Friday 31 October 2014

Bloody Harvest Celebration on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel for Halloween!

It's that time of the year again. Ghouls and Demons come to play..

But more importantly for us gamers, a lot of games come out with special Halloween-themed content.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel has one..

Download the micro-patch and head on down to the Regolith Range and battle (Un)Deadlift for a chance at the Bloody Harvest Jack-o'-Cannon! There's also Candy Cash to collect at the Regolith Range.

Sucks that I'm only like level 8 so won't get the best version of this gun.. Still, I'll be trying this over the weekend.

But.. But.. There's the Evolve Big Alpha going on.. Which do you want me to play 2K??!

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Evolve PS4 codes here..

So yesterday I was spammed with Evolve Big Alpha PS4 codes. Left, Right, Centre and who knows where else.. 

x 1820401292312192 times

I was under the impression that each registration code entered just might give me an Alpha code, if I'm lucky. So, I thought I should enter as many Registration codes in the hopes of getting 1 or 2 extra invites so I can pass them around..

When I received the first code, I was like Woohoo! Lucky me! And then my phone kept buzzing.. All my different email adds were getting codes, and then I logon to my email adds on the PC and check the junk folder and there's more there!

So, all in all, I ended up with 18 PS4 codes for the Big Alpha.. 

Does it sound like I'm complaining.. No! 

I'm giving away the codes to anyone who wants in..

All you have to do is send me an email with no less than 100 words on how you would like to spend your Halloween weekend if you get an Alpha code. 
Name me 4 friends that you would like to play with. Tell me the names of all 8 hunters that have announced and each of the hunter's abilities. 
Also go on and tell me the 2 different Monsters' names and their abilities. 
If you have time, go and write me a 500 word essay on what you think of the game so far, based on what you have seen online.. 
You might not get a code if I don't pick you, but you WILL get featured on my blog.. Only 3 winners will be picked and then I will have another competition..

Sounds good??

Nah.. I'm just kidding!!!! All you have to do is just PM me on Facebook or email me for a code. That's all you have to do. I just ask of you to try out the game and not waste the opportunity for someone who really wants it. 

I have 14 codes available at this point of time so get to me quick.

But seriously... If you do write me a 500 word essay on Evolve, I will feature you on the blog.
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Thursday 30 October 2014

GameStart Asia 2014: Freedom Wars Producer Event

Was one of the lucky ones who got front row access to the Freedom Wars Meet-The-Producer Stage Event at GameStart 2014!


Producer Junichi Yoshizawa was full of excitement when he came on stage and introduced his game, Freedom Wars and the slogan that he wants to make famous, "Let's contribute!"

He went on to share about his game and the 3 key points about Freedom Wars.

1. 1 Million Years of Imprisonment

Every person in the world of Freedom Wars, is born into a million years of imprisonment. (How many years do we live then?!!). So, the objective of the game is to fight for your freedom.. Pretty straightforward..

Your character will be termed a "Sinner" while the female android ally that will accompany and fight with you is a "Accessory". The "Accessory" can be customized so you can choose a male if you prefer.

2. Recapture Multiplayer Action

Producer Junichi showed off a live demo of the rescue mission gameplay where you will need to take down an enemy abductor and then rescue a citizen.  You can choose NPC allies to assist you even if you are not playing online with friends. You will need strategy and patience to take down the enemy before you can rescue the citizen.

If you complete the mission successfully, you will be rewarded points based on your performance. The more points you get, the more your sentence is reduced.. (Yay! From 1 million years of imprisonment, you will now only need to serve 950,000 years of imprisonment!)

Junichi then went on to live demo a co-op session. Suddenly, the enemy didn't seem so tough anymore. With 4 of them working together to take down the Abductor, he went down fast and the rest covered well for the other player who went to rescue the citizen. That looked really fun.

3. Battle against Panopticons

The Producer explained also that the online is set up in such a way, that when you battle, you can battle for your country. So, this is where the "Let's Contribute!" slogan comes in.. You battle to contribute to your country's ranking.

Online can support up to players in a 4v4 battle. That's 16 characters in a game, if you include each players' "Accessory".

In all honesty, these type of games just don't interest me 1 bit... but I have to admit, the game looks really fun. Producer Junichi was full of life and did a great demo of Freedom Wars' gameplay.

