MAGICKA: Game Review

• Did you ever wanted to try to combine elements with different attributes but you don't have the guts to do it because it's probably risky and you would end up DEAD!?
• Would you like to know if having only a single power which such as healing would make you fit to survive?
• Would you want to become a powerful wizard or sorcerer capable of manipulating all kinds of elements just like for real?

That's simple and easy! PLAY MAGICKA!

Magicka is an action-adventure PC-Game developed by independent developer Arrowhead Game Studios. It was released via Steam for Microsoft Windows. Of course, a free trial version download was made available for testing and reviews.

Magicka is played in a 2.5D environment which requires a little bit of high graphic specifications.

It is played in a third person perspective wherein you're controlling a wizard capable of manipulating, combining, forging 8 elements namely: Water, Earth, Fire, Cold, Shield, Life, Arcane and Lightning. It is great how the game apply the laws of physics while depicting the world of Sorcery and Magic.

It's fun when you wet the character and and make him use Lightning which suddenly electrocute the Mage(*laughs), it's not mean though since I'm just doing it in a game. I'm also impressed by the way how both Fire and Water mixed up and instantly forms into a form of Steam while combining Water with Cold forms a spray of projectile Ice shards. 

There are lot of different combinations and formula to form one magic into another. Combining a Shield element to any types of element would form barriers with that same attribute combined eith the Shield. For example, combing Shield + Earth =  Stone Wall,  Shield + Ice =  Ice Wall. You could also stack additional elements to improve the effect and feature of your magic such as when you add Fire element into a stone Wall it will produce a a burning Lava Stone wall. Also, depending of the number of elements of the same attribute that you add will increase its power and effect. For example, adding 4 Earth elements into a Shield element will come up with a very strong and tough wall of stone blocking and covering you from any harm. 

You could also create mines depending on the element that you use which are intended for traps that will instantly detonate when someone passes by on it including the caster itself.

You could also imbue elements into your weapon which make it more effective in battle and survival. Placing Water + Cold element respectively into your weapon will turn it into an Ice cold blade capable of defeating monsters with Low Ice element resistance such as Lava Golems.

You could also coat the caster with different shielding elements instead of turning them into a wall which will just make it hard for you to escape. Coating yourself with Shield Element will make your armor stronger and tougher.

You could also use the caster's elements to fix any circumstances the comes in the way. For example, when you have been burned by a certain monster and your caster is on Fire, you can make use of the Water element and cast it on yourself to extinguished the Fire and vice versa. Another impressive part of the game is that, using 3 to 5 elements will make your movement slower meaning you can't run around with a powerful spell combo ready to go. Once you learn the basics and and understand the flexibility of the system, it's addictively rewarding. 

Practice and experimentation is the best part of the game. After enough play your fingers will dance across keys with trained precision and unleash healing beams and put up fiery rock walls and conjure rain clouds, summon skeletons and revive fallen teammates.

Playing Magicka isn't about going through the motions with a control scheme you've used a thousand times before. It requires some reflex training that can reward you with wildly entertaining success on the field of battle. Unfortunately, Arrowhead's game is in need of patching at the time of this review, and bugs, crashes and connectivity issues occur with regularity. Even so, with a level-headed team of four, Magicka's cooperative action is entrancing chaos. It's rare for a game to feel this mechanically satisfying.

Watch the Official Trailer and be one among us!

Transformers 3: Movie Review

The First one was great

Transformers 2

The next one was a Big Blast




Transformers 3

The thirs one was "PERFECT!"

Regardless of not having Megan Fox on the third installment of the Transformers Movie Franchise, It surely hits the Blockbuster and got a 5 star rate on Sci-Fi category again(Bay and Spielberg are such a bad ass Duo). Moreover Rose Huntington-Whiteley deserves the role even for a starter way to go Carly.

Imagine yourself having a Car-turning-to-War Machine Robot guardian. Well what more would you ask for? I envy Sam for always having bumblebee beside him, even for the fact that in was unreal. 

