• Events

    Get updated on some of the upcoming events in the metro, from gaming to anime

  • Reviews

    Check out some of the reviews of the hottest games today

  • Gaming

    Get the latest info on what's happening in the world of gaming

  • MMOs

    Get yourself updated on the latest MMO games

  • Cool Stuffs

    Find out some of coolest things that is spreading on the internet

Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy New Year


Well the year 2010 is about to close in a few hours, another great year has ended, and a new adventure for new year awaits. And the best part is that The Reimaru Files will be bigger next year; with new games to feature, cool stuffs to share from the intarwebs, and more events to cover, and of course, more features will be added so stay tuned for that.

So let's all chill and celebrate the arrival of 2011. Happy New Year everyone!!

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Holiday Game Teasers

Here're some teaser trailers from Gametrailers.com of upcoming new fighting games to keep you guys entertained on the holidays.

First up is a new trailer for Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 showing off the revealed character rosters for the game, where also in the last few seconds of the video hinted more characters to be added in the coming days before it's major release next year. The other teaser is from the the father of Tekken, Katsuhiro Harada giving us a nice Christmas present showing off a video footage of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, that is still in development.

So enjoy watching and Happy Holidays



Saturday, December 25, 2010

Event Aftermath: Megacon

If you thought that the Christmas Toycon was the only event in December, it turns out that there's a follow up event at the venue in the Megatrade Hall 1 in SM Megamall.



The said event was called Megacon, and it was held last December 22 and 23, which was a bit in a tight situation for the convention as it was dated on a weekday, it happen a few days after the Christmas Toycon and a few days before Christmas. But anyway it still offered some gaming, anime and collectible goodness.

The bad part was if you attended the whole three days of the Christmas Toycon, chances are, you'll be seeing some similar booths in Megacon, so if you are looking for some items that were not available from the Xmas Toycon, you're out of luck.


There were gaming booths like a DoTA tournament and a free-play booth from Sony and MAT Online. A cosplay competition but sadly the majority were from the previous event and some are rather uninspired, but there were few good quality cosplayers. You would also notice that the event was rather spacious due to the very few booths at that time



Overall, the event was rather rushed but maybe next time, they'll offer more activities and booths in the future.

You can check some of the images of the Megacon from the slideshow below.




Oh yeah as a bonus, I took a video of an Otaku band performing one of K-On!'s opening song during the event. Enjoy...

Merry Christmas

Monday, December 20, 2010

Event Aftermath: 5th Christmas Toy Fair

The people behind the one of the popular toy conventions held their 5th annual Christmas Toy Fair (which is also known as Christmas Toycon) which happened last December 17-19 at the Megatrade Hall 1 at the SM Megamall, where the site became a collector's haven for three days, with lots of figures, model kits, stuffed toys, comics and vintage collectibles all for sale.



You'll probably noticed that compared to last year's toy fair, the venue has gotten bigger and more booths are open, giving you more stuffs to buy for yourself and as a gift. And of course there were raffles and other activities such as auctions for those hard to find toys. There was also a Toy Donation Drive which will be donated to Kythe Philippines.


On day 2 of the Christmas Toycon, a cosplay parade was held for the cosplayers to showcase their Christmas themed costumes.

You visit their official site: toyconph.com
Check out the slideshow below for more pics of the Christmas Toycon.



Sunday, December 19, 2010

MegaCon

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

VGA Winners and Game Premieres

Last Saturday December 11, Spike TV aired their annual Video Game Awards or VGA in short, at the LA Convention Center in Los Angeles, California, where they recognized the games, both for consoles and computers, that became the best for this year. They also previewed the debut videos that will be premiered for the first time on some of the upcoming announced games.

So for this year, here are the winners on their respective categories:
  • Game of the Year: Red Dead Redemption
  • Studio of the Year: Bioware, Mass Effect 2
  • Best Multi-player: Halo: Reach
  • Character of the Year: Sgt. Frank Woods, Call of Duty: Black Ops
  • Best Xbox 360 Game: Mass Effect 2
  • Best PS3 Game: God of War III
  • Best Wii Game: Super Mario Galaxy 2
  • Best PC Game: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
  • Best Handheld Game: God of War: Ghost of Sparta
  • Best Shooter: Call of Duty: Black Ops
  • Best Action Adventure Game: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
  • Best RPG: Mass Effect 2
  • Best Individual Sports Game: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11
  • Best Team Sports Game: NBA 2K11
  • Best Driving Game: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
  • Best Music Game: Rock Band 3
  • Best Soundtrack: DJ Hero 2
  • Best Song in a Game: "Far Away" by José González, Red Dead Redemption
  • Best Original Score: Red Dead Redemption
  • Best Graphics: God of War III
  • Best Adapted Video Game: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game
  • Best Performance by a Human Male: Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker/Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
  • Best Performance by a Human Female: Tricia Helfer as Sarah Kerrigan, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
  • Best Downloadable Game: Costume Quest
  • Best DLC: Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare
  • Best Independent Game: Limbo
  • Most Anticipated Game: Portal 2
And for the game premiers, majority were sequels of popular franchises, while others are reboots from classic games, so here are the videos of the games from Gametrailers

