Clans

Anyone who has played any online game (or games that can be played online - honestly, what's the difference?) knows that there is something called clans or guilds. Essentially it's a group of players who band together for different reasons and they play together, laugh together, win together, talk to each other (c-c-c-c-combo breaker), and die together.

In World of Tanks, players can join clans and just like any game out there, there are different types of clans. These clans range from the very casual laid back clans that teach newcomers the basics, to hardcore clans that require large amounts of effort and dedication. These hardcore clans have to option to compete in clan wars and try to win land for their clans. Of course with something so important, these clans often mandate their members to participate in training battles to improve each others' skills.

I had recently left a casual clan and moved onto a more hardcore one. One of my many reasons was because my old clan started seeing a lot of inactive members and no matter how hard I tried to push for it, we were never ready to fight in clan wars. There simply wasn't enough members on a given night to even participate in clan wars let alone have 15 tier 10 tanks ready to fight. At the same time, I also believed that my skills could be better used elsewhere and that I was rather confident in being able to take out any tank one-on-one. I like to consider myself an engineer and I tend to look at the strengths and weaknesses of each tank and compare them to what I'm driving. Then based on the data I have gathered, I can make a simulation of the event in my head and judge whether or not I would win. Of course, I would have to put it into practice but having played World of Tanks for so long, it does become easy to discover the weaknesses of your enemies after a while.

So enough of me bragging about my skills (which really aren't that great but I'm trying to improve), my current clan is filled with nice people. Granted some are rather...unique in their own sense but all are very nice and awesome people. These fellows have clan wars experience and know what they are doing and after fighting with them in multiple clan battles, I feel rather confident that we can defeat all but the most hardcore clans. It's funny though how we are able to capture land only to have it taken away from us the next day. Then we recapture it and lose it just as quickly. It's still a nice experience though and having played on that map so many times that I now unconsciously go to my usual position when I encounter that map in public matches.

Seeing how this is a blog, I feel that I should also talk a little bit more about myself. For those stalkers trying to figure out more about me, I am a university student. I think I'll just leave it at that for now.

Oh, can't forget a picture. I had just recently got my first tier 10 tank so I have been using that for clan wars a lot. It's a very fun tank and just like most American tanks, it's rather versatile compared to other nations.

True Crime

Several years back there was a game called True Crime: Streets of LA developed by Luxoflux. Basically it was a Grand Theft Auto game except you were a cop instead of a criminal. It's always nice to see the station from the other side of the bars. Anyway, that was back when I had first started playing video games, well seriously playing them. I had a Nintendo Gamecube back then probably because it was the cheapest out of the PS2 and Xbox. I didn't really catch onto PC gaming until much after did I discover that it was a lot easier to have everything you wanted (games, school, work, etc.) all on one machine. Did I get off topic again? So True Crime was my very first M game and I'm going to be honest here, I wasn't 17 at that time yet. But I really wanted to play that game because you were allowed to be a cop. I've always wanted to be a cop when I was a kid. It always seemed fascinating watching the cops chase down criminals in movies and on TV so obviously, I started to get influenced by it.

Nevertheless, I managed to get my hands on a copy of True Crime. Boy was it money well spent. I still have fond memories of it from a special appearance with Snoop Dogg to how difficult it was to get your hands on a squad car to the very accurate map of Los Angeles. Well the map wasn't super accurate but for a video game made in 2003, it was very good. Essentially, you could explore almost all of L.A. through a video game provided that you get used to seeing the same buildings and the same pedestrians and cars.

It was the first video game of its series and just like any other video game, there were areas that could be improved or fixed. A.I. is probably the most obvious one given the fact that this game was made in 2003. But a good chunk of these improvements were installed onto the next game in the series: True Crime: New York City.

Now TC: NYC would have been a great improvement over TC: SoLA if it weren't for the fact that it was rushed to stores. TC: NYC implemented a monetary system (just like many video games at that time) and as a player, you could purchase cars from various car dealerships or clothing to customize the protagonist Marcus Reed. The number of cars you were allowed to own was greatly expanded from the standard Ford Crown Victoria to a Nissan 350z to even a limo. All of these cars can be given a "police upgrade" which essentially adds a small light bar at the back of the car (or front in some cases), gives it a siren and adds a reinforcement bar at the front of the vehicle. This effectively made turned your civilian car into a police one and you could go around pulling over drivers checking for contraband or issuing bogus traffic tickets.

