Being Saleh: The Winner

Two months ago Square Enix made a Free Company/Guild video recruitment contest, so we submitted our entry, it's just us having fun in a dungeon and Linsa Lominsa together.... and we WIN!!!!

Thanks to everyone participated, it won't happen without you all!! , we delivered some cheesy lines though :D

Dual Wield: The things that are not on line

The thing on the right picture is a patch of begonia sp, if you're not familiar with begonia you might want to look at your sixth grade biology textbook, it's one of the most complex flower family, also a common one (and yes, a nightmarish version of them exist on all fantasy media, like those man-eater plants). this flowershrub on the picture have nautilus style, pretty slick and awesome IMO. So anyway what's a picture of flower doing in my blog?

Let me get back a bit, a few weeks ago I stared at my Steam folder and found out that I have like ten unplayable games, and a quick look at my folder reminds me that I just bought The Secret World and have no time to play it alongside Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV, I have a project on SWTOR to ensure whether their f2p style is a trap or just a plain hindrance, apparently I only racked three days worth of my game time to it to reach level 30, (I finished it yesterday), not to mention I also have to sacrifice FFXIV for it, long story short: what happened? PS: I just remembered that I also had Defiance and only played it for like 5 hours

I guess I was burnt out, more likely I was burnt out not because of the games, but of my activity around it, like hunting news, beta testing, give some feedback to devs, forum trolling, blogging, and so on, I have done this since three years ago with occasional game-jumping and sub-continuing (on WOW), I took a break on WOW and other games for a year due to real life situation, but this one is different since i have so many things to do, so many games to play and review that I don't even know where to start, or ends, or whatever. Also i noticed that I can only stay awake for two hour at nght, probably from work or I'm just not that fit anymore.

So as we continue, last week I met a friend, I don't usually make new one since my job and all gaming stuff prevent me from meeting people (which doen't have anything to do with work) and I was asked: "When was the last time you go out?", I hopelessly tried to rack my brain to find that information, I know that I must go out at a time, and embarrasingly: the only thing that I can remember is that a year ago, our Guild Wars 2 guild met offline (an annual event), after that everything was like work-related or something similar, family affairs and such.

I'm embarrased to say that I'm a complete shut in

Playing all MMORPGs was my very goal, it won't matter if I like it or not, just play them all, review them all, see them all, follow them all, it gives me something to do beside work which I also have several similar set of goals, MMORPGs is a life that I discovered and build from scratch when I was still a lone beach wanderer on Anarchy Online six years ago. Building a gaming community is also a nice touch, although it will be constantly changing by trends, some people stay, some people go, I still believe a good gaming community transcends the game itself but what happens when the game itself wear you out? I'm not expecting this, I though the constant stream of MMORPGs can prevent something trivial like boredom, but what happened wasn't boredom, it was "too much of a good thing".

So, the flower picture was sent for me, per request, The other picture is a photo I took on my trip to Bali several years ago (see? I did go out) I think it's time to take a break from gaming, I don't know what I'll do though, before I met MMORPGs I have nothing to talk about except works, and probably hobbies I never did anymore but I think I found that the outside's getting more and more interesting...You know, I met a lot of nice people online, I also a witness of how anonymity can bring the worst of mankind, ingame it's nice to see guildies pulling their weight for you. It was just like someone offgame that barely knows you, spent five hours on each and every day going to and from work, and still found some time to meet you, it was wonderful act and deserves your outmost gratitude, why? Because they're good people, that's all.

Valvrave The Liberator: The Review

courtesy: Wikipedia

If you're not familiar with Gundam franchise you should know that it's a long running anime series about mass-murdering adolescents who piloted giant robots, every installment of Gundam deals with war and their effects to the people involved in them, at least until a failed effort called Gundam Age failed to deliver these things and make the show a joke. There's an HD OVA (mini series) called Gundam Unicorn (out on bi-three-monthly schedule) which still retain the premise. But unfortunately it's not enough, so former Gundam series creator and developers created a new series called Valvrave which embodies all past Gundam's niche.

Valvrave opened with familiar setting, fancy schoolboys and girls hangong out in their school, then war shoved in front of them in form of an invasion, giant robot appears and they have no choice to pilot it or their loved ones die, in this one Tokishima Haruto takes the helm of a suddenly appeared giant robot called Valvrave, unfortunately (formerly) unknown to him that it has dire consequences for him (and become more dire as the series progressed), the situation get more complicated when a genius calculative invader called L-Elf Karlstein suddenly switches side and join his forces. The story revolves around the survival attempt and consequences Haruto and his cohorts did to keep their independence.

There are a lot of going on in Valvrave as it borrows many elements from hit series, the cold and calculative L-elf can be related to Lelouch from another sunrise series: Code Geass or L of Death Note, Haruto is the narrow-minded straight good guy with little development but realistic, Haruto's schoolmates (lots of them) are supportive characters with their own reason to fight and support. There's also elements of mystic/supranatural as a balance of this story . But the one thing about Valvrave is that every elements of this series plays right, there's almost zero anticlimactic feeling after each episode, also there's always something going on with these kids and it's not here by itself or suddenly appeared, but surfaced as a result of their own doing in the past. As the series progressed more Valvrave are discovered and these kids despite knowing the consequences decided to pilot it, the thing is that it keeps the audience guessing who's the next pilot as a part of the series' appeal, and when it finally revealed it's not from a single scene of private episodic heroism but a clever chain of events from past epsiodes which it's plot twist can be shocking and unpredictable up to the borderline of controversy, it's not really subtle but it works.

Love story exist in Valvrave as a support plot, it takes form of impossible ones, nothing from these stories can be considered 'worked out' due to another elements of the plot: Lies/Truth and Indifferences, it can be considered harsh at some points, it's not a main dish of the main plot but it served as a foundation of expanding it. Indifference also plays major part in the global conflict as the little struggle of survival becomes international incident and ignite all out war between nations, and it was executed nicely without have to shove the audience an episode of just a laser battle between Gundams... i mean Valvraves

Element of Strategy plays a pivotal role of Valvrave since it's not only the Valvrave fighting out there, the transition of the naive schoolkids into battle-hardened veterans going on smoothly without making their original personality disappear, L-elf as the mysterious genius plays battle of wits on almost episode not only with the enemy but with his allies, and for each battle more of his personality begins to open up without leaving his original cold calculating self gone.

Valvrave is Gundam, I can give you that but it has it's own story, it's own design, it's own twisted imperfect sense of justice, turmoil is the Valvrave series main engine even when there's episode of peace, there's many plot in this series that has the potential of becoming a sequel even when it has been resolved, it's only a story about several schoolkids which the world altered between rejecting and accepting them, back and forth regarding of a global situation. Valvrave made everything logical, as it's slogan: "The system that unveils the world", exposing the truth can be harsh, sometimes people can't accept it, but acknowledging that people is different than you doesn't mean they held a gunpoint to your head, but when fear of differences has gripped you... you'll see guns everywhere and you'll shoot first.