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception


Batman: Arkham City


Resistance 3


Portal 2


Mortal Kombat Kratos Revealed Trailer


Mass Effect 3


To watch the rest of the videos that were premiered at VGA 2010, you can visit Gametrailers' VGA page

Saturday, December 11, 2010

More Marvel Vs Capcom 3 Update

A new set of videos were uploaded today at Gamespot showing two new characters in the upcoming fighting game Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. The video shows Storm for the Marvel side and C. Viper (from Street Fighter 4) for the Capcom side. You can view the videos of the two characters below:

Storm Video



C. Viper Video

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

DJ Max Portable 3 Review


Pentavision has just released the third incarnation of their popular rhythm game entitled DJ Max Portable 3, the sixth game for the PlayStation Portable. Will this game be a hit to rhythm lovers and long-time DJ Max fans?

Long before DJ Max Technika became a hit in the arcades, there were several versions of DJ Max to the PSP, which became a hit. For those who haven't tried DJ Max Portable, the gameplay is similar that from Beatmania, only without a turntable. You have to press the corresponding button as notes fall down from the screen, continue timing the press to make a combo, rack enough combos to fill up your meter to unleash fever mode, a special mode where you can multiply your combos, the longer your combos, the higher your score will become. You can also adjust the speed of the notes before and during the game.


The first thing you will notice in DJ max Portable 3 is the new presentation, it makes you feel that it is whole new game, all of the videos are now in HD, giving a more fluid and crispier look.

DJ Max Portable 3 now features a new gameplay called the Remix System, with the Remix System, you now have an additional two side panels on the screen, making it a total of three panels instead of the original of having just one, when notes come out in one the two side panels, you have to push the analog nub to that particular direction, making the game feels like you are actually playing a real DJ turntable.


In addition to the Remix mode, some of the game modes returns to the game, such as the mission mode, where you are given a challenge to complete a certain objective in order to accomplish the mission and unlock a reward such as new tracks, avatars, wallpapers, most of the unlocked contents can be seen in the Lounge mode.


Sadly it only features quite a few songs compared to the previous games, and most of the songs are from the Technika 2 series and others are remixes from older songs. Despite the somewhat small tracklist, it still offers a variety of songs such as House, Techno and Pop.

Another sad part is the tedious grinding in a casual game, it feels like all Korean games are required to be super grindy, and the bad part is that to unlock new contents and songs, you need to level up and to make it worse, when leveling up, you have to pick from 3 boxes to get a random reward, so the chance of getting a new song is pretty slim. It would be better if they retain the Club Mission mode from DJ Max Black Square to lessen the repetitive grinding.


The multiplayer mode was removed, which was a bad move. and there is no online leaderboards to check on your ranking, instead the game will give you a code where you will input it on the DJ Max website, they could have offered an online feature via WiFi to receive song and mission updates similar that to Rock Band Unplugged for longer gameplay times.

Overall, DJ Max Portable 3 would have been a better game it wasn't for the tedious grinding, and the lack of a multiplayer feature lessens the gameplay time for players. Although the new Remix mode still offers a good amount of entertainment despite with several flaws to the game.

If you are a fan of DJ Max, you might give this a second chance, otherwise if you are looking for a good polished rhythm game, better stick with the older DJ Max games or with Rock Band Unplugged.

Game Rating: 6 out of 10

DJ Max Portable 3 was developed by Pentavision and published by PM Studios

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

5th Christmas Toy Fair


5th Christmas Toy Fair (aka Christmas Toyocn)
December 17-19, 2010 10am - 10pm
Megatrade Hall 1, 5th level, Mega B, SM Megamall


Schedules:
Live auctions – Dec 17-19
Christmas cosplay – Dec 18, registration at 10am-2pm, parade starts at 2pm. Add some Christmas theme to your costume
Toy donation drive – Dec 17-19

With special participation of Mommy Mundo
and Event partner Anime Alliance Philippines and RPG: Metanoia movie

Source: toyconph.com

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Event Aftermath: Battle of The Immortals Guild Leader's Meeting

MMO publisher Cubizone held its second Guild Leader's Meeting at the New Horizon Hotel last December 4. Different Guilds from different MMOs all gathered to witness a launch of their new MMORPG: Battle of The Immortals.



Battle of The Immortals (or BOI as the Cubizone people call it) was developed by Perfect World Games (the people behind Perfect World the Heroes of The Three Kingdom) and features a 2.5D style of gameplay, it also has the feel of Norse, Greek and Chinese mythology, all combined to create a imaginative world.



The game offers five character classes: the Vanguard being the tankers armed with sword and shield, the Vicar being the healer class, the Warlord for the melee heavy hitters, the Magus for the magic damage dealers and the Executioner the DPS (damage per second) makers.



