I'm still alive after three nights of watching Henyo, my brother's Net cafe. No sign of the thug who pwned all that time - I'm still not letting my guard down, though.

I know, I know I've let you down.
I've been a fool to myself.
I thought I could
live for no one else
But not through all the hurt and pain.
It's time for me to respect
the ones you love
mean more than anything.
So with sadness in my heart
I feel the best thing I could do
is end it all
and leave forever.
What's done is done, it feels so bad.
What once was happy now is sad.
I'll never love again
my world is ending.

I wish that I could turn back time
cos now the guilt is all mine.
Can't live without the trust from the ones you love.
I know we can't forget the past
you can't forget love and pride,
because of that it's killing me inside.

It all returns to nothing, it all comes
tumbling down, tumbling down,
tumbling down.
it all returns to nothing, I just keep
letting me down, letting me down,
letting me down.
In my heart of hearts,
I know that I could never love again.
I've lost everything,
everything
that matters to me,
matter in this world.

I wish that I could turn back time
cos now all the guilt is mine.
Can't live without
the trust from those you love.
I know we can't forget the past.
You can't forget love and pride,
because of that, it's killing me inside

It all returns to nothing, it all comes
tumbling down, tumbling down,
tumbling down.
It all returns to nothing, I just keep
letting me down, letting me down,
letting me down.
It all returns to nothing, it all comes
tumbling down, tumbling down,
tumbling down.
It all returns to nothing, I just keep
letting me down, letting me down,
letting me down.

Seems apt for my life right now. "Can't live without the trust from ones you love." I wonder how long they will, when they see how hopeless I really am.

This is my last-person seen post. If no one has heard from me via SMS, e-mail, or landline phone for an extended time, it means I might have suffered an untimely demise while tending the Internet cafe in the Pantranco area.

In fairness, getting wiped off the face of the planet by some low-life thug won't be too big a ripple in the cosmic sea. I'll be missed by few people, only my girlfriend and family will cry at my funeral. My girlfriend because she loves me no matter what a worthless bum I am, and my family because of all the cash, effort, and time they poured into me getting a college degree which I had to screw up even further by dying without their permission.

So what has my life been? My life, loath I am to admit it, is defined by whatever people I have in my circle. I am an incurable gamer, and if they had a Bachelor of Science in Gaming I'd have graduated with honors. My life is revolves around accomodating my friends, my girlfriend, trying unsuccessfully time and again to get a college degree, and gaming.

I've self-taught myself katakana, forgotten most of my Spanish and Italian, and since a very young age fluent in both English and Filipino. I've spent the past three or four years trying to get a bachelor's degree in Library and Information Science, clearing all my major subjects in two years only to be bogged down for another two years by the thesis proposal. Life doesn't get suckier than that. I'd say it sucks to be me, but I've got a great girlfriend (the best in the world), I'm still more or less in one piece (though my teeth beg to differ), and I'm still not living in the streets.

I should have tried to go to Creative Writing, or Mass Communication, or Journalism when I got out of Engineering. Why I chose Library and Information Science, I'll never remember exactly. Maybe it was because they didn't have a GWA requirement when I was looking for a college to take me in before the University of the Philippines kicked my ass out after two semesters of being a non-major. Do I regret my choice? I could say I don't. I made a new friend shifting into the Institute of Library and Information Science, despite the Institute's refusal to allow me to graduate.

That's not really fair to the Institute who took me in when the others wouldn't. In fairness, I'm still lost as a freshman, despite being in college for six years already. I'm living in Avenue Q, and my friends do too. But you have to wonder at your department, when your thesis proposal panel tells you during the discussion that the University paper is looking for writers for its literature section. It makes one wonder what to think.

My current life is being sucked away by a corporation more powerful than Microsoft, more eBill than Gates - Banpresto. Curse their SRW line! If I was to create my own major and degree, I'd be Ph. D. in Simulation Role Playing Games, Major in Super Robot Wars. Oh, Kingdom of Loathing comes in second place for draining my time, my blog last.

All in all, this post just wants to say, if I haven't posted in an obscenely long time and people haven't heard from me, I've been killed by some semi-educated lowlife in Pantranco while I was tending the Internet cafe my brother owns. Knock on wood.

