23 years old

Hey guys I'm 23 now. I had a great day! But first I wanna tell you guys something. Remember that argument Kunal and I had. Well things were cleared the very next day and well it was just a silly misunderstanding.

So Kunal and I are buds again. He got me a mini usb hub for my bday. That was a surprise as I wanted one. 

I am not really much of a party animal, but I like having fun and a great time with friends - no matter how simple things are. Simple but sweet.

We watched the movie Turtles Forever. A must watch if you're a fan of TMNT.

We had a lot of fun and lots of laughs. It was a great day!

Also got some cash to spend. Let's see. ;)

Back from Baroda....

Long time no see Blogger. I just didn't know what to write, but here's a memorable event I'd like to write down....

The last time I had posted about my meet with my good friend Mimo when he had come over to Pune. He insisted that I visit him next and so I did. This was the first time I travelled to a really far away place...alone...Thus began a memorable adventure for me!

The title should be back from Vadodara but I think it sounds catchy with Baroda.

I managed to convince my folks at home that I wanted and had to go to Mimo's place (I needed a break). A date was then decided, where I'd stay at Mimo's for 3 days and then return, leaving Suparna and mom to babysit Benji (rascal!). Thus began my first adventure to an unknown place. I was determined to do it. So my ticket for Baroda was booked. Left at around 10:30 PM. The bus stopped at a restaurant for dinner. I asked the conductor where I should get down at Baroda. Turns out the bus wasn't going to Baroda....whaaat???!! It was going to Ahmedabad. The travel agent had said that Baroda would be the last stop - Liar! I asked the conductor what I should do. He said I would have to get down at some bypass. I asked him to tell me where to get down. I was nervous, but I decided to stay calm and think of a solution. I tried asking other passengers whether they were going to Baroda- gulp! Most of them were heading to Ahmedabad. The guy sitting next to me was going to Baroda, but he was in the same position as I was...first time...felt like a newbie lol! The next morning at about 9:30 Am I got down at the bypass. Looked like a really random place to land in. Reminded me of the Hinjewadi bridge area. Crap...I called Mimo and asked him what I should do next. There was an auto rickshaw wala nearby. After talking to him and Mimo, the auto guy dropped at a particular point. I was relieved when I reached Baroda city. Then finally Mimo shows up- hurray! After reaching his home, I gave a huge (albeit silent) sigh of relief.

After freshening up and having a nice breakfast, we booted up his PS2 and tried 3 games that I had brought for him- Dragon Quest 8, Okami and Dark Cloud 2. Mimo was happy with the package. We played for a while, and in the evening went to this place called Sinduth. It reminded me of a mini Lonawala. It was a nice place. Mimo had brought 2 of his friends along and they swam and enjoyed. I hadn't brought any swimming stuff and thought it wasn't a good idea to get wet. Get wet I did. I slipped on the moss and fell in. Ouch! It was funny but real slippery. It was fun. I think I'll go take a swim there next time. We spent the night watching Superman Batman: Public Enemies and playing Burnout Revenge. We also played Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks in Versus mode which was cool and real funny (listening to Liu Kang's screams).

The next day, we watched the movie Up at Inox. The movie was nice though it seemed random. Everything was close to this guy's place. Baroda seemed a cool place. Did I mention I enjoyed Auntie's khana? Rajma, palak rajma, paneer masala, milk shake with ice cream, chole, sherbets...wow it was awesome...!

We also went to Crosswords and Landmark. Read some stuff there. We also played Burnout Revenge multiplayer at Landmark just for the heck of it. NFS Most Wanted and Carbon suck on the PS2. Couldn't bear to play those.

We got Tenchu Fatal Shadows, Gungrave, Swords of Destiny and Ratchet: Deadlocked. We enjoyed playing those games.

I got some books from Crossword that I could take home with me. One of those books was Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident; the graphic novel. I felt like getting it because of the artwork. Boy, graphic novels rule! There was also this comic series created by Goscinny called "Iznogoud" (is no good?). The drawing style was similar to Asterix and Obelix and that's what made me curious. It seemed funny but not as classic as Asterix. It seemed to be the story about a court magician of Baghdad called Iznogoud who wanted "to become Caliph and not the Caliph". That left me scratching my head, but kinda reminded me of Tantri the Mantri series from Tinkle comics. I was tempted to buy another gamepad (became a hobby, sort of) but decided not to. We also watched Aliens in the Attic, Green Lantern: First Flight and The Tale of Despearaux.