The Stage Event was conducted in Japanese, so there was a translator of course. Kudos to the translator, who did a wonderful job of translating in the same level of excitement as Junichi Yoshizawa. She definitely kept the momentum going as Junichi showed of his game.

At the end, there was a lucky draw for those lucky enough to get an invite. Came so freakingly close to winning a PS Vita as the winning number was 75 but my ticket was 72. Not so lucky I guess..

Those who are looking for a fun and addictive game for the PS Vita should check out this game. It was released this week so... "Let's Contribute!"
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Wednesday 29 October 2014

Just some Evolve Talk..

Just some talk about Evolve..

Big Alpha invitations are bring rolled out in waves. So check your mail guys and gals. For those of you still want to try and snag yourself an invitation, check out my list of known Registration Codes.

Everytime I receive an email notification, I'm hoping it's from Evolve. Can't wait to play this weekend. Halloween weekend has never been this exciting.

Oh and I gave in and pre-ordered this beast..

Hope it turns out as good as it looks.

And for those who wants to know about the progression system, you can check out this video.



Ooh..  I didn't realise that there will be different weather options in the game. That's going to change things up a bit. 

Anyway, I'm looking to play with a big group of friends this weekend, provided we get in of course lol. So, if you guys get an invite for the PS4, do let me know in the comments below with your PSN ID, I'll add you up and we can have some fun together. Will be a great time to get to know some of you guys better!
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Tuesday 28 October 2014

GameStart 2014: Day 2 Quick Overview

Day 2!

This time I was going with the "Evolvers" Gang so we decided to get there early. Early enough to be in the first 300 for the free loot bag.

Almost 4 hours of queuing was crazy! I think this is the first ever time I have queued this long for anything. Thankfully, we had some good company among ourselves as well as beside us. Met another gamer, Leon and we managed to kill some time just chatting about, what else but games?!

And then out of the blue.. A McDelivery guy appears!

Looks like someone didn't want to risk his queue spot.. That was really funny!

Since all of us in queue were already given our tags, a couple of us went for a quick breakfast. Came back just in time for the start. Almost ready..

First 300 gets a random Loot Bag!

I got just a EA T-Shirt and some other junk.

We headed straight to the Playstation Area. Got more hands-on with Far Cry 4, The Evil Within, The Last of Us Re-mastered, Shadow of Mordor (They weren't kidding when they said it was very similar to Assassin's Creed and the Batman Arkham games), Until Dawn and BloodBorne.

Had a better experience with Far Cry 4 this time.. Still couldn't figure out how to climb the elephant so I had to improvise. The demo was of a fort takedown, same one as this video.

Blasted open the fort doors, then ran back and provoked the elephant. Once it started charging at me, I ran straight into the fort and hid in the corner. Elephant comes in rampaging and starts attacking the enemies. Poor guy went down pretty fast though. Should have protected him better.

The open choices shows in the demo itself. You clearly have several options on how to take down the fort. There was a 'flying copter' thingy just nearby so could have used that. Saw someone grappling up a cliff to get the vertical advantage and Abhi, who's very familiar with the Far Cry series went for the stealthy approach. It's not like other games where they claim you have the freedom to choose your gameplay style but don't offer you the options.

Good stuff! There wasn't anyone waiting behind me so I had the chance to try different approaches. Which was surprising in a way. Somehow, no one wanted to play Far Cry 4..

Moving on, we split up as me and Jerome tried to complete the Quest card thingy for the free goodie bag but found out all the bags were redeemed when we had just 1 more to go.. So sad..

Signed up for a free HearthStone card pack and the Heroes of the Storm Beta Access.

At this point of time, most of us were split up just checking out different stuff. 

I tried some Diablo 3 on the PS4 as the Crusader class. Just wanted to get a feel of how the game plays on a console. Felt kinda weird as I have always played the games on a PC with a mouse and keyboard.. But I think those who have never played the Diablo games should give it a try.

Time to get ready for the BloodBorne Meet-the-Producer Stage Event!

Got our tix for the event and met some interesting cosplayers along the way.

BloodBorne time!
I was a lot more excited for this event than I was a few days ago. The game looked really good. Monster designs were interesting and the combat, while a bit clumsy, was fun. 

However, I felt the game was very, very tough. Not a dumb hack-and-slash where the enemies do shit.. Far from it, you had to be very technical with this. Every minion was a challenge.