My thesis proposal was rejected today. That's it. Just like that. My life is over. Time to look for the nearest bridge to jump off, or a handy gun to slip into my mouth to end it all.

...

Not!

Seriously, my life just got more complicated. I can say goodbye to graduating this October. I hope my mother doesn't kick me out of the house. I hope my dad doesn't order me out of the house. My father in particular seems to be averse to funding my studies any further. I can't handle a part-time job - I wouldn't have time for my research then.

I don't know what to do now.

Again I curse my inability to read hiragana and kanji. Basically, the illustration above is a cup size comparison line-up, from biggest to smallest, left to right. As a friend pointed out over the phone, without ever seeing the image above, the 'contestants' are people NOT from the first SRW Alpha. For the benefit of others, they are (from left to right): Lamia (SRW Advance), Seolla (SRW Alpha 2), Excellen (SRW Impact), Ouka (SRW Original Generation 2), Ivis (SRW Alpha 2), Latouny (SRW Original Generation), and Alfimy (SRW Impact).

The advent of SRW J comes as a little letdown to me, as Banpresto has announced that it will be their last title for Gameboy Advance. As a balm for offended sensibilities, SRW J features bouncing female cut-ins for the main robots' subpilots (which would irritate more narrow sensibilities).

The above is a screencap of the SRW J TV commercial. It's actually two blocks of 3 screens wide and two screens high. The bouncing originals are on the lower left screen of the top block, and the bottom corner screens of the lower block. Yes, folks, Banpresto carries on the proud tradition of using 17-year old schoolgirls as fanservice / robot pilots. Oh, and if you're interested in what the other screens are, here's a map.

TOP BLOCK, left to right, top row first: Athrun and Kira from Gundam SEED (possibly during an in-game series reference battle), Domon Kasshu of G Gundam (performing a Double God Finger, his partner not shown), Double Burning Fire performed using Mazinkaiser and Great Mazinger, Katia (Banpresto Original subpilot), an army of Bonta-kun assault suits led by Sousuke Sagara (Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu), and Tekkaman Blade posing before laying the smackdown.

BOTTOM BLOCK: Don't know who or what this first frame is from, will research; next to it is Misumaru Yurika, captain of the Mobile Battleship Nadesico, Kira Yamato going into SEED mode, Festenia (Banpresto Original subpilot), Coustwell (Banpresto Original mecha), and Merua (Banpresto Original subpilot).

I'll say it again, because I like saying it, those 17-y.o. girls bounce.

I may have it bad right now, but I must remember these things that I must be thankful I have, got, or am getting, or simply am.

I'm still alive.
Three meals a day.
I have parents who still love each other even after 28 years.
I have a loving girlfriend.
I can read and write, do simple to moderately complex arithmetic, and I have manners.
I'm not living on the streets, begging for money or food.

When this fails to cheer me up, there's always onemorelevel.com. Contains Flash games that simply brighten your day.

This has not been a paid advertisement of onemorelevel.com

I've had an odd week so far.

Monday: Had a nasty dream. I dreamt that it was dark skies outside, felt like a thunderstorm was coming down. I was looking down at the neighboring village, where I see a roiling black cloud heading up one of the other villages roads. I didn't know how or why, but I knew that I was seeing a tornado. I could see white plumes of dust swirling into its center. I was concerned, and wanted to warn everyone in the house. I turned around and saw my mother heading out the screen door - and in the space she just vacated was another roiling black cloud. I shouted a warning to her, and reached out to pull her to safety, when suddenly the cloud turned into a full-blown dark funnel and lifted my mother up and away from me. Needless to say, I scared myself awake, a nasty wrenching in my heart region chasing away the drowsiness that usually accompanied my waking up every day.

Tuesday: An even nastier dream - I dreamt I was picking bits and pieces of my teeth out of my
mouth, the pieces ranged in size from fragments I could swallow and not notice to whole teeth and gum bone assemblies. Ugh.

Wednesday: I just sent in my thesis proposal to the dean. I hope it gets accepted - I have less than a month to work it if I want to graduate this October.

