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When two medics heal one another, it's commonly referred to as a donut (because their heal beams loop around and resemble a-- yes, that's right).
I was playing medic on the om-nom-nom-nom server today when a pyro rushed me and a fellow medic. Out of desperation we donut together and scramble around like idiots so the pyro couldn't roast us with his actual flamer. Oh yes, we were still on fire of course, but we weren't dead.
We were both on fire for around a full minute healing each other and being set on fire before a soldier blew him up. Usually being on fire that long kills a medic two times over.
Me: How are we still alive?
Fellow medic: I don't know!
Then I was promptly blown up by a rocket.
Also, offensive engineering ftw. I snuck a forward base and some teleporters right under the red team's nose and watched as a heavy and two demomen rushed the last point as soon as we capped point B. I like to think we won so quickly because red's defense was caught with their pants down as my teles pretty much ported my entire team right outside the red team's doorstep.
- Feeling:
bouncy
First Name : Marcel
Last Name : Hoang
Email Address : samuraiblade@gmail.com
Phone Number : 714 422 6451
Best Time To Call : 2 PM - 5 PM
City you live in : Westminster
State you live in : California
What's the URL? : http://csulbgaming.blogspot.com/
URL: http://striderhoang.livejournal.com/
Select your edition : Los Angeles
How long? : 10
What's your insider knowledge? : I always take note of the local video game and specialty stores along with the arcades and public gaming centers.
Arcade Infinity in the Diamond Bar area is a popular spot for competitive gamers, especially in fight games. Because of its popularity, it's also received it's fair share of arcade games that aren't officially out in North America like Blazblue and King of Fighters XII.
Howie's is also a relatively little known chain that opened a location in the Westminster mall, letting gamers game on high end computers for a price.
I enjoy browsing the local stores for unique deals or random price hijinks and problems. I've tried pre-ordering the premium edition of Blazblue: Calamity Trigger for the 360 at 2 different Gamestops, but they don't acknowledge the existence of the the premium edition. What's funny is that their own website was advertising it one their front page.
Category : Games & Hobbies
Specific Topic : LA Video Game Examiner
What would you like to write about? : Tell them about interesting gaming spots and various misadventures as a consumer in the video game industry.
Did you know you there's an arcade where all the games take only two or three nickels? Nickel Nickel in Huntington Beach has modest selection of popular and niche cabinets, all at only a nickel or two.
How much shovelware can one customer find in one store? Go to one store, be it a big box store like Target or specialty store like Gamestop, and count how many games on the DS or Wii fit within the cheerleading/baby care/casual genre, then become depressed at the number.
Arcade Infinity to hold the Ladies of Street Fighter tournament June 27th. Some of the top players at the arcade get a lady friend and train them on Street Fighter IV (training montage not included) and test their skills against other girls in what has to be one of the only tournaments that I'd also describe as sexy.
What qualifies you? : I'm currently pursuing my baccalaureate in Journalism and planning on a master's degree as well, so I'm trained on news gathering and reporting.
I've kept a video game blog for close to a year now following my personal experience on video game news and consumerism.
I've also recently joined my school newspaper as the online assistant editor.
Asides from that, I've been a gamer since I was 5-years-old back with my Sega Genesis system I got from my uncle with a copy of Ecco the Dolphin in a bundle pack that was probably from Costco. Ever since then, I've owned at least one game system from every generation from the SNES, Playstation, N64, Gamecube, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii with memorable times in between with friends' consoles and a love of the arcades all the while.
What makes you different? : I enjoying being a bit of a shopper about my video games, so I want to keep people informed on what they can find out there is they look hard enough and the zany stuff as well like games unique to a store. For example, Target has their own version of Shaun White's Snowboarding for the Wii, which is a pretty random show of favoritism.
Distance has never been much of an obstacle to me, as I drive for 30 minutes just to go to Puente Hills mall to their Tilt Arcade.
I use Google Reader religiously and consider myself to always be on top of the news concerning video games and technology as I regularly read Kotaku, Ars Technica, LA and NY Times, and MTV Multiplayer among other subscriptions along with aggregating sites like Digg.
Article 1: Gaming on a Nickel: Nickel Nickel Arcade Has You Covered For a Penny-Pinching Good Time
Article 2: Arcade Infinity Hosts The Ladies of Street Fighter Tournament
Article 3: Is There a Such Thing as a Good Game Under $20?