The concept and the idea of the film was well planned. The anticipation of the films one after the another is the key to its success. The characters of the film were balanced equally to maintain excitement and anxiety of what we longed for. All I thought was Optimus was the strongest and no one can match him, but the third installment proved to me that no one in the Cybertron world is capable of fighting the decepticons unassisted. Thanks for Bumblebee and the rest of the Autobots squad. It's just sad losing Ironhide. He's way to cool to be annihilated. Thumbs down for that.

But overall, the film was perfect and......... well perfect is perfect.. Nothing more to say.

Viewers would definitely crave for Transformers 4. XD

The Social Network: Movie Review

The main protagonist of the story was no other than the current CEO and Founder of the popular Social networking site Facebook. The movie explains the detailed information and the story behind the popularity and rise of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

It all started with a quarrel with a girl friend that made Mark enraged and dedicated to destroy the girl’s reputation by broadcasting a website called facemash that will let the people around the Harvard community compare and choose which is better between two individuals. 

The phenomenon became a threat to the Harvard domain and later made Mark’s skill acknowledged.

The Winklevoss brothers decided to have a partnership with Mark to make a Social Network site for Harvard which began to make mark create the Facebook. Mark agreed to the Winklevoss’ suggestion but didn’t really intend to cooperate with them but just to have a full grant access to the Harvards domain Harvard.edu.

It was soon recognized by a famous Internet Technology Businessman and Entrepreneur Sean Parker. Parker got really interested and made the Facebook expand wider to other countries. Which until today runs at its finest and continuous in providing added features to maintain user subscription.

I believe that this film helped many people in unraveling the mysteries of Facebook and the real story behind its success.

Antitrust: Movie Review

The story revolves on a very gifted software designer and programmer Milo Hoffman. Together with his best friend Teddy, they were about to release a firm in which it'll help to create ways for different channels of digital technology to work as one with harmony.

However, the plan didn't work well when Milo suddenly receives a message from a very large company offered by Gary Winston, a very powerful and radical thinking person who turned his company in becoming one of the richest computer firms on earth, into joining him with his plan to build and be part of the SYNAPSE Software. SYNAPSE lets you broadcast all of your personal graphic media, pictures, musics videos, documents and etc. While sympathetically believing on Teddy's principle that human knowledge especially computer knowledge belongs to all people and that open source software must be supported at all cost, Milo was lured and provoked by Winstons tempting offer and decided to be one of his model in designing and researching on the SYNAPSE.

But Milo underestimates the ruthlessness of the leading-edge software industry, and he soon learns there's a sinister undercurrent to Winston's drive to stay on top.

Milo found a way to stop this controversy, and he did it by making the SYNAPSE open source to to global network using the the SYNAPSE software itself and vulgarly broadcast Winston's Dialogue about the survival of the fittest.

Later on, Milo became popular for hisn heroic deed and Winston was deemed Guilty of multiple crimes including the massacre of Milo's best friend Teddy.

While the cast is great, the best part of the film is the message it says regarding the capitalistic greed of Gary Winston and the altruistic motivation of Milo Hoffman. It's actually a surprisingly apt think piece about corporate power vs. open source.

 I enjoyed watching the film this rising issue will definitely raise war between corporate businesses to open source business. For me, human knowledge do really belong to everyone so, HOORAY for open sourceXD

Hackers: Movie Review

Hackers is an American thriller film starred by Johny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Renoly Santiago and Matthew Lillard directed by Iain Softley. The film was inspired by the rapid growth of computer enthusiasts.

The film revolves on Dade Murphy aka Zero Cool who was arrested and charged at young age of 11 for crashing and breaking into multiple systems within a single day. Due to his threatening skill, he was banned for using a computer unit until he is 18 years of age.

And now that he’s of age, he’s back in the hacking business and ready to unleash his fury(just exaggerating). After having a local television station infiltrated by Dade using the trick of Social Engineering, Dade was disturbed or technically attacked by a stranger called Acid Burn which was eventually kicked out. During the conversation with Burn, Dade identifies himself as crash Override his newly created codename.