Later on during the event, it was mentioned that only 1 in over 300 people managed to beat the first Boss and in US, only about 30 out of 3500. Not sure how accurate the numbers are, but it was believable.

The game was so tough, that it was a turn-off. As much as it looked great, I didn't want to buy a game that I just wouldn't be able to complete.

Anyway, I felt a lot more confident after the Producer event where Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa showed off his skills. I'll give you the details of the Producer event on another post.

Went for a quick lunch, before heading back.

No gaming convention is complete without a racing game! Time to race!

Got selected by Tagronauts for some free Instagram prints!

Cool! But what do I do with prints of cosplayers? Time to make my own prints!

Messed around more with the Evil Within Photo Booth. This was such a hit... The rest of them were hooked on this! They kept getting more & more prints from Tagronauts and we even got a group photo!

After numerous prints, it was time for the Lucky Draw..

No luck again sadly..

Crowds started clearing after that and finally.. the Namco Bandai Booth was empty enough to join the queue. All I wanted to try in their booth was Dead Island 2. Game was similar to Dead Island 1 even though this was done by a different developer. 

From what I have seen of game-play videos online, my concern was that the zombies didn't pose much of a challenge.That didn't change after the hands-on. I was still figuring out the controls and the zombies couldn't even kill me. 

Of course, this was a pre-Alpha demo so I'm hoping the difficulty level will be pushed up a few notches for the game. Too bad the program kept crashing but still happy to have tried it. Yet to answer anything about Dead Island 2 vs Dying Light.

We went back to the Playstation booth again and I tried WWE 2015 and BloodBorne. Watching the Producer demo was helpful. Had a better idea of the combat system and progressed a lot more than my first few tries. Still very challenging but do-able. Couldn't figure out how to lock on to the enemies or I just might have progressed to the first Boss. Oh well..

Last but certainly not the least, we manage to grab 1 round of Evolve just before they closed the place. A huge thanks to Chris and the rest of the 2K Asia staff for squeezing us in for a game! 

It was us 4 against their staff, Chris as the monster. It was a great and very close game. We almost had him but the Kraken got the win in the end. Great stuff however. 

Just glad that in the end, we got to try Evolve which was what we all wanted to play right from the start. Long queues all day long but that's great for the game itself. I can for-see plenty of gamers will be enjoying the 4v1 gameplay next year in February.

Long and tiring day but we all enjoyed it and it was worth staying till the end. Wouldn't have felt right to end GameStart 2014 without a single game of Evolve.

That's all for Day 2.. 

..and the Day 2 loot!

Hopefully we will meet again next year, GameStart!
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Sunday 26 October 2014

GameStart 2014: Day 1 Quick Overview

Quick overview of Day 1 and some pics from Gamestart 2014..

Reached there nearly 2.30pm and the queue was mad long..

What you see here is just a fraction of the actual queue.. say 10%? There was no way I was going to get into the Hall before 4pm for the Freedom Wars Meet-the-Producer stage event.

Luckily I managed to talk to a very nice lady who was from the Organiser team I suppose, who managed to get me and my wife in straightaway, since I had the stage event invite. Thankfully, common sense prevailed or I might have still been queuing outside when the stage event starts.

It was really packed.. really didn't know where to start. All the queues for the games were damn long.

After walking around aimlessly for a bit, I headed to the Playstation area. Collected the freebie for being a Playstation Plus suscriber and then checked out the Playstation Arena.

Very creepy Evil Within themed Arena. I'll try to take better pics of the arena tomorrow. Was too crowded to get a good shot.

Tried Far Cry 4, The Evil Within, The Last of Us Remastered.

Wasn't too familiar with Far Cry 4 and I didn't know how to change weapons and stuff. The demo was in Austrian or something like that so the tips weren't much for a help either. Will give it another try again tomorrow.

The Evil Within wasn't too bad. Survival Horror isn't my cup of tea however. I think one of my friends mentioned that the game doesn't provide tips or clues about where to go and what to do, and it showed. Will try again tomorrow as well.

Wanted to give The Last of Us Remastered a try to see the graphical differences and I was impressed. The playable demo was actually from the DLC story, which I totally forgot about. The one where Ellie is with her friend. Need to get the DLC soon!

Collected a couple of freebies for trying out these games.

Headed over to the Evolve booth, which was massive. Super long queues here as well!

