Diablo 3 – a launch from hell

Yesterday was May 15th, and I spent the whole day denying to my friends that I was queuing up for my copy at the Diablo 3 launch event – I was at work, people!

Anyway, it turns out that the big Diablo launch has been plagued and plagued by tons of problems. First and foremost, there is the whole server jam, and many people would boot up their games only to see this screen:

Then there was the whole issue with a certain templar actually crashing your game and then preventing you from logging back in…

And now my friend finds this bug in the game:

Where do I go from here?

I’m kinda glad I haven’t gotten my copy yet because I would probably die from the frustration if I had taken the day off just to play the game. As it is, I’ll probably only get to start playing it this weekend, so hopefully these issues will be resolved by then.

iPhone like a sir

We had a Mexican-themed surprise party for a friend’s birthday recently, so we bought some fake mustaches. When I stuck one of the fake mustaches onto my iPhone, I realized it looks really similar to a certain Internet meme!

Retro games and Relationships

As a game reviewer, I get sent pretty much most of the latest games to try out. But the other day when I had a day off, do you know what I was playing?

Sid Meier’s Colonization – a game that originally came out in 1994. There was a remake a few years ago, complete with updated graphics and everything, but I was playing the old one. The one that looks like this:

Sid Meier’s Colonization – and it’s terribly dated graphics

It’s not much to look at, is it? Hell, it didn’t even look good for it’s time. Compared to the games of today with their fancy HD graphics, bump-mapping and physics engines, this game looks absolutely archaic. iPhone games look better than this!

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Colonization is tons of fun, and the simple graphics just means you can concentrate on the game without being distracted by any fancy particle effects.

I tend to regress to old games like this. I mean, I was playing Prototype 2, a new game that allows you to run and leap through New York City with monstrous powers that allow you to destroy tanks with massive tentacles etc… and I just get bored of it after a while. The flashiness of the graphics and the whole “open-world” gameplay (dreaded buzz-words plaguing today’s games) fades after a few sessions, and I didn’t feel compelled to keep going.

Compare this with older games like SimCity 4, Star Control II and Shadow Dancer, that I can easily go back to again and again. They didn’t depend on flashy graphics or gimmick dujour gameplay… they were just solid pieces of entertainment. And solid, fun gameplay is timeless.

Even without fancy 3D graphics, Star Control 2 is one of the greatest games of all time!

I wish I could somehow take my love for classic videogames and express it to my wifey in a way that would make sense to her. So maybe then she’ll finally understand why I’m so in love with her and believe me when I tell her that I think she’s beautiful and will always think she’s beautiful – even among younger girls, supermodels, and the like.

Of course, being the cynic she is, she’ll probably point out that in my videogame metaphor, I still dabble with new videogames, even if they’re just short-term flings. Or point out that I’m inadvertently saying that she’s less physically attractive than younger girls.

I guess I’ll just have to come up with another metaphor then…

What happens if you outsource your copywriting

Like 99% of other gamers out there, I’m pretty much dying to play the soon-to-be-released Diablo III. This game is 10 years in the making, has a massive following, and is pretty much destined to just sell itself.

That said, it still wouldn’t hurt to put a bit more effort into its copywriting, Walmart!

Check out Walmart’s write-up on Diablo III. It’s atrocious.

It has such amazing lines such as:

• “The Diablo III PC/Mac Game revolves around an interesting plot which will keep you spell bound. while you are playing.” – Punctuation issues aside, thanks for reminding me that I’ll only be spellbound while I’m playing.
• “Bring home the PC video game to solve the mysteries of the mighty Barbarians.” – That really isn’t what the game is about… at all.
• “The Barbarians will have a variety of revamped skills at their disposal based on the use of their incredible physical prowess.” – Nothing too bad about this… except that this line appears twice in the short write up.

So yeah, it’s terrible, and the copywriter seems to have an unhealthy fixation with the barbarians.

Moral of the story: If your copywriter is ridiculously cheap, there’s a reason for that. Just pay the other guy the extra few dollars instead.

For much better copy, you can check out Groupon.sg. That site has my wife giggling (for the right reasons) every single time.

 

Ulcers, Spectral Swords, and the Economy

I bit my lip the other day while having dinner, and it was one of those big bites where you can actually hear your teeth mince your lip. As a result, I’m now nursing a big swollen ulcer on my lip.

Since then, I’ve been extra-careful when it comes to eating and drinking, because it seems like it’s easier than ever to accidentally munch on my lip now. For starters, my lip has become a bigger target and my teeth are used to maneuvering around a smaller lip.

It’s like, once you’re hurt, it’s easier to get hurt again. Which kinda sucks.