Both games allowed you to randomly frisk pedestrians for illegal weapons or contraband. It's always pretty fun watching the animation as your character cuffs the suspect and trips him onto the ground. TC: NYC also gave players the option to turn in the evidence to the evidence locker at the station or sell it at a pawn shop for some extra cash. This would affect your character has he completes his deeds in a good way or a bad way. This lead to different endings depending on whether you wanted to be a bad cop or good cop.

I never did got to the part why TC: NYC was so bad now did I? The biggest reason for it was because it was rushed thus a lot of bugs were not found nor removed. This really surprised me as anyone who played the game for 30 minutes would soon notice the frequent crashing or the inability to use the scope on a simple sniper rifle. The game was still very fun but the bugs really ruined it.

Fast forward to 2011. I was very disappointed to find out that True Crime 3 was canceled by Activision as they wanted to focus more of their efforts on Call of Duty and other mainstream titles. Now I haven't really paid attention to the gaming news lately so when I walked into EB games today, I noticed a game called Sleeping Dogs. The cover was what had captured my attention and as I picked it up, I got this strange feeling of familiarity. The back cover had the usual pictures of showing some action but I thought these pictures looked really familiar. Reading the description also told me that the player would be playing as an undercover Hong Kong police officer. Now things were starting to get really familiar and I decided I would remember the name and research the game when I got home.

As it turns out, Square Enix had bought the rights to the game and finished the development of it. I am really excited to see how this will turn out and also I really wanted to play a video game that took place in Hong Kong; my home city.

I'm feeling really tired right now so I'll just paste the usual picture and go to sleep.

Why Must I Title My Posts?

I feel like it's been such a long time since I wrote something. Nevertheless I will make an effort to make more posts from now on. Hopefully my procrastination skills won't get the better of me... Lately I've been feeling my English skills have been deteriorating. I'm starting to turn to short sentences. Like this one. WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!!?

Either way, I've just finished watching Battleship and I thought I should write a few things down before they leave my head. For those of you who have never heard of Battleship, it's actually a board game in which two players set up their warships and try to strike their opponent's fleet. In the infinite wisdom of Hollywood, they have decided to make a film adaptation to such a game and put a little spin to it; aliens.

I won't spoil the movie for those who haven't watched it but basically aliens decide they need Earth for their purposes and seeing how aliens don't talk human, the most obvious language is violence. A good chunk of the movie is filled with action of big guns firing at each other but there are the occasional parts that make you wonder, "do they ever do that in the military?". 

On a side note, I must admit Rihanna looked a lot better than with her usual make-up. That's not to say that she didn't have any make-up in the movie but instead, she didn't sport her usual "Nicki Minaj" look. Did I exaggerate a bit when I compared her to Nicki Minaj? Well Rihanna certainly did look more "normal" than her usual self. At least that's my opinion. 

Being the overly-obsessive gamer that I am, I began to think about playing a naval battle RTS game. Unfortunately I'm thinking I set the bar too high as the closest that I found was Naval Warfare: Arctic Circle. I know graphics shouldn't be too big of a problem when I go look for games but this one really makes you feel like you're playing a game from the 90's. Just in case I didn't make myself clear, this game was released April 2012. 

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait until 2013 when World of Warships will enter alpha testing. But speaking of which, about a month ago I had received an invitation to closed beta for World of Warplanes and I am ashamed to admit that I suck at flying. Why couldn't they have invented heat-seeking missiles earlier? I'm having such a hard time aiming my bullets at my target. I knew I was bad at planes but this really takes it up a notch. The first kill that I got was because my wing grazed into him and I was fortunate enough that he had very little health left. I crashed shortly after because I flew too low....

But I honestly can't wait for World of Warships. I think I'm going to grind the aircraft carrier line first seeing how it's always fun having dozens of planes flying around you (provided you aren't piloting said planes of course).