pretty much sure my dinner was over.

On the way home, the greasy concoction of cream sauce, oil and fried stuff in my stomach left me feeling sick and with a bad aftertaste in my mouth. I decided to get a beer from a nearby 7-Eleven in hopes of preventing any potential messy situation and it worked quite well in killing the aftertaste and numbing the stomach.

I guess my Cafe Cartel'ing days are over. Maybe it was just a case of bad bread and bad sauce (the oil and friedness I've encountered before). Maybe, but one thing's for sure - Cafe Cartel now wasn't like Cafe Cartel then. Next time I'm heading for New York, New York.

Cheers

I love crappy, utterly nonsensical, exaggerated humour. I really do. Especially when the humour is in the face of seriousness (a la Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots). Here's a fine example of one, a Cheers beer commercial.



And after you've watched that one, check out the parodied version by Phoenix Wrong.



Cheers!