Let The Hunger Games Begin

Here's the trailer of one of the most awaited movie adaptations since Harry Potter, The Hunger Games:


The Hunger Games is based on the novel written by Suzane Collins. It actually is the first book of a trilogy. Collins placed the series in a post apocalyptic world and isn't the usual love themed young adult book which seems to be the trend of today. Collins was able to tap into emotions and themes such as politics, freedom and even death.

I found the book engaging and a definite must read. Now, let's hope the movie would be a must watch.

Watch Gundam AGE Online!

So guys, it looks like Sunrise decided to upload Mobile Suit Gundam AGE to YouTube. Six episodes so far have been uploaded to Gundam.info's YouTube Channel. Enjoy!




Here's the rest of it:Main PageEpisode 1Episode 2Episode 3Episode 4Episode 5Episode 6
Brought to you by Gundam.Info

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

  For the longest time, I had a prejudice bias that this movie sucked. People that watched it said it wasn't worth it, it cost $137 million to produce but only made $85 million worldwide in box office sales, and it featured neither Cloud nor Squall. No single black mage or Chocobo.

  Soooo, if the movie was so bad, how come I watched it again after 10 years? I just happened to be working on a series of posts on the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Doing further research for material, I 

read the article on the Lifestream and saw it linked to the movie and mentions the Gaia Theory. Interested, I read on and eventually re-watched the movie.

Production:

  As mentioned above, the movie had a huge budget. This is very evident in the technology used in the animation. For a movie made in 2001, the photorealistic graphics of the movie still owns made after it to this day, ten years later. 

  Each frame of the movie is 10 megabytes and has twice the resolution of your HDTV. To give you an idea, standard videos play at 24 frames per second. At 10mb x 24fps, four seconds of the movie is one gigabyte. Yeah, I know.

  Designs for characters, environments, technology, vehicles and creatures are top notch. From armor scratches, dust on the ground, hair movement, and even freckles and skin pores. You gotta hand it to them. Keep in mind that this was 10 years ago. 

Plot (avoiding major spoilers, of course):

  The story centers around Dr. Aki Ross and her struggle to save the planet from the mysterious alien terror called Phantoms. Some thirty years prior to the events of the movie, a huge rock known as the Leonid Meteor hit the planet, and with it, came the Phantoms. 

Dr. Aki Ross

  For the past several months, Aki has been having the same dream over and over. And each time the dream repeats, it goes further than the last time and reveals more images. She records these dreams as she believes that these are messages and that something is trying to tell her something. The recordings get longer, but the message behind it remains unknown.

  Aki Ross and her colleague Dr. Sid attempt to understand the nature of the Phantoms in relation to Gaia, the spirit of the Earth in search of a way to eliminate the threat without the use of military might as armed combat may injure Gaia. As irony would have it, the military had built the Zeus Cannon-- an orbiting satellite that houses a powerful weapon with the sole intent of destroying the Leonid Meteor and the Phantoms with it.

Phantoms Attacking

Zeus Cannon

  As the story progresses, Aki finally finishes the dream. The alien race that was the Phantoms' former selves tells her the events that conspired prior to the meteor crash. Their planet was one torn apart by war. This caused their planet to be ripped apart by its own Gaia. As the planet collapsed, a chunk of it eventually became the Leonid, taking with it the alien Gaia and the ghosts of the dead aliens; violent, bio-etheric manifestations that can pass through solid objects and kill living organisms on contact.

  The military eventually succeeds at firing the cannon at the meteor only to agitate the alien Gaia to appear. Further shots only agitated it and caused to expand and grow more violent. Some spoiler moments later, Aki manages to stop it by awakening Earth's Gaia to protect itself. Just like the Lifestream did in FFVII.

Gaia being all Lifestream-y

The Verdict:

  Watch the movie with an open mind and don't expect Cloud or Squall to appear. The story is very well composed, but very poorly told. Aki remains interesting and engaging throughout the movie, but the other characters suffered. Photorealistic 3d and visual effects are way ahead of its time. Nobuo Uematsu's work was nowhere to be heard and thus the movie lacks awesome music. If you're a Sci-Fi fan and a Final Fantasy fan, watch it. If you're a Final Fantasy VII-only fan, you may not be able to appreciate it as much. Better wait for my Advent Children Complete review which should be out soon.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits within is property of Square Pictures and Columbia Pictures.

All images are screencaps from the movie.

Exploring Lagendia: Dragon Nest SEA Review

Over the long weekend, Arckham and I decided to try out Dragon Nest aka DN. It's an MMORPG game, developed by EYEDENTITY and published by Shanda Games. We are both officially hooked and we wanted to give you guys a preview of our DN experience so far.



Arckham having more time to play is already level 22 and I happy to announce that I've reached level 15 as of this weekend [Yes, work and everything else in between.] I think we're still pretty much on a pretty fast pace seeing that this game's current level cap is only at 32. We currently are on one of the Southeast Asia Servers, namely Springwood. The three others are:  Westwood, Holywood, and Greenwood .

Xylith's Character

This games gives you four classes: Warrior, Cleric, Archer and Sorceress. Each class has two paths or job changes which you achieve once you complete the job quest at Level 15. Something we like is once you've chosen you next job you're given a chance to try out the different skills to kind of have a feel of how you'll build up your character. Then you are given a ticket to reset your Skill Points and finalize you skill tree. One thing I wasn't too happy about was that the classes are gender locked. What that means is that all Warriors and Clerics are male while all Archers and Sorceresses are female. Since I am are used to playing my own gender as my main character, I feel a bit boxed in.

Xylith Showing Off Some Moves

The Skill Points are earned as you move up. What we like about the DN skill tree is that if you right click the particular skill, a tiny window pops out and runs a short clip on what the skill would look like which helps with the decision making process. Stat Growth is not character specific like in Ragnarok. Character Stat Growth is directly proportional to your level, you can only augment you stats with in game gear and the titles or achievements you get to complete.



The controls is something that I needed to get used to since it heavily relies on WASD for movement and the mouse for direction. What I appreciate about this game is that the interface is not hard to understand, you have everything you need to see on screen and at the same time there's not a lot of clicking since everything is keyboard dependent. Despite it being a keyboard dependent game, it's actually very keyboard friendly. For example, if you need to run around for a long time you don't have to constantly hit W, you can hit E and it's on auto run. Another is that if you need to go to a particular place on the map, all you have to do is to pull the map up and right click where you want to go and the character makes its way there similar to Pet Forest. Since, I play on my laptop these functions help prevent me from wearing down my keyboard.

 

Arckham's Character

Gameplay is dungeon based and very similar to Grand Chase. The story line is intricate and you really learn a lot about Lagendia's (the fictional world of this game)  history. I appreciate the dungeon based game play since it helps lessen the lag for the different players which has always been a given in MMORPGs. It also caters to those that want to play solo and those that constantly want to party.

Arckham Showing Off Some Moves

Graphics is something I am very picky about but I am glad to say that DN does deliver. It may not be the best out there in terms of graphics but it isn't a sore eye either. The skill sprites are smooth and the movement runs smoothly as well. The character designs despite being Chibi don't give you the feel of controlling a child on screen. They were able to put in a bit of maturity into the characters that would also not alienate children.


What we like about this game is that it seemed to learn and take the best functions from all the other MMOPRGs out there and blended in to a nice smooth system. Whether you're a casual gamer or a hard core one, this game caters to both with the different dungeon difficulties and in game achievements. Safe to say that we both are enjoying this game very much and we hope to see you guys around Lagendia.