Preparing, uploading photos : 5
Creating Hyperlinks : 5
Embedding Videos : 3
Online promotion through sites like Digg : 5
Your article : I've been lucky enough in my life to have working in a Mom & Pop's style used game store part-time, Gamesquare. Unfortunately, these businesses have a difficult time staying afloat with competition from chains like Gamestop and Target, not to mention the expenses included with something as touchy as used game sales. But the strangely generically named Game Place has a small hook that sets it above the rest: they have staff trained in electronic repairs.
Our consoles are getting more and more complex. 10 years ago, I never would've dreamed my console would have a hard drive on it, let alone wifi. But this increasing complexity has lead to swarms of angry gamers with malfunctioning systems. The 360 is notorious but the PS3 and Wii aren't exempt.
Located in the Westminster Center at the corner of Westminster boulevard and Goldenwest avenue, this unassuming used game dealer has shelves and tables lines with bricked 360s and down-and-out PS3s with their staff diligently repairing them, bypassing the irritating shipping and handling process to Microsoft's own repair center all the way in Texas.
Used game stores are in a precarious position. Chains like Gamestop offer consistent service at their best. On the other hand, Ma & Pa stores can give you a personal attention a chain can't. A lot make their mark in rentals, but few can offer the professional service of repairing your consoles and cleaning your discs. Here's to hoping Game Place will service the area with good games and repairs for a long time.
Game Place is at 6731 Westminster Blvd # 107, Westminster, CA. You can call them at (714) 898-4263.
Your Bio : Marcel Hoang has been attached to the video game scene since 1993. Since then, he's played his first game on the Sega Genesis (Ecco the Dolphin), been to places like Redondo Beach's massive boardwalk arcade, and read magazines like Gamepro and EGM while print journalism was still unquestionably important. Now reading blogs and sites of note like Kotaku and MTV Multiplayer, Marcel is actively pursuing his baccalaureate in Journalism and plans on getting his master's.
If there's one thing he's picked up as a reporter and a gamer, it's that getting out there and getting seeing the story beats reading about it the next day, any day. And hopefully you'll see it that way in his writing.
How did you hear? : Other
Other? Please specify :
- Feeling:
calm
So yeah, it won't embed (fancy that Veoh coding!) but at least we have urls!
- Feeling: Huzzah!
Also, playing a fight game on a PS2 controller was refreshing after trying to play CvS2 on the Gamecube for days.
Hopefully I can get some time in TF2 before the tourney starts. I'm not particularly excited about it cause it doesn't seem particularly
- Feeling:
annoyed
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Seriously, I checked nothing on the systems knowledge section.
But today? I'm standing behind a guy who couldn't link combos if his life depended on it. I'm sure someone reading this understands the concept of pressing buttons in sequence. Hit the opponent with a weak attack, then push the next button, which is a medium attack, then push the next button, a heavy attack, in a rhythmic sequence. It's not hard really, and will net you a simple but powerful 3 or 4 hit combo.
But this guy. He kept mashing the same attacks over and over. I'm not saying anyone reading this knows the best time to attack and the best time to block, but this guy never blocked. Hell, the boss would throw out a super for no reason at all, he didn't even combo into it, but most people's first instinct is to jam back on the joystick to block it in such a simple situation. This isn't about sudden surprises, because the super animation takes takes a full second to start. Plenty of time for the frames on your character to block.
No. He ate every attack like the worst rushdown fighter ever. And he wanted to beat story mode? I'll give you three tries maybe until I jump in to fight you and inevitably kick you off, but com'on!
In the end, after he spent nearly $3 (replays are a quarter) I ended up just taking his spot as the character he was playing just so he could see his ending. He's not playing, but he's played long enough, and now I'm playing, one way or another.
It took me 75 cents beat the last boss.
After the credits rolled, I finally got to play as my main, Noel Vermillion.
Ironically, she uses guns, and yet has no real projectiles.
- Where was I?:Puente Hills Mall
- Feeling: aggravated
I'm into technology. Sure, my focus is video games, but as a child of the 90s who's grown up in the Internet age, I love me some technology and Internet subculture. Hey, if I'm not gonna be a doctor or a lawyer, might as well be involved with what I want to be involved with, right?
Here's my problem. You're talking with a friend over the Internet and a question comes up. What do you do? If you said, "I'd answer the question right there." You're one of two things.