Dade enrolls at a certain High School in which he was able to meet with a group of certified hackers: the tough-talking cyber gamer Kate, a junior hacker, prankster Cereal Killer and Lord Nikon and telephone dial tone bypass expert Phantom Phreak.

The group was then involved into a Global Conspiracy when junior hacker Joey Pardella accidentally breaks into a supercomputer to prove to the group that he is a worthy member. He downloaded some of the source files of the Company’s supercomputer. Unfortunately as a result of his newbie skills, he was detected by his unauthorized entry and the company summoned Computer Security Officer Eugene aka The Plague. Eugene is just taking an alliance with the government but his real objective was to steal money from the company via Salami Slicing ( a series of many minor actions, often performed by clandestine means, that together results in a larger action that would be difficult or illegal to perform at once).

Joey was then later on captured together with his computers and gadgets but no evidence has been found throughout their search for the garbage file that was downloaded by Joey. Meanwhile, Dade and Kate soon figured out that they had met each other in a television station and legalized that they were Crash Override and acid Burn. To settle up their scorching competition, the group decided to deal with it by having a contest making the three remaining members as the Judge. Their hacks were focused on harassing agent Richard Gill.

After Joey’s release proving he’s not guilty, he immediately spread the news with the phantom freak but they were already followed. Ramon Sanchez aka Phantom Phreak social engineered the news to Kate and to all of the members including Dade. At first, Dade was hesitant to take action because of his previous criminal record but when her mother was already involved he had no other option but to participate and help the group of Kate.

The team seeks the help of the Razor and Blade, the producers of a certain hacking network station to globally assemble all hackers to help them accomplished their task. The team emerged victorious and stopped the conspiracy of the Plague which was about to happen.

Razor quoted that “Hacking is more than just a crime. It's a survival trait”. I’ve realized that there is more into it than being a serious crime. Hacking is designed to make the computer world to have the best out of it. If its security we are talking to, it’s better calling a hacker rather that a professional to provide real life simulation.

Artificial Intelligence: Movie review

Artificial Intelligence or A.I is a science fiction fantasy that bears similarities to Pinocchio and originated as a long-gestating project of director Stanley Kubrick that passed to his friend Spielberg after his death.

A.I focuses its story on a young robotic boy named David, a meccha, which is programmed to feel human emotion, to have human responsibility and to have the will to think and decide on its own. As an experiment, he had have been a permanent substitute for a couple who had their son Martin terminally sick. Unexpectedly and unfortunately for David their biological son Martin was able to return back and recover to its sickness which made a conflict and sparked jealousy between David and Martin over their parent’s love. It wasn’t long enough after Frances, the mother of Martin, made a decision to leave David to distant place and let him leave on its own.

The next act of the film focuses on David setting out on becoming a real boy worthy of becoming his mother’s affection. David struggled on his journey alongside with a pleasure providing mecha named Gigolo Joe together with his talking toy named Teddy. On one of his adventures, he was taken into a Roman Circus-Style named Flesh Fair, where mechas are totally destroyed, incinerated, decapitated and dismembered.

 He then went to Rogue City to look for a creature named Blue Fairy and unravel the mystery of his existence. Police pursued on capturing Joe for his expired registration but avoids his capture by the help of David.

On the next act, they went into a totally submerged New York City where David’s Creator Hobby reveals the secret if his creation. David figured out that they were all just toys in the first place and were intended for leisure use. David planned on escaping and went into the deepest body of water and there he saw what he was looking for a long time, the Blue Fairy. He strongly believed that it will answer all of his questions and will finally have the love of her mother.

Over centuries he remained waiting and frozen and undisturbed until the species of alien found and revive him. Parts of his memories were projected by the aliens and made it possible for David to meet his long waited mother and made reconciliation with him.  

Overall the story line, the castings, the role playing, visual effects and twisting of the film made it a record high 4 stars out of 5. The film was splendid and one of Spielberg's best of the best.