It reminded me of this videogame called Soul Reaver, where you’re this bad-assed vampire-wraith named Raziel who spouts extremely melodramatic lines, like my favorite one here:

“Utter desolation.  My once-proud kin, wiped from this world like excrement from a boot.” – Raziel

Raziel and the Soul Reaver

One really cool thing about Raziel was that he possessed the Soul Reaver, which was this glowing spectral sword that feeds on the souls of your enemies.

Without the Soul Reaver, vampires were harder to kill, as Raziel needed to find other means to impale them and kill them. But with the Soul Reaver, Raziel can just slash and impale enemies with ease, and you can wade fearlessly into battle with it. However, there was just one annoying catch:

The Soul Reaver can only be active when Raziel was at full health. The moment you get hit by anything, the Soul Reaver fades away until you fully regenerate your health back.

And that again made no sense to me. I would much rather have the power of the Soul Reaver when Raziel had low health, and would need the additional advantages to keep you from dying. With the benefit of full health, you could afford to soak up more damage and take more risks, and the power of the Soul Reaver was really not as necessary… so why is the Soul Reaver only bestowed on you during the times when you don’t need it? It just doesn’t make sense.

I was pondering this while I was carefully brushing my teeth (nothing stings quite like a toothbrush being jammed into an ulcer), and then it occurred to me that the economy was no different.

Economic policies tend to favor the rich, so it’s easier for the rich to get richer, while the less-fortunate have to work much harder to stay afloat.

I’ve read that this is the case in America, because even the poor want to maintain these one-sided tax-laws in the belief that they’ll someday strike it rich and be equally protected by these policies. I guess it’s because there are so many rags-to-riches stories in the US – just look at Zuckerberg and all those ridiculously well-paid celebrities and athletes.

That’s not the case here in Singapore though (our local celebs don’t exactly make that much money either), so I don’t know why things are the way they are… just like I don’t understand why the Soul Reaver only pops out when you don’t need it.

Guess it’s just not supposed to make sense, like this stupid ulcer on my lip.

Raziel is a bad-ass!

Actually, you know what else doesn’t make sense? Why’d they decide to turn Twilight into a movie franchise, when Raziel’s story of vampire betrayal and redemption is so much more compelling? Plus, he looks awesome!

Dream weddings are not possible if you’re Chinese

I had dinner with an old friend last night, and a topic that came up was his upcoming wedding, and the chaos and turmoil that comes with the planning. My own wedding took place only a few years ago, so those experiences were still fresh in my mind, and we found that our wedding planning ordeals have a lot in common.

And at this point I realized something: If you’re Chinese, you can totally forget about your dream wedding because it will probably never happen.

You see, we now live in an age where most young girls that actually dream about their future weddings would base these dreams on the images they’ve seen in Hollywood movies. They want that beach front wedding that Katherine Heigl had in 27 Dresses, or a nice garden set up like the one in The Wedding Singer.

The beach-front wedding from 27 Dresses

It doesn’t have to be anything over-the-top, you know?  Our respective other halves just wanted a nice quiet and intimate affair, attended by close friends and relatives, where everyone has a good time.

But there’s one major obstacle that all Chinese couples face: their Chinese parents.

Chinese parents don’t like quiet weddings. They want a giant fucking banquet where they invite 400-700 people that you’ve probably never met before in your life.

All the fun and glamour of a traditional Chinese wedding

That includes that cousin of an aunt that lives in China, your dad’s kindergarten friends that he hasn’t met up with since kindergarten, and that random guy that might be related to your family because there can’t possibly be that many people named “Lee” in the world, right?

They want noise, they want strangers, they want ecologically-unfriendly and inhumane soups to be served, and they want a spectacle. In movie terms, they want the kind of wedding like the one in Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet.

And in Chinese culture, the wedding is not for the bridal couple; it’s an event meant for their parents to show off. So when it comes to the wedding planning, parents get to overrule their kids.

Maybe there might be a compromise if the bride grew up dreaming of a wedding spent with gossipy old Chinese women, sleazy Chinese men with comb-overs that leer at the bridesmaids, and every dish served comes with a face. But these days, that’s just highly unlikely.

Honestly, the best thing to do is to completely forget about your dream wedding. Just let your parents do whatever the hell they want, and invite every random person they want.

After that, you plan a post-wedding wedding, just for you and your friends. You can have it on the beach, or you can have it at the Universal Tour when Jaws pops out of the water. You can even wear a dress like the one Stephanie Seymour wore in the November Rain music video.

But this time, don’t invite the parents.

The iconic November Rain wedding dress