Merry Xmas and Happy New Year 2014!

Escape Room and Mission Q

The new thing in town, real-life escape rooms courtesy of Japan. Nice concept and good fun. KL is home to two, the first being the Escape Room @ e-Curve and the second being Mission Q @ SS15, Subang Jaya.

Having played two rooms at each place, I have to say that Escape Room has the better atmosphere and decor overall, which leads to more engaging puzzles and a thematic feel to it. Mission Q on the other hand makes up for its lack of good props and theme with some innovative puzzles, though it does feel slightly "cheap" at times.

Even if you're not into these sort of escape room type games, if you like puzzles and problem solving you should give it a whirl. Prices don't differ too much between the two but it is a bit pricey at about 30 - 36 ringgit per pax per room.

The Loading Bar (eSports Bar @ Malaysia)

My friends and I are starting up The Loading Bar, an eSports themed bar for gamers to come chill out, have a beer or two, watch some live matches together with other gamers and just have fun. Visit the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TheLoadingBarMsia) and give us a visit at our next event!

So many Zekes! (The Last of Us and World War Z plus other movies!)

We've got a zombie overload this week. The Last of Us by Naughty Dog came out about a week back and I've been playing it over the past week. It's an awesome game with an engaging story and plot (a must for any game in my book), stunning visuals, and solid (though safe) gameplay and mechanics. Even if you're not a fan of the zombie genre, this game is definitely worth a play.

Expansive scenery and details throughout the game.

The game's two main characters, Ellie (left) and Joel.

Cordycep zombies are the least of your worries actually...

World War Z also came out last week featuring Brad Pitt as a super calm super solider against the 'zekes'. Its an interesting movie based on an interesting book premise though quite straightforward in the telling. One of the least horrifying zombie movies I've seen to date (Resident Evil used to take that spot) but not the worst by far. Also worth a watch.

Not going to end well...

Watched lots of other blockbuster movies recently too. The week before we had Man of Steel; I personally enjoyed that despite many saying that it fell below expectations. What more can you expect from a Superman movie? What super duper depth are we looking for here? Maybe that's why Batman is always more popular than Superman. Also watched Monsters University yesterday, good movie, entertaining but not the best movie of the year by far.

In a fit of spontaneity, I bought a bouquet of flowers and a hand mixer for my wife. She finds it sweet :) Hand mixer sounds odd as a present (where's the diamonds?) but she likes baking and I like baking with her so it made sense?

Also gotten back into MOBA games. Its kinda fun when you play with friends I guess. I hate playing pubs cause of the various types of assholes that emerge. Waiting for the DC universe MOBA (the Flash is my pick!)... I'm sure Batman / Superman will be top tier heroes.

WoW Cube and The Cat Lady

We've started playing WoW! Well, more like skipped the starting part and just went right into it. My friends and I built a WoW Cube, and we've been playing that the past couple of weeks. The game is simple to play and not as deep as Magic: The Gathering but its new and its fun so whatever. If you played the Shadow Era, iPhone game, its pretty similar. So I've gone off the deep end with this cube drafting thing and created a whole blog dedicated to it. Go visit! Click here here here.

The Cat Lady. This game. So good, so sad, so EMO. Point-and-click adventure with dark, gritty and very adult themes. Lovely artistic presentation, great and gripping story and awesome characters. Some people say the voice acting isn't quite there but I think its awesome, I love Susan Ashworth's voice actor. The soundtrack is just as great, melancholy and fitting with the game. Go play this!

The game is filled with atmospheric scenes like this one

Not a good place to be, this.

KL Cube Drafters & Exalt Assets

MTG cube drafting has increased to a staple of 1-2 times a week and given how regularly we cube draft I figured it might be a nice opportunity to create a web blog about it, in addition to tracking and communicating the changes in the cube to the draft group. The web blog covers the contents of the cube, play logs, change logs and the winning decklist(s) for each draft. The last bit is interesting to me to explore the different kinds of archetypes that can arise, and I hope also would be useful for the other cubers to learn and improve from. We got a game going last night, so will be updating the play log section of the blog. Visit it at www.klcube.blogspot.com.

Exalt Assets has gotten its first house and its first renovation project! Woo hoo! Its a property investment and uplift company that a few partners and I started earlier this year. While there are still a few kinks in the business model and things we haven't sorted out just yet, I think its a good start to the business. Here's to hoping more business comes our way!

Dead Devil Cubes

First off, GONG XI FA CAI to everyone! Happy Chinese New Year to you all! Even if you're not Chinese!

Devil May Cry; I liked this game but it had major changes which I suppose most people just couldn't accept. Dante's change for one; I'm glad they revised him to look more like a young, arrogant prick rather than a young, emo f***tard that he was before but... he's not the same Dante we know and love. Gameplay wise, it was too easy to be taken seriously as part of the DMC franchise, even with the harder difficulties. The story was alright, a "modern" and "realistic" retelling of the original DMC tale. I loved the art direction, the character models and the world and how it was portrayed. Still, not enough to fill its dark soul with ligggghhhhtttt....

Dead Space 3; another game in these present times that fall victim, just like DMC, to the "inclusiveness" bug... i.e. game developers feel that they have to dumb down the game just so that EVERYONE can play. And when the game is so easy that everyone can play, no one really wants to. Where's the challenge? Dead Space 3 is really, really easy on any difficulty other than hardcore, and that's because of some cheap shots with falling rocks and space debris. Also, more action than horror which is a minus point for the series. Some closure with the ending, standard stuff really.

Cube drafting is where the fun's at... lots and lots of cube drafting this holiday, with back to back drafts, 8-9 people almost twice this past two weeks (oh joy!) and loads of fun to be had with new cards in the cube.