Mes Secrets Inconnus

While cleaning up all the old PS2 games today, i came across this , which was pristine and somehow i had missed it. I just popped it in and it held me captivated for nearly 3 hrs. Urban reign takes you through a story line that puts you into the shoes of Brad Hawk, as you attempt to clean up the streets by stopping the gang wars and destruction. While the storyline is somewhat interesting at times it doesn't really matter, as in any beatem up games you find that your only objective is to beat down enemy after enemy.
The game employs a very good combat system that lets you do more than your average punch kick and throw. You can also reverse grapples and strikes as well as hit multiple enemies at the same time and do various special attacks that you learn throughout the game. The fighting may seem boring at first, but one you get farther into the game, and get better at the game you'll notice that the fighting scenes can actually be a blast to play as well as watch, and you'll see something new each time.
The difficulty level on this game is insane and I would suggest sticking it on very easy or if you've had some experience try easy. It starts off easy but quickly gets ridiculously difficult and you'll find yourself struggling to beat bosses even on very easy. The main gripe about this game is the lack of multiplayer story mode. Thiru and myself tried to play the multiplayer game, but there is absolutely no reason for it not to be there as atleast half of the missions in the game involve you and a cpu partner taking out the baddies.
The game boasts a 100 mission story mode which can be quite time consuming considering the difficulty level of the game. What would have been nice though was for the game to include some free roaming levels like the classic beatem up games. In Urban Reign you are just thrown into area after area where there will be one or several enemies that you have to beat up.
While the levels eventually get repetitve Urban Reign is still a solid attempt at making a decent beatem up game. A nice fun game to have in your repository.

Welcome to the Arena, where high-ranking warriors are transformed into spineless mush. Abandoning every ounce of common sense and any trace of doubt, you lunge onto a stage of harrowing landscapes and veiled abysses. Your new environment rejects you with lava pits and atmospheric hazards as legions of foes surround you, testing the gut reaction that brought you here in the first place. Your new mantra: Fight or be finished.

Fits right for a project team that in pressure for delivering on time. We already had a tough time line and were working weekends to meet them. But what the heck, a tired mind needs some kind of energy. And QUAKE 3 was the adrenalin we found. It all started as a wild idea on a group chat,  Aswe were talking someone just downloaded the quake 3 demo version and shared it to others. Some one else was swift to set up the server and before we realized we were spawning like crazy. So much so, that we even forgot we were in office. It needed a PM to bring us back to our seats...

Tough letting it go... i am sure this is just the beginning :-)

There are only 2 real stress busters for me

1. My play station and the awesome set of games I have. This forces me to forget my worries

2. My daughter Niyanthri. She makes me forget all worries.

I am a gunny bag today. My eyes are sore and is burning. I just did not get my quota of sleep. It's just that COD has deprived me of human's basic need. I was up all night yesterday after seeing Niyanthri to bed. COD completely changes the rules of engagement by redefining world war -2  gaming.The unforgiving battles against new ferocious enemy in the climatic European and pacific countries will keep you glued to your seat. It's been an awesome experience.

Lessons learnt :

1.The flamethrower and rocket launchers are the most dangerous equipments and if you do not operate correctly you end up dying

2. Do not play these games in the night. There would be no one to disturb you and you will not know how long you have played the game before sun begins to rise

3. Every mission is new, don't ride too much on luck

4. If you play games @ night , make sure you have some munchies next to you. You will feel hungry. I was tempted to eat Niyanthri's cerelac :-)

Well I am a humble kid. Especially when a supernatural feat is achieved, I always downplay. I really don't want to talk about it, but since cricket is a religion in this part of  the world, you can read it over HERE or HERE.

Both relate to the same incident , but they will surely get you a new high...

