Timothy Olyphant has been confirmed as the actor to play Agent 47 from the Hitman series of video games. I’m not exactly sure if he’s fit for the part. As you can see from my crude 10-minute photoshop above, he doesn’t have the dark, brooding professional assassin image quite right. The movie should be interesting with Luc Besson on board. Cross your fingers and hope that this game-to-film adaptation doesn’t get butchered like the ones that came before it.

Hey, at least it isn’t Vin Diesel.

Gone is Insectivore, my old Celeron 300MHz SD 196MB. This PC I’m using now, Muymra, is a three year old AthlonXP 1800+ DDR 512MB whose knees have weakened and is likely on it’s last throes before it finally dies of old age. It’s actually running at 1.2GHz just so it doesn’t keep freezing up. This phased out Nvidia FX5600 128MB acts up every once in a while to bombard me with ugly square artifacts, usually at crucial moments while playing a game. Before it pisses me off enough to break it, I’m going to peacefully retire it out of pity and start planning for my next baby.

My P30,000 budget is fairly reasonable for a gaming PC considering I plan to transfer devices over from my current PC such as extra hard disks, my 19″ CRT, and my DVD-RW.

This list will be changed according to my most current list of parts to be purchased:

Next set of problems, coming up with the money by this summer and thinking of a new name.

Update: I’m halfway there, another month or so of holding off any impulse buying and I’ll have the money to buy this thing. Maybe add another month if I want to gift myself with a sweet Wacom Intuos.

Okay, so I made a mistake; we didn’t move to Makati City, we moved to Pasay City. Close enough, the Ayala MRT station is just a couple of stops away.

No phone line, internet connection, or even cable yet. I’m writing this post from my sister’s laptop at her boyfriend’s house just 2 spits away from our apartment. I’ve been killing time learnng from video tutorials I copied off the net months before, watching seasons of ReGenesis, Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Voyager. Also, I’ve made it a point to get some new games and catch up a little on the single player games I’ve neglected since I got sucked into the online gaming world.

The Smart WiFi people are supposed to come by this week and take a check if our location’s feasible for their broadband service. I’m surprised I’m doing well enough without a regular internet connection.

I’m going to continue killing time playing The Sims 2 (with University and Nightlife expansions), Black & White 2, and the almighty Civilization IV. I think those will keep me sane enough and satisfy my geek cravings for now. I think I should have gotten Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2 and Star Wars: Republic Commando though.

In a previous post, I expressed how much fun it was to create characters in City of Heroes and City of Villains. Here’s a bunch of icons from my childhood that I decided to recreate:

- He-Man
- Skeletor
- Mask Rider Black
- Piccolo (DBZ)
- Mojo Jojo

I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be making more during the course of my free trial.

Yesterday, I was asked to come by the office of a company I yet cannot name to pickup game boxes of City of Heroes and City of Villains to do some playtesting. I’ve been really dying to try out this game. If I had money to burn I definitely would have bought and subscribed to this game long ago, and I think that’s the root of my problem right now.

After a long night of creation a hero and a villain, putting both of them through the tutorial and initial missions, I found that the game didn’t immerse me enough into it. The game itself is impressive, the world is large and believable, the character creation and customization is simply jaw dropping, but I think I’ve been too spoiled by Guild Wars where the combat is more interesting and involved than just attacking an enemy and waiting for it to die.

I found myself being sent into a mission with a somewhat lackluster dialogue and little motivation to do it. All I had to do was enter a warehouse and kill everything inside. Oh wow, whoopdeedoo. I might have found no problem with this before, but now it just seems a little… dull.

Nonetheless, I’ll make the most out of my corporately-sponsored superhero/supervillain romp through Paragon City and The Rogue Isles. I’ll go give it another whirl and create another character, which is hands-down one of the most fun things in the world.

01/05/06 Edit: I take back the dull part. I’ve met some friendly players who invited me to join a bunch missions and steamrolling through them with other superheroes has turned out to be quite fun. I’ve recently created a new villain who commands a small army of ninjas. Hell yeah!