I've been amusing myself online with Kingdom of Loathing and this ecchi flash game. At home, the stories in my head drive me to write until my fingers hurt. I don't mind - it keeps the insanity at bay.

I hate DoTA. At least, I hate playing against experts / addicts in our shop.

It's like feeding them. Make that it's like spoon-feeding them.

I almost seem to always go for the underpowered, underdog characters. Thus, resulting in constant ownage of my in-game ass.

If I play the game for fun, and end up getting trounced every single fucking time, should I quit?

I figure it's like Magic: The Gathering, or MechWarrior - he who has the better equipment wins, especially if the said pieces of equipment are no brainers. I mean, it's not hard to lose when you're behind a Red&Green Fires of Yavimaya+Fading deck, or when you're fielding One-Eyed Jack's Jupiter. It would take total noobs to lose using those.

In contrast, I play with no-name red and green cards that have never made it to tournaments. I field BattleMechs that can't perform charging attacks without melting down 33% of the time, and when they don't melt and hit the target, the accuracy is shot to hell. I have fielded such in a tournament, and did horribly. After all, the most expensive piece of my army was only around 1200 pesos - my opponents were fielding more. They were literally playing with tuition fees on a 3' x 3' table.

Should I quit?

Maybe I would quit, but not entirely. I'd probably play the next time a new DoTA hero comes out. Much like in the way I try to keep up with the latest trends in the collectible games that I've played, a few innocent years back.

Or maybe I should stop playing against people better than me. I could take noobs to school - they're the only ones I probably can.

I'm writing this straight off the crest of several high waves. Oldest news (pun intended), yay, I'm 23 now, and still stuck in college. I got me a new pair of rubber shoes out of it. They're a vibrant blue, and I love 'em.

Not as much as I love the copy of Neverwhere which Neil Gaiman signed. On the title page, he scrawled, "Mind the gap!" and emphasized it by encircling the cryptic remark. Help me out here! If a British author tells you to mind the gap, what is he really saying? I'm all for it being a Neverwhere reference, but what if it isn't? What if in his uniquely British-author way telling me that I talk to much?

Here's a transcript of our conversation (which came about after waiting for seven hours in a line).

Me: Good evening, Mr. Gaiman. I hope we haven't tired you too much.
NG: It's been what, three bloody days?
NG: The next time I hold one of these things here, I should do it over a week, and not a weekend. But I have this feeling that this bunch - you'll be there every single day!
Me: Oh yes we would, Mr. Gaiman, yes we would!

I know, I know, after waiting all that time, I should have had some more memorable dialogue. But, hey, it has been eight hours for me, and three nights of this book-signing for him. Neither of us were up for witty banter - besides, I didn't want to hog his time for the other 400 or so people waiting downstairs.

It was a real long line. We started outside the mall (1:30 PM) and seven hours later, we were two floors up. My girlfriend and I were numbered 398 and 399. And there were more people trailing after us; with each passing hour the lines grew longer still.

And lastly, just earlier today, I watched Pinoy Blonde with my girlfriend. All I can say is that the director has had one heck of a great time shooting it - how many people get to order greats like Eddie Garcia and Jaime Fabregas to sing on a film? How many directors get to cast popular names in showbiz in bit roles? I bow to Peque Gallaga!

Just had to nitpick this once. Prepare for a quick katakana Romanization hop.

Last post I mentioned something about Zengar / Sanger. Taking a closer look at the katakana, it reads "ze-n-ga- so(inflected)-n-bo-ru-to." As the first part has been officially translated as "Sanger" (oh, the wonderful Japanese habit of replacing "er" sounds with the "extended short a" symbol), that leaves us with the second part.

Begging the question, the name could have been transliterated as Zengar with even better similarity to the katakana pronunciation, but why'd Banpresto stick with the 'Sanger' romanization? Ugh.

The second part of the katakana sequence reads 'zo-n-bo-ru-to'. The use of the "ru" kana indicates that there is a distinct R or L sound, which must not be glossed over. E.G., 'bo-ru-to' = bolt, but 'bo-- to' (in the tradition of Japanese swallowing their Rs) would be "boat" or "vote".