Without warning, the Serpent King Orochi descended from the heavens. Using his unworldly powers to shatter time and space, Orochi kidnapped the strongest, wisest and most courageous warriors from Ancient China and Feudal Japan to test his might against the heroes of these ages. Most of the great armies of these two periods would succumb to the might of Orochi. Yet powerful warriors remain and are ready to continue the fight. Now, the greatest showdown in history is about to take place

All that being said, I find Warriors Orochi to be nearly unplayable. I've never had an issue with the difficulty of these games before, but even with more-than-reasonable leveling you are overpowered rather than superpowered. The appeal of these games has always been one character who can (beyond reason) plow through hundreds of opposing warriors. In Orochi, you are battered by minions and rendered immobile by officers constantly. It leaves you with a feeling of helplessness and frustration - it took me five tries to beat even the second (one star difficulty) battle. Besides the combat, I find the menu system to be completely unintuitive. Some nice options from the previous games are incorporated, such as leveling weapons, but for the most part having to organize/combine weapons or officers appears to be pointless and time-consuming. I will only pick this game to play only if all my other DVD's burn out.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 takes you inside-the-ropes to experience the drama and emotion of tournament golf. In addition, the U.S. Open, a USGA championship, and the USGA’s Rules of Golf is available in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 for the first time in franchise history. You can hear the roar of the crowd from the next hole over, can you handle the mounting pressure while you stand over your tournament-winning putt? Expanded crowds surround every hole; adding to the tension and excitement of each shot. A first for the franchise, real-time weather is reflected on every course, ensuring the in-game experience matches that of the current weather conditions. It also features a television broadcast style presentation, which include instantaneous updates and a new announcer team of ESPN.
All in all, if you are a golf fan, its a must grab…

After serving me for 3 yearns now, my PS2 stopped reading my fav games. I was very concerned that it would mean end of my gaming life ;-(. So hurriedly I took the playstation to Sony service repair center. But unfortunately the service guy would not help me much, simply because - it was out of warranty & mine was modded. But i really would like to know who in our country would - buy a international warrant for an device you buy outside india and that too for more than a year. & then who would pay 2K for each game to satisfy your gaming quench? What would National market guys do?

Well, i then began my journey to find a repair center in Bangalore for fixing my PS2. After hours of googling, i found nothing. Fortunately I had heard of a electronics repair shop near my home who was supposed to be good in such things. I just took my PS2 there. The moment he saw the PS2, he reeled out the model, the mod chip and other details which convinced me that he was the ONE. But on further investigation, he found that the lens was bad and needed a replacement. Here is where another journey began. All his contacts ran dry and he could not find the lens. We had to either ship the PS2 itself to chennai or mumbai , as it was available there. And for some reason, we found that days were passing by and no progress.

So again, i started getting impatient and started to quiz my friends if they knew any repair shop. Fortunately Phani passed me this message from his forum - "There’s one shop on the church street (It’s in a small complex and easily locatable), its right opposite to ‘Oye Amritsar’.. I don’t remember the name of the shop, but I got my PS2 repaired from there"  . I decided to take it to that guy.

So i went back to the guy who had my PS2 , faked a reason and collected it back from him. And then what happened after that is miraculous.  I just got it home and something told me to plug the PS2 and see. I just did that and presto my PS2 began playing all my games ;-) I could not control my happiness :-) ( You would understand that only if you are a gaming freak)

I am off this weekend to National market to pick up more titles - most wanted being - call of duty - world @ wars.

As Phani rightly put it - GOD ....Guaranteed Overnight Delivery ... for your prayers :))

 

And on the night the Lunar eclipse was schedule, we spent the day playing cricket with Deepak, Guru and the neighbour's kid Samith.

The plan to play cricket was spontaneous and its always amazing how things work out when you don;t plan. 5 mins back we did not have bat or ball, but then we managed to get from a distant friend. That's another reason why cricket is a popular sport in india;-) . Well we did not have much choice of grounds or stadiums so we simply confined to our parking lot . We devised a lot of complex laws/rules which gave a fair chance of someone becoming out and if you adapt soon you could be among runs. We played various variations of the game. I am pretty sure if we write to Lalit Modi ( VP of BCCI), he would market it for millions of $

And the result was .... body pain, aches and severe cold stretching till fever...

Well , it started off like any  other day, with me drinking a jug of chai over newspaper and being a Sunday was only a catalyst. I had nothing productive to do, except for the fact that i had to complete the design of a website which  I promised to publish yesterday. Lazy meee!!!!

While i was at it , i got a call from GC , that he would drop by.It was a lazy moment, but we got into the act. First we went out and checked the Ezone, found nothing that invigorated us. But that made us hungry and we embarked on a journey to Annaporneshwari hotel. The hotel is a old fashioned place, but definitely got a good cook and his NV dishes are the best. After our lunch we packed off to buy some music CD's and PS 2 games. Brian Lara's cricket, Metal Gear Solid ( Snake Eater) & Prince of Persia were the games that i picked.