Pangya is a new free-to-play localized MMOG being introduced by NetGames. Even though I think the name “PangYa” without a doubt sounds terrible, I was told about it by a friend who has similar gaming preferences, so I decided to give it a chance. Much to my surprise I found it very entertaining and relaxing.

I played golf as a young boy, my father sort of goaded me into playing it. I spent many weekends whacking around balls at driving ranges, I even joined a junior tournament once (which I lost, to no one’s surprise). I wasn’t very good and I didn’t really enjoy having sore hands, sore feet and unnecessarily darker skin.

I don’t really like the graphic style, I’m quite fed up of the whole cutesey anime cliche, but hey it’s free to play so I can’t really complain. The music sounds like elevator music, but thankfully I didn’t come across any bad voiceovers for the weird “magical” power swings. Made available are some consumable items to use that provide various effects for 1 turn, and what seems to be a cutesy game prerequisite nowadays: vanity equipment. There are clothes, accessories, even caddies for you to purchase.

The user interface is actually nice, it gives you a little desktop with shortcut icons to various game features and UI elements that would give you an idea of what would happen if Fisher-Price made it’s own operating system.

Needless to say that the very concept of golf with RPG elements nauseates me, the actual golf-playing portion of the game is very playable and easy-to-learn. The tutorial will guide you through the basics and there is a practice mode so you don’t embarass yourself when you make a great drive to the green, but spend 2 or 3 extra strokes putting the ball into the hole from 3 yards away.

From there, you go into Versus Mode and start going into head-to-head or team matches. There is a Quick Start button that will immediately find you a match or create a room that other people will join a few seconds after and just play a golf game like you normally would.

There isn’t much pressure or distraction aside from the usual morons who want you to hurry up your shot. Just ignore the fuckers, you have anywhere between 30 seconds or a full minute to make your shot depending on the room’s settings. It’s all very casual.

So far I have spent one afternoon playing this, and I think it’s safe to say I will continue playing it because at the end of the day, the fun factor is what matters the most… even if you’re ankle-deep in your own vomit.

Recently posted at the RF Online Philippines website:

How loyal are you to your race?
Date Posted: December 28, 2005

RFO-Ph goes commercial

First, Sneak Peek.

“Only hand-picked warriors called to join the war on Planet Novus.”

Then, Open Beta…

“Accretians, Bellatos, and Corites gathered warriors to fight on their side. New recruits pledged their allegiance to their chosen races. Armies grew bigger, and the battle, deadlier.”

Now, a development in Planet Novus is about to test the loyalty of these warriors to their races as RF Online Philippines goes COMMERCIAL!

Pay-to-play starts on January 10, 2006!

“Battles will be more deadly and rivalry will be fiercer as only true Accretians, Bellatos, and Corites will remain on the battlefield.” Click here to see the Pay-to-play features.

Save your Christmas earnings, stock up on Level Up top-up cards, and be part of the country’s biggest online game!

Here are the game time rates that will be applied on RF Online Philippines starting on January 10, 2006.

Denomination	Hours
10		0.5 (30mins)
20		1.5 (1h 30mins)
50		6
75 		14

Denomination	Days	Duration
100		5	5 days
350		21	21 days
500		31	31 days

That has got to be one of the most blatant ripoffs I have ever seen. While I understand that Level Up Games may have some agreement or contract with CCR that dictates the ridiculous pricing, they are really shooting themselves in the foot here. Lineage II is priced similarly, but I have tried this game and it is indeed beautiful, massive and epic in scale and detail; RF Online at its current state has nowhere near as much polish or content as this dated game. Hell, the announced fee is practically two-thirds the way to the subscription fee of World of Warcraft but with like one-tenths the quality.

There has already been some dissent among the folks at their forums, seems like the population is split down the middle as of writing. There are the students, casual gamers, and financially-challenged hardcore gamers those who strongly disapprove of the new pricing scheme (read: scam), and then there are the gaming elitists with delusions of grandeur who believe that an expensive fee will effectively give them the playing environment they want and are still oblivious to the fact that RF Online is a bloated and overhyped grind machine that didn’t have much thought put into it.

I’m really going to get a kick out of what’s going to happen to this game in the coming weeks.