Salintheus

Wow, I wanted to get this game when it came out last year but I waited until now (by now I mean last week) and got it for $25AU.
It is one of the most amazing games I have ever played, so time for a mini-review.

As soon as you start this game, you get thrown into this incredibly vibrant and incredibly JRPG style story.
The premise: You are inside Frederic Francois Chopin’s dream while he lies in his death bed. A very interesting and different concept. Throughout the game there are cutscenes back to the ‘real world’ and between each chapter there are rather long music peices, composed by Chopin of course, which have photos and the story of Chopin. Pretty cool and educational. Being a JRPG there are a lot of cutscenes and this game is no exception. I think the first 5 hours of gameplay, you sit through 30 – 45 minutes of cutscene.

The battle system is pretty cool albeit not hugely different from other JRPGs. There is the time-based turn in which you can run around and do multiple attacks and spells. The main difference is the light and dark battle system. That is in light you do different special moves as to if you are in dark. Simple, cool and sometimes annoying.

Graphically, this game is on par to where it should be. There are no annoying little graphical glitches and everything is in the same style.
Aurally, it is as amazing as Lost Odyssey if not more so. Being a game based on a fictional Chopin, you would expect the music to be nothing less than brillaint, and it isn’t.

As for a learning curve, it takes a short while. But as the story goes on and your characters level up, you gain ‘party levels’. This changes the way that battles are fought, i.e. they become more tactical and difficult. Rather fun and adaptive.

Score: 8/10

Why is it so annoyingly hard to get a job even with a lot of experience in various different jobs?
I just can’t understand it.
I’ve been applying to jobs for over 18 months now. I have applied to roughly 100 – 120 different places but I don’t get anything. Not even a ‘next-round offer’ or callback.
WTF?

Over the past year and a bit, I have been friends with a band called Devonera. In particular the singer, Steven. He is quite possibly the only person in Adelaide that has the classic power metal/operatic voice. It can blow you away from 50 metres away. Anyway, long story short, Devonera kick him out because his voice didn’t suit the style. They have now become a hardcore band.

Steve was pining to join another band for a while. About 2 months down the track a band called Innocent Exile found him. This band play a style of melodic metal similar to Eternal Tears of Sorrow but less keyboards and more guitar melodies. I guess you could relate them to Dream Theater but that may be pushing it a bit too far. Well, Steve happened to love what he heard from the band and so agreed to do vocals for them.

Today, he finished recording his vocals over one of their songs called “Visions Of The Past” and holy shit, its brilliant. It is pretty mediocre quality but you hear everything you need to.
The link is http://tinyurl.com/4ddhw5.
Give it a listen and I hope you enjoy it.

Also, I most likely shall be recording them soon!

After much deliberation, review reading, shopkeep talking, I have finally settled upon a spec for me next and first ‘true’ gaming pc.

Now I could give you reasons for why I picked each part. I might possibly do that. But I shall just list the crucial components.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
Motherboard: Asus Striker II Formula
RAM: Corsair 4GB 1066Mhz DDR2
GPU: MSI GF9800GTX OC 512M
HDD: Samsung 750Gb Spinmaster
Case: Antec Twelve Hundred
PSU: Corsair TX750 750W
Monitor: BenQ V2400W 24″ 2ms

The CPU, RAM, HDD and case choice mostly came about from the fact I do a lot of audio work. Pro-tools is known to be a bitch and from my experiences with it and the amount of plugins I use, it is a real hog. The case is massive and has huge cooling. If I ever get enough money to buy Pro-Tools HD then I shall have plenty of room for the card.

Well, this is the basic jist of my build. By that I mean the crucial parts. This has taken me 24 drafts and 2 weeks to reach this conclusion. Picky much?

I’m just not entirely sure about the monitor.

Well over the past few weeks I have jumped into the world of PC building. It started with a friend asking me to install a hard drive, then another friend asked me to completely upgrade his computer and now I have 2 people wanting me to build brand new PCs.
How the hell did this happen?

I also have plans to build mine in the next couple of weeks.
It shall be my first TRUE gaming PC. I just can’t make up my mind about the graphics card, so here are my options.

Palit 9600GT OC vs. 2×9600GT OC in SLi vs 8800GT vs 2×8800GT in SLi vs 8800GTS vs 9800GX2

Of course the two obvious choices are the 8800GTS and 9800GX2. Ones cheap and awesome, the other is incredibly awesome just painfully expensive. I need to keep in mind that Nvidia might be releasing the 9900GTX in a month which will actually be different from the 8800GTS, unlike the 9800GTX.
So cost vs performance vs time are my factors.

The 9600GT OC will be a short-term solution. The 9600GT in SLi will be a slightly longer solution. The 8800 GT fits in the middle and the last two are long term.
Hmmmm, its a tough one.

This band was introduced to me last week with the film clip to their song “We Are The Nightmare”. Despite my original thoughts of the song title (how Arch Enemy of them!!), it turned out to be a brilliant song. So I listened to the rest of that album, it was pretty cool. I managed to get all of their works and holy shit, most of it blew me away.

I’m not new to tech death, not in the slightest, but these guys managed to take tech death and add a consistent melody/feel to each song. Unlike other bands such as Spawn Of Possession and Necrophagist (not so much) where its pretty much “I can play 9213812 notes a minute, how many can you play?”, Arsis managed to fit thousands of notes but its done well.

Well, thats enough about them. So here is the video “We Are The Nightmare”

I stayed up until 4:30 am to watch live-updates of the keynote speech. Quite frankly, I believe I could have gone to sleep. It was all predicted with the exception of GPS. The 3G iPhone hits Australia on 11th of July.
I can honestly say I’m disappointed as I’m sure a lot of other people are.