The N kana before the Bo is interesting. The N might take on the sound of the English M, which would result in Zombolt. Then again, it could stay as N, giving us Zonbolt. The same controversy plagues the three-piece monstrosity Zambot / Zanbot 3 (below).



This was a sad show. I can't believe Yoshiyuki Tomino would kill kids, but he did. SPOILER: 2 of the 3 pilots die in the final battle. Bah. It's a Super Robot show, for crying out loud! Readers are supposed to be happy at the end!

Then again, it is a genuine Tomino piece. Sigh.

I owe the new layout to my girlfriend. I love you dear.

It's been a really long while since I had anything of not happen to me that's worth writing about.

The squatter who slugged me will, and probably already did so, escape the pathetic claws of justice. The system sucks in the way that if I had a gun under the table that time, shot his leg or arm to prevent him from running away or hitting me some more, I'd have been the one to be arrested. I can see the newspaper tagline - "Mauled student arrested for defending self with gun." You can't win ever at some things, it seems.

For the more recent happenings... Well, I've seen the Super Robot Wars OAV, oohed and aahed, and left wanting to see the next two episodes.

The much-anticipated Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, the conclusion of the series, features bounciness yet again! It seems that Banpresto has found the way to keep its target market captive. But beware, they seem to be targeting a new sector of the market - bishonen addicts. I'll explain.



(Above) Zengar Zombolt / Sanger Somvold, one of Banpresto's more popular "Original Characters."



(Above) A new "Original Character" in SRW Alpha 3. Has been called a 'Zengar-ette' by one of the people in a message board I frequent. The thing is, this one's a guy. He's the male Real-type pilot.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Hey. Big update this time. I got attacked by a squatter in the shop who claimed I was cheating him - after I apologized and handed him the ten pesos he certainly had a right to.

I suck as a blog-keeper. Check out when my last posr was, and you'll see what I mean.

I write this on a keyboard whose key layout is all but rubbed off by gamers' hands, including mine. My hands seem to be good only for nothing. Now, watch as I use them to fend off my girlfriend's attempt to tickle me to death for lumping her in the "Nothing" pile...

I'm serious. Laughing too much can kill a person - something to do with not getting enough air properly to the lungs. It's not a funny way to die - not that death is funny in the first place.

What have I done in the past three months? Academics? Pfftz. Big fat egg there. Fan-writing? Some. Some success, lots of rewrites. Online gaming? I have a level 49 character in an MMORPG that's going Pay-to-Play soon, very soon. He's the most powerful character I ever had in an online game, and I think I'll keep him.

Emulation? I've recently finished Super Robot Taisen Original Generation 2. Once, that is - the game begs to be fnished thrice, to unlock more stories and features I guess, but when you can't read kanji and hiragana fluently, you don't care much.

Besides, I'm part of this BBS that discusses this stuff - I'll just mooch off their knowledge.

Animation? I'm waiting eagerly to leech the Super Robot Taisen Original Generation OAV, once it's released. I'm currently watching His and Her Circumstances, needing a change of pace after Chobits. I missed seeing the 24th episode of the CLAMP obra - I really wanted to see the relation dynamics between Chii's boss, a bakeshop manager named Hiroyuki Ueda (voiced by Yuji Ueda, whose other roles I am a fan/jealous of) and Hideki's co-worker, Yumi Omura. I know Hiroyuki's beef - he gave his heart to a cute Persocon who died saving him, a Persocon he married but who eventually lost all memory of him. (READ: Bad hard disk.) As for Yumi - she seems to have an anti-human-sized Persocon ax to grind, that's all I know. Then at the end of the TV series, she's seen in Ueda's shop - I want to know if that was a social call or if Yumi's looking for work there, or if Yumi's actually a masochist - I wanna know!!!

"Love is being with someone you like, even if it causes the two of you some hurt, because being apart from each other hurts a hell of a lot more." -- Paraphrased from Hideki Motosuwa, last episode. One of Hideki's more lucid moments, and I agree with him.