BOI also offers a mount system where you can acquire different vehicles and they are also upgradeable, a pet system where you can capture monsters (and even boss) to tame them and even fuse two pets to create a new one. A quest system where you can also attend instance and earn points to buy powerful equipments, and powerful equipment sets called Soul Gears where the equipments also levels with you.


There are some other notable features such as the Guilder (cash item currency) trading system where you can exchange Gold to Guilder points so you can purchase premium cash items. The Double EXP system is another feature that is interesting; every week, each player has 300 minutes worth of double experience bonus, they can use it anytime they want and it will reset every Sunday. The New Player Reward System gives new comers bonus items that gives them a slight edge when starting a new game.



During the meeting, Cubizone announced that they have some special promos to kick start the launch of BOI, such promos such as raffles where you can win a Nokia C3 or even an iPhone by playing BOI. There will also be a ICafe PvP tournament where players can win as much as P15,000 and ICafe owners can also win cash prizes. You can also win prizes by being the first to reach the level cap.


The Close Beta Phase of BOI has already ended and they will start the Open Beta Phase on December 6. we'll try to make a review of the game, so stay tuned for that...

For more information, you log on to Cubizone's official website: www.cubizone.ph
and Battle of The Immortals' official website: www.boi.ph

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Faces: Voltron Series


Here's another episode of Faces, for this episode, we'll be focusing on the classic 80's cartoons Voltron: Defender of The Universe.

Voltron is about a group of space explorers riding different vehicles that can transform into a giant robot called Voltron, fighting against evil empires to protect the universe.

For those who didn't know, the Voltron series was created by Peter Keefe where he licensed two different animes to be edited, lessened the violent scenes and rewritten the script to make a whole new one. The series focused on the two Voltron forces: The Lion Force and The Vehicle Team, originally this was supposed to be a trilogy series, but due to the poor reception in the Vehicle Force arc, the third arc was canceled. A movie was created that featured the two teams fighting side-by-side. So let's check out each of their opening videos as well from the Japanese versions, take note that the narrator in the opening videos was voiced by none other than Peter Cullen (the guy who voiced as Optimus Prime).

The Voltron Lion Force was the most popular of the two, which composed of five lions to form the mighty robot. This was based on the anime series Beast King GoLion, although this was the first to be aired from the series, this was noted as Voltron III. And then in 1998, a sequel to the Lion Force was created and was dubbed as Voltron: The Third Dimension, the new series was created in CGI (Computer Generated Imagery)

US version



Japanese Version (GoLion)


Voltron: The Third Dimension Version



The Vehicle Team composed of fifteen vehicles and were sorted into three groups: the Sea Team, the Land Team and the Air Team. each group can form into a larger vehicle and also as one giant robot. This arc was the least popular from the series. The Vehicle Team was based on the Armored Fleet Dairugger XV. This was also known as Voltron I.

US Version



Japanes Version (Dairugger XV)



The supposed third arc would be called Gladiator Voltron (aka Voltron II) and should be based on the anime Lightspeed Electroid Albegas, but because of low ratings on the Vehicle Team arc, the proposed arc was canceled.

Japanese Version (Albegas)



As of today, the people behind the popular cartoon series are planning to develop a feature length film based on the Lion Force, and last September, they posted the concept art of the said movie. Although up to now, there are still no news on the development.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Cartoon Profile Picture Campaign

There's been a campaign in the popular social network Facebook recently, where all Facebook users are encouraged to change their profile images with images of their favorite childhood cartoons/animes. This campaign is to support the awareness on violence against children.

Can you remember some of these cartoons?
One picture is already a bonus
(click to enlarge)

This campaign will last until December 6, as I try to research on what the significance is, I found out that it is also the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada; an anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique Massacre, where 14 women were murdered because of their gender. Also, the United Nations started a 16-day campaign to fight violence against women and children, which started last November 25 and ends in December 10.

Now back to the topic, it is really nice to remember our childhood days, especially the things was enjoyed at those times, but most kids never watched or even know that these classics, it is because most of them weren't even born at that time. Some classics like He-Man, Sh-Ra, Voltron, Thundercats and many more.


So for the profile picture I chose the Centurions, a popular 80's cartoons, what I like this is that the seer coolness of interchanging weapons for land, sea and air operations, and the catchy phrase of "Man and Machine, Power Extreme" is rather cool at that time. I remember watching this on the Betamax and even on the TV.

It's really cool to get the nostalgic feel on these classics, heck there were even remakes so kids today can remember the awesomeness of the 80's cartoons.

So if you want to join the campaign, just replace your profile picture with your favorite childhood cartoons and post the following message on your status:

Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until December 6 (Monday), there should be no human faces on facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is for violence against children.

And don't forget, this campaign is not just only to remember the good old days, but also to fight violence against children.

Oh I almost forgot, check out this blog a friend of mine posted about the similar Facebook campaign.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

A Tribute to Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen, famous for his role as the doctor in Airplane! and Lt. Frank Dreblin in the Naked Gun, passed away last November 28, 2010 at the age of 84. A great actor and comedian, he will be surely missed.