I really enjoyed staying at Mimo's place. It was like we were realllly realllly  old but very good friends; we are. Im glad I met him though. I wish I could have stayed longer. I really enjoyed this trip! It felt sad when it was time to say goodbye. We were enjoying so much. The time passed quickly and slowly at the same time.

This adventure certainly is one of my most memorable ones.

RTFS now at PC!

I have a new blog at PC, the Pirate-Community. Pirate-Community is probably the biggest unofficial Rayman fan community.

Special thanks to Hunchman and rest of the PC crew.

I'm still new to Wordpress, but heh, I'll get the hang of it. 

RTFS Adventure chapter one: The Bog of Murk

RTFS Adventure2(Rayman The Fan Series) is a fan series interactive adventure game of Rayman. This is the second game in the series which will be divided in chapters, and the chapters will be separate. RTFS Adventure 2 takes off after the prequel.

Here is Chapter One: The Bog of Murk. The story continues as Rayman defeats Jano and as a reward for passing Jano's test, he receives a magic sphere. They are then deliberately teleported to the Bog of Murk. Rayman and Murfy are surprised to be there. There, Rayman meets an old friend and runs into the newly appointed "Mistress of Magic"- Begoniax. Begoniax is not pleased to see Rayman at all, and brings a new pet to play with him.

Chapter one

Play online on Deviantart.

Download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d94ab4b1eb8081c0aaca48175a79d1c37afb2521e3347763c95965eaa7bc68bc

Hope you have a nice time playing chapter one. :)

Vacation time

Long time no see bloggy. I was busy with exams and a lot of stuff happened that I really don't want to write about. So what is this blogpost about?

I don't know. I guess I'm just gonna write whatever I feel like here. Now that my holidays have started I've been busy checking out E3 2009 videos from Gametrailers and watching "The All new Batman Adventures" (TANBA), a show that took place after Batman: The Animated Series and I doubt, was ever shown in India. I remember watching the Gamespot review of Batman Vengeance. I remember enjoying the PC version. I was curious about it when I had seen it on Ubisoft's website before it was released. Then I had watched the trailer, and was like, man I gotta play this game! And now while watching TANBA, it brings back memories of Batman Vengeance. The artwork, character styles, voice acting, everything is just like the series. 

I plan to watch The Batman after that. I did watch a couple of episodes, read a few issues, etc, but the character design felt weird at first. The characters were redesigned. Take a look at Joker:

Creepy no?

I heard that the Wolverine movie would be released on the 19th here. Man, there's probably gonna be a lot of crowd. (Yash, remember when we had gone to watch Dark Knight on the first day?) I hope they're still showing the Watchmen movie here. Friends here talking more about Angels and Demons but for me, Watchmen movie gets a higher priority than Angels and Demons. I do wanna watch it. Indian Express's Pune Newsline isn't of much help showing movie lists.  

Ah, now that the holidays are here, I better start working on RTFS Adventure 2 and better get that tablet fixed. Stupid loose connection problem. Delayed thanks to Kunal.  Bah!

Finding Mimo

Mimo:- I first met him online via orkut. He seemed like a really excited dude online (you know how scary that can be!), but he turned out to be a very nice guy with a good sense of humour, and we turned out to be good friends. Been 2 years since we know each other now. I remember last year when he had decided to drop by in Pune to have a meet up. He came all the way from Baroda (all by himself and he's 16; What a bindaas guy!) and randomly landed at Chaphekar Chowk. He called me to pick him up. Luckily Chaphekar Chowk wasn't that far so I could pick him up. It was really nice meeting him. It was like we really knew each other (even though we had met for the first time.)

That was a year ago. It was time for a second meet. This was last week. He was free at the moment so decided to come to Pune. I asked him to stay for a week but he could only stay for 4 days. Good enough. "You have to pick me up wherever I land." OMG! No! Told him to get down at Chinchwad or somewhere nearer; or else i'd have to go all the way to Pune and bring him back home. He got down at Wakad. I asked him to come till Danghe Chowk, while I'd take my kinetic and reach there. It was hot, dusty and windy outside. So we met up. I brought him back home. Benji was happy to see him and guess what? As soon as we got home, the first thing I heard was "Take Benji for a walk". Oh well...

