Saturday, June 26, 2010

Today's haul

I am splurging way too much lately. Just received the R1 a few days ago and I am already getting new toys again. Today's haul includes a Ground Pounder Monster Truck by Redcat and a Tamiya Knight Hauler. The Knight Hauler was a late father's day present for my dad though, so this haul wasn't all mine. The haulers are probably's Tamiya's most luxurious RC line. The whole setup is not cheap, but they are really cool. Just watch the following video and you will know what I am talking about. Note: the sound effects are not added in the video, there is a multifunction unit (sold separately) which does all the sounds and light effects.


As for the Redcat Ground Pounder, I have always been a solid axle monster truck fan, just like the real trucks. There are plenty of independent suspension trucks in the RC market, but I was never interested in them, sure they handle good and all, but they are just not as cool as solid axles. Redcat is a relatively new company to the RC scene. I've never actually bought anything from these newer companies because I am scared that they will be junk. But I have read great things about these trucks on many forums and it looks like Redcat takes care of their customers really good. This truck is actually a V3 because there were some bugs that some people experience during the initial release of this truck and they actually came out with the V3 with all of them fixed. Now THAT is customer service. Another thing is because this is a solid axle truck! There are probably only around 10 solid axle trucks in the market, with probably only a quarter of that aimed at the monster truck racing crowd (the others are for rock crawling). So it is quite nice to have another player to compete in the game, therefore I had to give them a try. So far I've only been able to run it indoors because it has been raining the whole day, but stock speed seems pretty good. I will have to wait til tomorrow to test it outside, can't wait though! Here's a video to show what it is:

Friday, June 25, 2010

Toy Story 3!

WAS AWESOME!!! Just came back from watching it in 3D. This was actually my first 3D movie, it had the cool factor in the beginning. But it really didn't add anything extra to the movie. It's probably just because there wasn't any "action" in it that they could have taken advantage of with the 3D effect. Back to the movie itself, I totally loved it! I've been a Toy Story fan since I was a kid and I've been waiting for this to come out since the teaser about a year ago. It was well worth the wait. I give it a 4.5/5.

Now about the 3D effect, we will see how it does in "The Last Airbender" next week.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Earthquake!!!

So here I was playing as Skywarp in chapter 2 of the War for Cybertron Decepticon campaign when I felt my chair shaking underneath my bottom. At first I thought it was my dog or someone nudging my chair, but no one was behind me. Since I was so immersed into the game, I thought I was shaking my bottom unconsciously LOL! Shortly after, messages from my friends confirmed that it was indeed an earthquake. It is on the news right now and it was reported as a 5.0 magnitude one. I've never felt an earthquake before so it was quite scary to think that it could occur here (thought we were in an inactive area). I would have probably freaked out if I was at work today being that I am in the top floor of the building which is regularly only accessible by elevator, except for the stairs which activate the fire alarm.

After a thorough check, my toys are safe and none of them tumbled over.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Today's haul

Took the day off today and most likely tomorrow as well because of the G8/G20 happening in Toronto. I went yesterday and didn't see any protesters, although there were much less people than normal in the subways and a lot of police and metal fencing everywhere. Usually when I take the subway at this time, it is packed. But yesterday, there was only three other people in the train cart with me which felt pretty weird at that time. This morning, my parents told me not to go because there were reports of gunshots in the early morning and reports of other hidden weapons that were found. So just to be safe, I will take the week off earlier.

I haven't gotten any figures lately even though there were several sales in the past few weeks because I got bitten by the RC (radio-controlled) bug again. And since school is finally over, it is time for me to go back to this long-time hobby of mine...at FULL FORCE! LOL! It is just great to sit in the workshop and build and work on my RC's, especially without worries of school. I have collected many projects over these years that were started, but never finish due to the lack of time. I am glad I will finally be able to pick these back up and finish them. Although there is quite a pile up and it will last me for quite a long time. Okay, I'll stop blabbering on and go straight to the hauls.

First, today is a special day....the release of Transformers: War for Cybertron! And being a transformers fan, I HAD to get it! Especially since it is not a movie-tied game, so there's a chance that it will be good, right? I got the PC version off of Steam at noon today at $39.99usd. It was 9 gb and took around 2 hours to download from Steam. I am not a big gamer, so don't expect a full out review, but it will just be my thoughts. I first tried out the campaigns (first chapter of each Autobots and Decepticons). It is your typical shoot the bad guys and reach the checkpoints type of game with some stupid AI's. The cinematics were nice though and since I never watched G1, I am not sure if they got it right, but it is interesting. But it's really not that bad, just probably because it's TRANSFORMERS. However, the game really shines in multiplayer mode. For the multi-player mode, there are several modes available (like other games: death-match, secure and protect nodes, and modes similar to capture the flag). However, I've only tried deathmatch because there were no one playing in the other modes lol! In death-match, you get to choose between 4 classes: scouts, scientists, leaders, and soldiers. The classes determines your armor, weapons, abilities, vehicle modes. As you play and gain scores (from killing other bots), you gain experience which are totaled and added at the end of each round. The exp. are used to level up your class (depending on which class you used in the game). Leveling unlocks items such as weapons, abilities, and other robot suits.

The controls are really good, one gripe I had is that it seems like the buttons are not reconfigurable, although the default settings were nicely placed and I got used to them in a jiffy (even though I haven't played these types of shooting games for ~6 or so years). There are plenty of people to compete with even only after a few hours from the release time. Another unusual feature of this game is when you join a game, you are randomly placed into one. There is no list where you see all the games available and you choose to join one. Although I am sure you can join the same games as your friends. I am not sure on the max. limit of players per map though, the most I played today was I think 6v6 which was plenty of fun already. There is also a co-op mode, but I haven't tried that out yet so no comment on that for now.

This is an awesome game for Transformers fans, but the online mode makes it a great game even for those who are not a big fan. It sort of reminds me of a japanese gundam fighting game on the PS2, but even more cool!

The other haul of the day is my new RC rock buggy, the R1 by Gmade/Junfac. Ordered this from Korea last Thursday and got it this morning (from Korea to Canada)! I've heard of fast shipping from these guys, but I didn't expect it to arrive THIS fast!

This rock crawler/racer/buggy is just so cool looking! I knew I had to have one once I saw it, especially after this vid.


All in all, today was an awesome day! Now back for some more War for Cybertron gaming!