Games: Replaying Fallout Tactics, Starting Imperial Ages, Movie Review: Forbidden Kingdom Spagghetti Dinner at The Married Soldier's Place

Games: Replaying Fallout Tactics, Starting Imperial Ages:
I was a little bored playing Facebook on last Friday night so I went to surf some of my own games websites and lo and behold, I found the revived link to a Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel editor and I was so happy. Why? Because the editor will allow me to reinstall the excellent squad-based tactical game and replay the game as many times as I wanted to. I did and within hours, I had my squad inside the final mission - The Calculator inside Vault 0.

What you see above is my Fallout Tactics team standing at attention. From the left onwards, Sean (team designation: Commander), Farsight (team designation: Ranger), Torn (team designation: Sniper), Brian (team designation: Gunner), Jo (team designation: Engineer) and finally Stitch (team designation: Medic). This Special Operations team pushed through the various missions of the game and with their carefully chosen skills, made it through to the final mission. Hmm...perhaps I will write a blog post about this team and what made them so successful to keep me entertained throughout the game sometime in the future. =)

The above screenshot is taken from a new game which I am also currently entertaining myself with whenever I am at home not tutoring. It's called Imperial Ages and it is a browser-based game which requires only a free account and Internet connection. On the surface, it lacked the graphics and intense plotline of many strategic city-building games and one cannot really personally commandeer the battles should his/her village is under direct raids or attacks.

However, the game has its own merits to keep me playing - it has no blood and gory scenes and it requires a considerable level of skill in management and foresight because one will have to balance limited resources of wood, stone, iron and gold against priorities of building and developing the village, defense and recruiment of troops, as well as trade and diplomacy with other Imperial Ages players from all over the world. I will write more about my young village in a later post once I figured out more about the gameplay itself.

Besides gaming, I have also found a interesting book in the National Library about cultures and civilizations of the Middle East and have been spending the past week reading through the complex but very interesting tidbits about Assyrians, Summerians, Romans, Parthians and many others. It looks like the Middle East has one of the riches mix of cultures and histories in the whole world, interlocking one another with trade, war and construction of strange monuments and cities of various functions. I like reading about different cultures.
During the movie-cum-dinner gathering at Great World City, the four of us walked into this art gallery because The Married Soldier's wife wanted to buy some paintings for their house.
It turns out that the art gallery has quite a good collection of paintings, notably using 3-dimensional techniques to bring out the textures of certain things, such as the above painting where the orange leaves of those trees came to life. Unfortunately, the prices of these paintings also came to life - a stunning $950 which is way off her budget for paintings. Still, it would nice to hang some of these in the house. Perhaps they will come back with a bigger budget for it.

Movie Review: Forbidden Kingdom (2008)
The Changed Man, The Married Soldier and his wife and I went to GV Grand at Great World City to watch this movie by the very familiar Jackie Chan and Jet Li on last Saturday. The Changed Man said he did not like the movie but I find it very interesting and entertaining because the fighting scenes were nicely done (especially the one between Jackie Chan and Jet Li in an abandoned temple) and even the newcomer was humourous and fits into the character of the reluctant savior of The Monkey King in Chinese mythology.

I also liked the part where they explained some of the interesting and even educational concepts about kungfu too - the part where they said something like "...it flows around like water, which is so gentle and yet can cut through rocks...learn the path but find your own path" So zen...I like.

The final scene where the showdown between The Monkey God and The Jade Warlord, as well as all the other adventurers against the Jade Army at the Five Elements Mountain (where the Monkey God was tricked and imprisoned by The Jade Warlord) was quite well-flimed too. There was also a part where the female adventurer The Golden Sparrow, was so adamant about revenge for her family that she was eventually defeated and killed by the obviously more powerful Jade Warlord and there was no way to bring her back to life because as what The Jade Emperor (The boss of The Jade Warlord who was in some retreat for 500 years) said "Her destiny was chosen by her own path".

I would give this movie a 3.5 out of 5 for entertainment value and even a 4.0 for its carefully placed explanations of Chinese martial arts concepts and even philosophical values. Go watch it if you like fighting flicks with a dash of humour and sometimes pain (well-exemplified by the young protagonist).

Spagghetti Dinner at The Married Soldier's Place:

After the movie, we went grocery shopping at Great World City and beef spagghetti and salad was on the menu. The Married Soldier's wife cooked up the abovementioned whilst the three guys slacked in front of the television, watching Hildago until dinner was ready at 8.30pm. The Changed Man and I did the dishes after movie and all of us spend some time watching one another's Facebook profiles and friends until we call it a day.

Well, that is all over the last weekend. I will blog more if I can find more time in the afternoon today. Breakfast calls. Tata~~ =D