Mimo had brought many PS2 games with him, which was a good thing as I could test them on PCSX2. He also showed me his work. He is currently working on a RPG using engine 001. For more info on the tool, visit www.engine001.com. I also showed him how much I've worked on RTFS Adventure 2 so far. Gee, I need to complete it soon.

Those 4 days passed quickly, but we had a lot of fun. We enjoyed Super Smash Bros Brawl a lot, me whooping his butt. Muhahaha! Yash, gonna hafta wait yer turn fer a-whoopin' ya hear? We also watched movies like Highlander: The Search for Vengeance. Kickass movie and smooth as butter animation. Imagi rocks!

Finally it was time for us to leave. Mimo's folks had a bus from Pune so they were coming back from their Mahabaleshwar trip. There were like 2 hours left, so we headed to Crosswords at Sohrab Hall. The content felt less that day. But there was some interesting stuff to read no doubt. We took out issues of Forge and sat reading. Time passed by. Mimo got a call from his dad and then it was time for us to leave. The bus stop was close by. Met Mimo's folks for the first time. I was kinda nervous. What would they be like? They turned out to be very nice people. Mimo's mother gave me a box of fresh strawberries and some jelly sweets to take home. Gee, that was very sweet. Time to catch the 7 o clock local. Wow it was like everything had been planned systematically, for when I reached the station the local had just arrived. Talk about timing!

Bye Mimo, it was really fun having you here. I wanna come to Baroda soon, but after my exams get over. See you pal.

Watchmen demo impressions

[Click on the screenshots for a bigger view.]Firstly I am new to Watchmen. I haven't read the graphic novel, but I will someday; I'm not familiar with the characters, but the game lets you play as Rorschach and Nite owl. I haven't watched the movie either and nor have I read the motion comic yet but I intend to check them out soon. So here are my impressions on the Watchmen: The End is nigh demo.

The game uses the "Kapow" engine. I mistook it for the Unreal 3 engine. Hehe. When you get something dark, cinematic with plenty of eye candy, one thinks its Unreal 3 engine. Remember when the Doom 3 engine used to be the talk of the day? Anyway back to topic...

The story in the demo has Rorschach and Nite Owl visiting some prison where the prisoners are wreaking havoc and having a party inside. The cops are fools as always and refuse to cooperate with the vigilantes. Dumbasses...so anyway, the vigilantes land there to help tame the crazy criminals inside. The cops threaten to shoot the vigilantes instead of taking care of the criminals. Man why are cops so stupid? They hardly thank superheroes for helping them bust crime. Instead of thanking them they decide to shoot them down. Wow! What a bunch of incorrigible stupid bums! So the criminals are set free while the cops chicken out, leaving Rorschach and Nite Owl to do the dirty work for them. So you beat up thugs using various combos, move ahead to a new part of an area, more thugs show up, you kick their butt and so on. I played as Rorschach and pretty much had a good time doing so. Didn't feel like trying out Nite Owl.

So the game has you punch, kick, throw enemies (the wiser option). Its fun when the thug you throw falls on the other idiots. Its pretty satisfying. Its also fun when you fling them off and they fall to their deaths. The game has plenty of eye candy and some good physics, but seriously...does a dirty prison actually shine that much? The floor seems to be so shiny that no matter how dirty things get, you can always see the reflections. Shiny floor with reflections lol. That's what eye candy often boasts about. There's also a lock picking mini game in the demo for Rorschach to do which seems pretty easy. Rorschach has a rage meter which increases as he fights enemies and by pressing RT or R1, makes him charge at enemies. Sweet. After you clear out one phase of crazy whackos, you can
wait a bit while you regain your lost health. As a beat em up game, it gets pretty repetitive but hey its fun. I've enjoyed beat em ups since school days. Remember TMNT?

The plot in the demo gets more interesting as you go on and then bang! End of demo. Damn. I look forward to playing the full game.

If you enjoy playing beat em ups, get the Watchmen. Its available for PC, Xbox360 and PS3. Also make sure you have a friend to join you. That makes it more fun. Later.