Monday, July 28, 2014

Salam Aidilfitri 1435!

It's Eid ul-Fitr today, so I would like to take this opportunity to wish Eid Mubarak to all Muslims. May all our deeds that we did in Ramadhan would be accepted by God and may we all have a blessing year ahead of us.

And for non-Muslims in countries that observe this festive season as national holiday, happy holidays to you! Go visit your Muslims friends and let us celebrate together and tighten the bond between us.

Taqabbalallahu minna wa minkum! (which means "May God accept from us and you our fasts and deeds").

Saturday, July 26, 2014

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) 2014 ~ 10 exciting new games (Part 1)

I love too many things; music, movies, manga, anime to name a few, that sometimes I just have to give up on certain things. One of it is video games. I love to play video games but I'm like two generations behind when it comes to actually playing them. Yes, I'm still playing on my PlayStation 2 console and I don't see myself upgrading it to PlayStation 3. What about PlayStation 4? Haha! In my dreams maybe. Personally I feel that playing video games is an expensive hobby (I believe I mentioned this before in my blog) and with my money spent mostly on movies and manga, there's hardly a chance I will be playing new-generation video games anytime soon. But I still update myself with video games news, especially anything about upcoming video games from interesting franchise.

Talking about video games, one have to mention E3 which is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the annual trade show for the video games industry. The 20th E3 was held on June 10 until June 12, 2014 at Los Angeles Convention Center. While I'm not physically there, I did browse the games that we featured there through the videos that were posted on YouTube and I have to say, there are quite some interesting titles that were introduced. So let's check out 10 games that I think look interesting and promising. I didn't watch every video game trailers though so my list would only confined to those that I had been exposed to. To make this post more bearable, I sliced the post into 2 parts with each part listing 5 games. So let's begin part 1!


Alien: Isolation


I love horror video games so let's start with one. Alien: Isolation is a survival horror game developed by The Creative Assembly, will be published by Sega and is a part of the Alien franchise. Set 15 years after the event of the very first Alien movie, the player will take on the role of Amanda, Ellen Ripley's daughter (Ellen Ripley is the main character of the Alien franchise played by Sigourney Weaver for those who don't know or may have forgotten about her) in search of her missing mother. The game looks stunning visually and the gameplay looks pretty scary, players would have to use stealth tactics to avoid being caught by the alien in the game. Looking at the trailer of the game kind of reminded me of Dead Space, a popular recent survival horror video games series. Would this game be as popular as the Dead Space franchise? You can check out the video game trailer to Alien: Isolation here.


ABZU


Nothing much is revealed in this video game trailer; no explanation on the story or what it's about. All it showed were picturesque settings where a character can be seen swimming under the sea. And let me tell you what a beautiful footage they were, totally breathtaking! With unique style of animation and striking colours, the visual alone makes me excited for this video game. To be honest, I'm not sure if these settings are just concept art for the game or the actual footage from the gameplay. Either way, I'm still excited to know more about this game. ABZU is developed by Giant Squid studio and will debut exclusively on PlayStation 4. You can check out the amazing video trailer of ABZU by clicking here.


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

What to watch? ~ 2014 movies: July

If you've been to my blog before, you'll know that I'm listing movies that had pique my interest each month for this year. So which movies that will be released in July that look interesting to me? Scroll down to see if they look interesting to you too. Let's begin!

1. Deliver Us from Evil

I love horror movies, especially when it involves the supernatural like ghosts or spirits. Judging from the trailers, Deliver Us from Evil seems to be like a very good horror movie. But I learned from the past that you never judge a movie from their trailers, so you never know how it will turn out until you watch it. But so far, I'm intrigued! It says that the event is based on real life events (I think that's debatable don't you think?) of a New York cop who investigates a case that involves demonic forces of evil with the help of a priest. Starring Eric Bana, Edgar Ramirez, Olivia Munn, Sean Harris and Joel McHale, the film will open in cinemas on July 2, 2014.


2. Earth to Echo


When I first heard/read about this movie, I thought it will be a kid-friendly adventure movie that features kids with alien and their amazing adventure together. And what a surprise it was for me when I watched the trailer for this movie; it was a found-footage genre, and it was not all bright and happy that I thought it would be. It looked quite intense and I like the realism the film has with its found-footage style of shooting. And the kids in this movie look like they can really act. The trailer definitely got me excited for the movie, although it does remind me a bit to the 2011 movie, Super 8. Starring Teo Halm, Brian "Astro" Bradley, Reese C. Hartwig and Ella Wahlestedt, Earth to Echo will be released in cinemas on July 2, 2014.


3. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes


Rise of the Planet of the Apes was an awesome movie, so I cannot wait for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which will be the sequel to that movie. James Franco and Freida Pinto will not be back for this sequel but we will definitely be seeing Caesar again as he is the central character in this reboot series. Andy Serkis will be playing Caesar again through motion-capture along with Judy Greer, Karin Konoval, Terry Notary and Toby Kebbell as the other apes charaters, while the casts that will be playing as human survivors in this movie include Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Gary Oldman, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jocko Sims. The movie is scheduled to be released in theaters on July 11, 2014.