1) a normal person
2) someone who exists in the 90s
If you're not normal, you'd at least realize that half the browsers on the market have a built in search bar, and most of those browsers with search bars are set to Google by default. Here's my problem as an abnormal person from the Internet...
Why are you asking someone a question, with their limited, human knowledge, when you can ask the Internet with it's limitless depth of knowledge?
You need to expand your mind, seriously guise. From now on, if someone asks me a question and the Internet is obviously available (like, obviously, glaringly available, like say, in a chat room on the goddamn Internets) I'm going to do one of two things.
1) Tell them to Google it
2) Give them a link, which leads to what I typed in on http://lmgtfy.com/
Yes, it's shell of another website, devoted to making a point that instead of getting information from a nearly endless source, you ask someone else, neigh, trouble someone else, for something that seems trivial.
WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN 21ST CENTURY
Now, in case you're interested, this is what set me off...
I'm on Facebook. This is a social networking website, in case you don't know. I mention I'm gonna start playing TF2 as soon as it finished installing because I bought a video card for my desktop. A friend asks me what is TF2.
Ok, seriously, I respond with this
Seriously, do I have to hold your hand or something?
- Feeling: annoyed
- Listening to:LUST sin: Jin Kisiragi's Theme
You freak out
What do you do afterwards?
Call your dead sister to find out she's alive.
So you have this raging emotion. What's next?
Take a little walk.
And after calming down and getting another call from the people from the person from the medical group?
Realize your sister was named after your recently passed away grandmother.
Hahahahaha
- Feeling:
tired
The best thing I could find was a $99 Hd which was prolly around 150 to 200GB.
It's not there anymore, so all that's left are $129 at best and upwards with a probable 10% discount of dubious value.
I know I'm not returning because there's nothing of value to me left in CC that's marked down well enough to match the impression of a liquidation. Out of spite, I drive down to Fry's to see what they have...
I score $56.99 portable HD with 160GB. Even with a cherry coke and sour jelly bellies, it came out to $65. A humoungous deal if you ask me.
The moral of the story is, always shop around. You never know when the next big deal will jump out at you.
- Feeling: jubilant
Good news: For us techies, we can score some price slashed, liquidated gear. Bad news comes from Gizmodo, but I read Lifehacker usually. Here it is in their words...
So keep your Circuit Cities under lock and key to make sure you grab that external hard drive you've wanted to separate your important work files from your sitting-on-your-ass-and-proscrastinating files.
The catch: According to Gizmodo, prices may go up to MSRP on Saturday, meaning the whole "sale" part of the liquidation sale isn't exactly accurate. Those prices may drop drastically between now and the March 31 close, so it'll be worth keeping an eye on.
- Feeling:
awake - Listening to:Nakajima Megumi: Seikan Hikou
Congratulations Ubisoft! You've successfully made a swish with the paper ball that is Prince of Persia into your proverbial trashcan (with optional basketball hoop).
Here are the things I'm going to troll on...
+ The Prince is utterly caucasian. You'd think if this as, you know, Persia, or vaguely middle east, someone would at least have an accent. The titular Prince spouts painful sarcasm (or wit, what have you), sports a questionable tan, has blue eyes, and sounds like he stepped out of a Southern Californian private school. Is this Prince of Persia or Los Angeles?
+ The levels are very similar in gameplay. In the original trilogy, you'd maybe get a spiffy new sword, or traps would get more elaborate and monsters would even appear as well. Here, I'm wall running my brains out. I'm wall running, pole jumping, and vine climbing until the cows come home. There aren't any neat booby traps or even cool mistake rewinding time controls. I'm doing the same thing over and over again, that is, wall running, jumping, and if I fall, I just start over at the beginning of the acrobatic puzzle, cause my partner just teleports in and might as well say, "Dying isn't cool? LOL! Lemme help you out!"
+ Remember the acrobatic, fighting machine that was the Prince in the trilogy? Well say hello to the new, slow paced, en garde Prince! Seriously, I'll beat the shit out of who suggested the change in combat, because it's just an arena mash fest. Mash X, sometimes Y, and if you're luckly, you'll skip the fight entirely by getting a ring out. But forget about rolling out of the way and gracefully flipping from one enemy to another. You're fighting one on one whether you fucking like it or not.
