It has been rough week but my finals are finally over. With the upcoming term I will have more free time for some serious gaming as well as to keep this blog updated. I still have plenty of games left to complete; Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, Daxter, Castlevania, Legend of Zelda (Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass and Wind Waker, which I haven’t touch yet). I picked up Resident Evil 0 for the gamecube few days ago and blasting through it now. Up to my point of playing, the game is good but not really as great as the previous installments. Don’t really have that eerie sensation.

It takes a lot of ‘moolah’ to render Crysis this good …

With the holiday seasons coming up, we are seeing tons of game releases; Crysis, Mass Effect, Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles, Super Mario Galaxy, Silent Hill Origins, Need For Speed ProStreet (zzz …) and perhaps some others which I might have missed. Seeing that I have an old school laptop and I don’t own X360, Crysis and Mass Effect is definitely out of the question. Super Mario Galaxy is a definite must play game but that Italian plumber will have to wait. I don’t want to leave too many unfinished games.

I came across this article posted in Gamespot about Violent Games Teach Hotheaded Behavior and again I feel that such study has proved absolutely nothing. There are a lot of factors to why a child or a teen turns aggressive. Family problems? Influence from TV, music, movies? Influence from friends? Why wasn’t such factors included in the study? Why is it have to be games that cause violence? During my high school days, most of the guys that make trouble are those who are trying to be cool, macho, show off, or whatever shit you want to call it. Fine perhaps back in my school days it wasn’t easy to get influenced due to 2D graphics, as compared to 3D graphics now. Then isn’t ESRB existed for a reason? Or are the studies trying to say that the current rating system is flawed.

Regardless I still don’t believe games are the main cause of violence in the world. I have been playing such games since I was young and I have never punched anyone or being cruel to others. Anyway Neko showed me this video about a parody of Kingdom Hearts with Boy Meets World. Check it out. It’s hilarious.

From my opinion on classic Castlevania games, you will either love them or hate them. Don’t get me wrong, Castlevania games are great but the amount of “punishment” you need to endure is enough to make you throw your console out of the window. Okay I’m exaggerating about throwing the console but the fact remains that Castlevania games are hard, and this PSP release is no exception.

Dracula X Chronicles features the remake of Rondo of Blood, a classic Castlevania game that was never released outside Japan. A similar version came out for Super Nintendo in 1995 but due to too many changes, it was considered inferior to the original Rondo of Blood. Thankfully after more than a decade, owners of PSP now have the chance to play the real Rondo of Blood, in both remake and the original version.

The storyline is pretty straight forward. Shaft the Dark Priest has revived Count Dracula and its up to Richter Belmont to slay him and rescue his girlfriend. Richter’s main weapon is the Vampire Killer whip and along the way he can pick up sub weapons which includes knife, axe, cross, holy water etc.

As I have mention the game is indeed tough and it takes a bit of patience to get through this game. It’s common to retry the same level over and over again (I think I continued more than 5 times when fighting ‘Death’) but somehow, that game has some sort of attraction to make you keep trying until you succeed. Perhaps the feeling of completing a stage gives some form of satisfaction. Frustrating as it can be, I’m still hooked onto playing it.

Throughout the game, you can find secrets and hidden items which enables you to unlock sound tracks (You can set them onto any stage you like), the original PC-Engine Rondo of Blood and Playstation’s Symphony of the Night. I tried a bit of SotN and it plays pretty good. Smooth animation with great music. At the time of posting I have yet to unlock the original Rondo of Blood.

To sum things up, you get 3 games for the price of 1 and if that isn’t a good deal, I don’t know what is then. It’s hard, it’s stressful but the end result is great.

Thanks to Neko most of the problems found when browsing this blog with Internet Explorer are fixed. The cause of the problem was the pictures I uploaded, they were too wide and IE doesn’t know how to format them properly (unlike FireFox). As there are quite a number of posts, I will only update the ones which I feel is important. So don’t be surprised if you still see some old pages that are messed up.

I have decided to stick with this theme for the time being. Using other themes messes up the blog again.

It seems like my old theme looked like shit on other browsers other than firefox. Last time it doesn’t look so bad on Internet Explorer but now it’s totally out of control. I will switching around themes for the time being until Neko whips up a custom theme. For now this theme looks ok on Firefox but as always IE screws it up. Anyone not using IE or Firefox please let me know how this theme turns out on your browser. Thanks!