Later we hit back home and watched some movie. Towards evening we again went out for a light snack :-) That explains our build:-) and then were joined by a couple of friends...

All in all a quite Friendship day!!!

My current musing is this tiny little cricket flashwave and table tennis. While the flash games are good, they are also quite handy and don't draw too much of my battery power. Controls are simple and the game runs well

I'll tell you what, you can play cricket & TT and still get the kick as though you are playing this on PS2.What takes the flash game apart from PS2 is the places you can play :-)
1. Play while traveling in car , bus , train & plane. PS: i have not yet traveled in a ship :-)
2. Play in office, when you are really stressed out
3. play in meeting while your bored
4. play on couch and make wifey think that something official you are doing
5.play when customer is around and tell that this is the break that you were looking at.
6.play among your collegues to demostrate that you have greater skills - hand eye co-ordination
7. give it to wifey , if she insists that you talk to her always
see the reasons :-)

An era of PC games. I used to spend hours on the PC and upgrading parts of it to have a solid gaming experience. First it would be creative 4.1 speakers for the WOW effect.....

Then it would be the RAM, then off course the graphic cards as the new games needed it. I had an NVIDIA back then. Then the games started getting bigger & plumper and the media shifted to DVD's, so then i had to buy DVD drive. When all was set, i realized my josh was more than my mouse can handle.. so began another set of investments for mouses, ergonomic keyboards, gamepads, steering wheels etc... Thats when i decided to buy PS2....

First there was Sir. Gary Sobers, then it was Ravi Shastri. Well before you tell me its Gibbs now. I beg to differ.It was the summer of '2k. We were back for semester holidays.

Thats when we decided that we kick off our cricket practice. Mind you we really had a good team and won many tournaments. And offcourse we played daily at our park. Sometime bet on money.I can list the various kinds of betting but i am here to tell you that 6 sixes in an over, is a feat which i achieved during that time. Anil , our team's fastest bowler had a brawl with me, that he has learnt the art of reverse swing. I was not convinced.So he challenged me and i accepted that.While he rolled his arms over, i freed my arms. All 6 balls, i struck 6 sixes continuously each better than the previous one.Everyone looked in awe, just like when Gibbs was belting. But i would still consider, my effort better than him - simply because all my sixes were straight ones. Atleast Gibbs had the option of belting the sixes anywhere!!! Does this make me the best???

OOh aaah ouch !!! I can't move my hand ! Even my fingers are protesting as I type. Coz all I've been doin` is playing Playstation games on my kick ass TV ! My friends are all having their minutes of fun, havin` a good laugh at me ! But i had my last laugh when they came over to my place and I just turned on a PS2 game - Soul Calibur.. NOW, its them, they are more hooked to that gaming device than me. All day long they call and ask me what time i am back home from work, so that they can play the game.

Getting stressed out at work is normal, but playing a good game of Tennis or Soul Calibur or even mortal kombat is even more stressfull. Its the stress that you would love. I have started t o have a good collection of games now. Smash court Tennis,Gun, Call of duty, Final Fantasy XII, Need for Speed - carbon, Unreal tournament( downloaded from Torrents), Tom clancy's splinter cell,Black( reversed engineered from another DVD),Beach volleyball, Cricket 2007, FiFa 2007, Combat Elite, Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas, Gran Turismo - 3, Top Spin, Sega games collection, God Of war, Soul Calibur, Mortak Komat- Armageddon - these are some i regularly play and can think of now. Trust me, all you need is one game and your are hooked... I am off now home, to play a few more and become the undisputed one.

