Durant is NBA's Elite

For the past few weeks, my life has pretty much consists of work, the NBA playoffs, work then more NBA playoffs. There's a conference finals game on practically every day so much so I begin to wonder how to fill the gap once the NBA finals is over. On Saturday Game 3, Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City put on an awe-inspiring 4th quarter to will his team to victory. It was one of those unbelievable cold-blooded, seemingly effortless 16 straight points by a single player that just breaks the will of any opposing team.

I felt inspired but not like how you would imagine... I felt inspired to pick up my playstation 3 controller, dust off that copy of NBA 2K11 and finally hunt down that trophy designed to mock KD, the cover star of NBA 2K's rival competition - NBA Elite (which never got release of course).  Get KD to eclipse his previous career high of 48 points in a single game? I'm pretty sure he scored more than 50 points in that nuggets game this season so not a big problem. Initially I was force-feeding KD the ball so much I wondered if it would ultimately jeopardised the team to a loss but in the end, I wound up with 59 KD points on 24 of 48 shooting and a playoff win over the Dallas Mavericks in the first round. Few trophies have as much history as this, I reckon this will be one of my favourites for a long time to come.

Hungry for Snake?

These are the two shirts that I picked out from the Metal Gear 25th Anniversary collection at my local Uniqlo store today. It's been a long wait for sure, I was beginning to wonder if they will make it here at all or how many of the designs are actually going to be available. Thankfully most of all the designs are there but some looked better up close than others so it made my decision much easier.

As video games have yet to achieve mainstream recognition within pop culture outside of Japan especially without a big movie franchise attached to its name, it's certainly nice to see these shirts in your regular retail outlet. Even if it means you sometimes rub shoulders with aunties who probably have no clue who solid snake is, picking the shirts next to you.

Damned Weekly Offers

My friend in Singapore was a little surprised when I didn't pick up any games during my recent trip there last month. I suppose this is because he has seen me at my worst, splurging on video games to the point he had to treat me to dinner afterwards as I simply couldn't afford such a lavish meal on my last day there. Yeah I know, I'm embarrassed by that so I made it a point not to let that happen again (the splurging of course, not the lavish meals...)

This time there were a couple of close calls like Shadow of the Damned and No More Heroes Paradise but ultimately it just wasn't as cheap as it looks after converting the dollars. I ended up having enough for a lavish meal this time even though we just had some rather affordable greasy burgers instead.

Today's Play-asia weekly special is pretty enticing, in fact they have been on quite a row recently offering Binary Domain and Never Dead just weeks after release. This week is the big kahuna, Yakuza: Dead Souls as well as Shadows of the Damned on the daily special. The only concern is Shadows happens to be the Japanese version and I didn't have time to see if it was import-friendly or not. The time was 3 hours away from the daily special expiring and there were only a few copies left. Ultimately I just had to take the chance, it's about as cheap as you can find the game selling here and just a tad cheaper than it was in Singapore. Of course, this wouldn't be a story if I failed to mention the hero's trashy looking girlfriend appearing on the cover of the box art as she was curiously absent from the others. Never underestimate the power of the string, my friend. Now it's time to make some room on my hard disk and game cupboard for my bulging collection.

The Mystery of Kenzan

I forgot to mention that my copy of Yakuza Kenzan happened to be a brand new copy still in its shrinkwrap when purchased. I didn't really give it much thought as to why a black label version was still available when the budget edition was released quite some time ago. I did see a lot of japanese games in the game store so it could have been old stock waiting to be cleared. Then I got home and realised something was amiss with my copy as you will soon see here with these pictures.

Now if you look at the earlier post you will notice I stacked my copy of Kenzan next to my japanese import of Yakuza 3. If you are aware of the chronology Kenzan was released before Yakuza 3, in fact it's the first Yakuza game on the ps3 platform from team SEGA. Still with me so far? Good now take a look here at the top of the Yakuza 3 case, it has the old playstation 3 logo embossed onto the case like most old games back when the black label used to be on the side of the cover art.

Now since Kenzan came before 3, the case should also be embossed with the old playstation 3 logo on the top right? That's the weird thing, the case for my copy of Yakuza Kenzan happened to be the new type without the playstation 3 logo on the top despite being shrinkwrapped. This is the official Sony shrinkwrap mind you, where you see the playstation logo on the tape as you peel the plastic off. Now before you jump into any conclusions as to why an old game could end up in a new casing, I must say I also notice a similar copy of Kenzan appearing in another game store so I doubt there's anything fishy going on here. My only plausible explanation for all this is that the game are still being published in their original cover art in Taiwan.

Let's Play Kenzan!

In case you see me on PSN and was wondering what I was playing, here's the latest addition to my game collection, Yakuza Kenzan. I have been meaning to play this game for a long time and like most gave up waiting for a western release. Of course I wasn't going to settle for a budget label release at this stage so I kept looking for a black label version of the original release until I found this in Taiwan.

Not a bad find at the price of 750NT plus I love getting games on my trip overseas as it makes great momentos.... well for me at least.

Guns Not Included

Love them or hate them there is no denying that downloadable content (DLC) is here to stay in the gaming scene. What kind of content constituted as being okay to be released as DLC and what content is absolutely necessary to the core experience that should not be released separately as DLC? For a game like Dead Rising 2, i can certainly live without the additional costumes and raised attributes as the game is already filled with enough costumes and apparel in the basic game.

Prologue/epilogue episodes like in Dead Rising 2, LA noire, RE5 or Lords of Shadow? Again nice to have but like an issue 0 to a comic book series not absolutely necessary to experience the core story. A trio of guns from a shooter game ? Now that's a big no-no especially when it's a tough shooter like Vanquish. Three weapons in Vanquish were pulled from the game and released as a Pre-order bonus from selected stores during the game initial release. Playing the game without them is like playing handicap though you can certainly finish the game, removing these guns significantly alters the difficulty of the game. I had no choice but to begrudgedly purchase this from the PSN store recently but it wasn't like Dead Rising 2 where I enjoyed the game so much to the point I didn't mind spending an extra dollar on the game's DLC.

What's your reluctant DLC buy?

Logan in the Old West

Logan, meet John Marston you two have a lot in common

I was in a bit of a wolverine craze of late so I dug up some modern classics to read and among them was the recent Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven. What makes Old Man Logan so compelling is Logan playing the role of the family man pacifist in this alternate reality future instead of his usual badass mutant berserker self. We don't know why he is that way initially but there he is, attending to his family and herds of cattle in the barn. We have all seen wolverine in action before and being the best at what he does, it's nice to see such restrain with the character until the final payoff when he does pop his claws out again.

What does this has to do with anything? Well, the character John Marston in Red Dead Redemption just reminds me of the Old Man Logan tale. But the problem with Marston is we've never seen him in action as the cold-blooded killer riding with his old gang or even this new family he talks about so fondly, at least this early on in the game where I'm playing. It hardly establish the character quite as well hearing him talk about it rather than seeing it. It's doesn't feel intimidating when Marston warns strangers not to push his buttons or take his words lightly because even I'm not sure what he's capable of, aside of picking up rare flowers and herding the cattle. The mundane task just feels that way, this is not how the cliche story of cold-blooded killers walking away from past life of killing is supposed to be. Is there going to be a huge payoff at the end where Marston goes berserk and just guns down his old gang and anyone standing in his way?

Maybe I should have just watched Clint Eastword in Unforgiven instead, I heard it's really good and has a similar story to Old Man Logan, probably Red Dead Redemption too.