+ Lastly, as I mentioned before, the levels are very samey. Here's what you're gonna do for a routine hour of gameplay. Brisk jog to the level proper, run on some walls and jump off some obstacles, kill a bad guy or two, "heal" the land, collect shit, rinse, repeat. It's almost as if the time control mechanic wasn't thrown out and I'm reliving the same gameplay over and over a la Groundhog Day. Well Bill Murray had it easy cause he eventually got out of that time warp. I'm stuck in this cycle until I beat the game...
or turn off my Xbox.
The box to Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift came in. Now I can enjoy to game to the fullest knowing I officially own it.
Prince of Persia is coming next in a few days of so.
Transfer cable for mah Xbox came in. About an hour or so for all the shit in my 20gb drive to jump the shark to my 60gig one.
Also, I have a free trial code for Gamefly if anyone wants it. I don't know how long it lasts, but since my membership lasts until April (then I'll actually pay for membership) I don't feel the need to activate it myself.
Any takers?
- Feeling: bouncy
- Listening to:Counterattack: Shadow of the Colossus OST
Well, I've realized I should whole heartily move my game-related posts and serious stuff over to my blogger blog because... well, blog is in the fucking website.
So yes, now I'm just taking this moment to fucking vent on something.
It'll be brief, but rest assured, it'll probably be something I never thought I'd do; put my emotions on the table on livejournal. Mostly because it's so cliche, I might as well throw in a car chase and mention I was the bad guy all along.
So I know this person. We used to know each other. That was a while ago (rest assured, high school era). But for some reason, whenever I even try making contact, my replies seem to fall on selectively fucking deaf ears. She replies to other people, but what am I? Some sort of fucking ghost? What do I need to do here? Wave a flag while decimating an entire nation and saying I'm gay? (though maybe a bit tasteless for a joke, you catch my drift hopefully. I'd need the fucking bat signal to get some sort of reply here).
Some people may know how much I hate using the phone because I'm such a technophile. I message her and comment her on facebook, but all I get is reinforcement to the notion that she talks to other people but not me, apparently because I have the aids plague, the satanic spawn of two of the worst diseases mankind has to face except for MEGA herpes. Despite my distaste for talking on the phone, my phone calls apparently lead to a black hole (that's not controlled by Verizon! Who would've thought?).
So here I am, laying my fucking cards on the table and folding. From now on, I'll take the proverbial stick-my-fingers-into-my-ears approach and go LALALALALALA.
Yes, my livejournal links to my facebook, and it'll be published in public. Fuck that! I'm fucking journalism major. Speaking my mind is in my goddamn blood. Maybe one or two people even know who I'm spouting about, but who cares? I'm fucking typing livejournal, the emotional spittoon of the internet!
- Feeling: Fuck this!
- Listening to:In Awe of the Power: Roar of the Earth OST
I'll be writing columns on technology and games sometime soon.
WOOO!
- Feeling:
accomplished
It's basically a quiz you take where you answer random questions about your friends. It's in a similar format as most other Facebook quiz apps, so you have a friend, a question, and usually yes or no.
It's like several other apps, and it's really not bad in that aspect. The thing I find questionable is that you can find out who said what after accumulating a certain amount of in-game currency (earned from taking quizzes).
Sure most of the questions are harmless, but what's the point of being asked what could be a personal question when that same person can find out after taking a couple of the company's crappy, mindless quizzes? The thing that prompted me to even write this is that someone apparently thinks I'm not happy, and the apps already reveals the person's gender, so it's like it's begging you to find out. The fact that I can find out who said this is in my opinion, in bad taste. It's not the answer my friend gave me, but the fact that I can follow a paper trail.
This is worse then gossip, because at least finding out where the gossip came from encourages investigative skill or at least, a good friend on the inside. This just takes a few minutes of clicking and dredging.
This is all opinion though, in the end. The quiz doesn't violate any rules on Facebook. I just it's distasteful to just reveal what used to be private answers like that.
- Feeling:
determined
It's funny how my campaign started off with the over arching villain constantly acting like the thorn in the party's side. Now, I wanna move that over as a theme working in the background while I churn out a dungeon of the week format taking inspiration and converting ideas into dungeons and encounters.
It's also funny how this is much more longer running and focused then my other blog ideas. Might be because this links to the Gaming Club blog, which I update with wicked fervor.
( The Underload's Mausoleum )
Note: These cards aren't final. Still fine tuning some things.
( Monster Cards )
- Feeling: accomplished
This makes me wanna break this out....
- Where was I?:Unnamed city in Left 4 Dead
- Feeling: jubilant
- Listening to:theme that plays when a tank attacks