Great to see everyone enjoying this game. My most anticipated game for 2015. Felt that not many in Singapore knew much about this game, so it's great for 2k Asia to come up with such a massive booth at GameStart. 10 PCs set up for 2 sets of 4v1 action. 

Have been hearing positive comments about this game from those who tried it out. Have been urging several of my friends to try this out and those who did, liked it a lot.

Refreshment time!

Red Bull were giving out free cans of Red Bull! Much needed energy for the fans!

GameStart 2014's mascot..

The mascot comes to life!

Approaching 4pm, we went for the Freedom Wars Stage Event where the Producer, Junichi Yoshizawa showed off the Freedom Wars PS Vita game. I'll do a separate blog post about this in detail another time.

Dinner after that..

Had to treat the non-gamer wife for following me to the Convention.. and putting up with my nonsense haha!

Came back for the lucky draw and had some time before it started. So walked around a bit more..

Retro gaming!

More games!

Kinetiquettes' Street Fighter Statues!

Lucky draw started.. no luck for us though!

Had some more time before the event ended so walked around more.. Went back to the Evolve Booth just to watch people playing..

Then went to fool around with The Evil Within photobooth..

Queues for DriveClub was gone, so wanted to try that but was pretty tired already so was planning to leave for home, and then I got a message from Louis that he was coming over. Waited for him and then got to try some BloodBorne.

Quite impressed with the graphics and gameplay. It's been a while since I got a hack-and-slash game so I'm considering getting this. More excited for the BloodBorne Producer Stage at Day 2 now.

In the end, only left when the announcement was made. Glad that Louis came and both of us got to try BloodBorne before leaving. That couple of mins was enough to change my impression of this game.

Shoutout to Akilen and Waliyudin whom I bumped into the Convention. Hope you guys enjoyed the day!

That's all for Day 1..

Loot! Swag! Freebies from Day 1!

Tips on getting doubles? Bring your Lady Companion ;)
Thanks Wifey! Somehow.. I think you enjoyed dinner more than the Convention itself.

Off to bed now.. Apologies if there are any mistakes in the post.. Too tired to look through for errors.. Need sleep before Day 2.. 


Saturday 25 October 2014

GameStart 2014: 1 hour to go!

Just an hour left to the start of the Inaugural Premier Gaming Convention for Southeast Asia, right here in Singapore!

The queue early this morning..

Pic Source: GameStart Asia Facebook
Great to see the support!

Got to start getting ready and make my way down to the Convention. Should be there just in time after the queues have all cleared! ;)

Afterall, it didn't look like there was any chance of being the 1st 300 to score a free Loot Bag. Phone's all charged to Instagram my way around the event.

Follow me on Instagram as I update it with pics live from the convention.

My Instagram: DrJengo

Will update the blog as well tonight once I'm back from Day 1.

The rest of my GameStart 2014 coverage: #GameStart2014

GameStart's Official Website
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Friday 24 October 2014

All ready for GameStart 2014!

Just about 15 hours to go before GameStart 2014 officially starts!

Tickets and T-Shirt are all ready!

My wonderful wife will be accompanying me on the 1st day. 2nd day, I will be there with the Evolve gang and a couple of other new friends. 

I even got the Limited Edition Tshirt featuring the GameStart 2014 logo. All good to go!

Once again I urge all those who are still considering, to head down to the event at Suntec Convention Centre. For the future of gaming in Singapore, your support will be crucial for this.

It really helped that Playstation is fully supporting the event with several games and lots of promos. Kinda sucks for Microsoft though.. No matter what the XBox fans say, I think the current gen has only 1 winner. 

It would have been a good opportunity for Microsoft to showcase their games and come up with a couple of promos to make a good case against the argument.

Not that I really care though, I'm just glad Playstation has taken this convention seriously. Lots of exciting games will be on show at the Con. 

I also managed to secure invites to both Meet-the-Producer Stage Events.


Looking forward to checking out both games that I have almost zero clue on what they are about. Of course, the freebies will be awesome too and I just have to cross my fingers for the lucky draw.

Also looking forward to check out Kinetiquettes' work again. 

Plenty of talent here, that Evil Ryu looks sick!

Once again.. I'll be updating this blog about my thoughts and impressions of the games and the convention as a whole, so do check back often in the next few days!

You can also follow me on Instagram as I update it with pics live from the convention.

My Instagram: DrJengo
The rest of my GameStart 2014 coverage: #GameStart2014

GameStart's Official Website
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