The selectors have given Sehwag too many chances.Drop Sehwag, I would be gutted if they pick him for the series against West Indies and Sri Lanka. IMO, ideally I'd want to see Ganguly opening again with Tendulkar like the old times from the mid-1990s; Sachin and Saurav used to be the most feared pair in ODI Cricket before Sehwag even made his debut. And another thing is that they need to look at Dinesh Karthik as a specialist batter. Just wonder if they put half the effort to improve his batting skills then they have worked on Pathan, Karthik seems to have the confidence and the ability to go a long way

And come on, somebody have a word with Sachin Tendulkar. Wtf has happened to him? Watching him bat last night, it felt like he didn't want to be there, he didn't show the stomach to fight and his injury is no excuse. Once a great, most feared batsmen has now become India's most unreliable player. I just cant't believe it. Just wonder what it is that's holding him back, and I feel he'll come to his natural best if he opens with Ganguly in ODIs. He just doesn't get the freedom and is forced to played too responsibly in partnership with Sehwag. That's not him, Tendulkar has never given a livin' f*ck about playing second fiddle, he used to own every partnership which is not the case anymore.
It's never been about ability with India, it has always been about self-belief and desire. This last test match was about who wanted to win the most. South Africa have grabbed this test from India's throat because they showed the desire and they deserved to win, fair and square.

The quarter-final loss to lower ranked Olga Poutchkova of Russia at the Tashkent Open brought another plunge in Sania Mirza's ranking as she dropped six places to be 61st on the latest WTA world rankings.
The other day as expected Martina Hingis won the SunFeast Open; as expected Hingis met Sania in the SemiFinal of the Open; and again, as expected the Swiss Miss defeated the Indian tennis star in that match. Defeated did I say? The word should actually be drubbed, clobbered,routed,humiliated - for once, the scoreline (6-1, 6-0) exactly indicated how the match went - absolutely lopsided; Sania had no answers to Hingis' graceful strokes, while Sania's famous "powerful" shots were totally out of control.

Yes, everybody has a bad day, but then a great athlete will pull oneself out of the abyss and try to scale the peak again. One hasn't seen Sania do this in a long long time and the next time she opines that it is "humanly impossible to perform at the same level every year", one should just ask her to look across the net at the likes of Martina Hingis - the comeback star of the year - or at the other Martina who turned pro years before Sania was even born and who recently announced her retirement after winning her nth grand slam title!

Same time last year, Sania was at the peak of her career and much admired.She truly was the icon of many a youngster in this country, symbolic of what we Indians can achieve if we really wish to do so. She was brazen, intrepid, dauntless and irreverent - the future face of India. Despite what she showed she could achieve, I do believe that the welcome she got on her return home was uncalled for - she wasn't yet a champion, not even close, having just started on a grueling, arduous journey on the road towards becoming one, someday probably. And Sania should have known this - but she revelled in the accolade, the adulation and the laurels, and started to believe she was worthy of it, that she has indeed reached the top, scaled the peak.

When she was awarded the Padmashree last year, I remember asking hubby, an ardent sports fan, if she really deserved it. To me, it seemed to come way too early in her career. The criteria to get a Padmashree award is defined as "excellence in their field". When did one decently good year translate to "excellence" in one's field? One cannot expect a child just learning to take his/her first steps to run - it has to be taken one step at a time, stumbling and getting up again, first with help and than without, getting a footing first and then finally taking a leap. Even if you do race down the track on your first outing, you would need to step back and evaluate your performance, so that the first race doesn't become the last one. But for some reason the powers that be decided that Sania was worth a "Padma" award.

This premature "recognition" of her "greatness" also seems to have gone to Sania's head. She has fallen a couple of notches down from the peak she presumed she had scaled last year, yet her head seems to be still stuck somewhere in the clouds above. I know she is indeed a role model for a lot of youngsters in the country today, and she has an an implicit social responsibility. But it still doesn't warrant her saying , "An `if or but' from my lips can create a national crisis''. I know she is young, and probably doesn't realize the enormity of those words, yet the same social responsibility that she is referring to requires her to think and act more sensibly, isn't it? The conceit in her tone and the speech, I am sure, isn't really lost nor is it actually condonable.

Success doesn't come easy. And it doesn't sit easy on anyone's head. Sania has the game, and has the power in her shots - but she is no way close to being a winner, a real champion. Yes, she is not even 20, but then so is Maria Sharapova and the distance between them is apparent - both on and off the courts. In this sports-personalities-starved nation it is easy to become someone the public reveres, but that doesn't necessarily make one a winner. Victory of any kind has to be won, gotten by a lot of sweat, strength of will and hardness of heart; not to forget extreme decency and dignity and sensibility.

Sania, you have a long way to go and it would help you as well as the millions who idolize you if the focus was indeed on the path ahead. You need role models? Look around you, they are all there - from Pete Sampras to Steffi Graf to Federer.