SPOILER ALERT: Chii is actually holding 3 personalities in her cute little head. One is her original self, Elda, created by landlady Chitose Hibiya's husband as a daughter. Elda was built to be Freya's younger sister - Hibiya-san's 1st daughter, also a sentient & feeling gynoid (pardon the Ghost in the Shell term) who falls in love with her "father" in a non-filial way, and decides to go away for good when she found out that it mustn't be. In a surprising turn of events, Elda allows Freya to transfer her 'ghost' (again, a GITS term) into her. Going 'Gaaah!' yet? Some people decide to toss Elda away, and Hideki finds her. Her learning program creates a knowledge storage shell, and this is what we know as Chii.

Then again, I'm not really new to the "machine with feelings and soul" concept - there's plenty of it in SRW, especially SRWOG2. One of them also does a heroic 'human shield' for an asshole who doesn't think much of created people, not because it's her orders, but because she develops totally inappropriate feelings for her boss. (Hmm, are they trying to tell us something here?)

I suck as a blog-keeper. Check out when my last posr was, and you'll see what I mean.

I write this on a keyboard whose key layout is all but rubbed off by gamers' hands, including mine. My hands seem to be good only for nothing. Now, watch as I use them to fend off my girlfriend's attempt to tickle me to death for lumping her in the "Nothing" pile...

I'm serious. Laughing too much can kill a person - something to do with not getting enough air properly to the lungs. It's not a funny way to die - not that death is funny in the first place.

What have I done in the past three months? Academics? Pfftz. Big fat egg there. Fan-writing? Some. Some success, lots of rewrites. Online gaming? I have a level 49 character in an MMORPG that's going Pay-to-Play soon, very soon. He's the most powerful character I ever had in an online game, and I think I'll keep him.

Emulation? I've recently finished Super Robot Taisen Original Generation 2. Once, that is - the game begs to be fnished thrice, to unlock more stories and features I guess, but when you can't read kanji and hiragana fluently, you don't care much.

Besides, I'm part of this BBS that discusses this stuff - I'll just mooch off their knowledge.

Animation? I'm waiting eagerly to leech the Super Robot Taisen Original Generation OAV, once it's released. I'm currently watching His and Her Circumstances, needing a change of pace after Chobits. I missed seeing the 24th episode of the CLAMP obra - I really wanted to see the relation dynamics between Chii's boss, a bakeshop manager named Hiroyuki Ueda (voiced by Yuji Ueda, whose other roles I am a fan/jealous of) and Hideki's co-worker, Yumi Omura. I know Hiroyuki's beef - he gave his heart to a cute Persocon who died saving him, a Persocon he married but who eventually lost all memory of him. (READ: Bad hard disk.) As for Yumi - she seems to have an anti-human-sized Persocon ax to grind, that's all I know. Then at the end of the TV series, she's seen in Ueda's shop - I want to know if that was a social call or if Yumi's looking for work there, or if Yumi's actually a masochist - I wanna know!!!

"Love is being with someone you like, even if it causes the two of you some hurt, because being apart from each other hurts a hell of a lot more." -- Paraphrased from Hideki Motosuwa, last episode. One of Hideki's more lucid moments, and I agree with him.

SPOILER ALERT: Chii is actually holding 3 personalities in her cute little head. One is her original self, Elda, created by landlady Chitose Hibiya's husband as a daughter. Elda was built to be Freya's younger sister - Hibiya-san's 1st daughter, also a sentient & feeling gynoid (pardon the Ghost in the Shell term) who falls in love with her "father" in a non-filial way, and decides to go away for good when she found out that it mustn't be. In a surprising turn of events, Elda allows Freya to transfer her 'ghost' (again, a GITS term) into her. Going 'Gaaah!' yet? Some people decide to toss Elda away, and Hideki finds her. Her learning program creates a knowledge storage shell, and this is what we know as Chii.

Then again, I'm not really new to the "machine with feelings and soul" concept - there's plenty of it in SRW, especially SRWOG2. One of them also does a heroic 'human shield' for an asshole who doesn't think much of created people, not because it's her orders, but because she develops totally inappropriate feelings for her boss. (Hmm, are they trying to tell us something here?)

And so this is Christmas / And what have you done / The old year is over / A new one begun...

Aside from seeing my first year with my girlfriend, I can say nothing much. I 'm thankful that I'm alive - despite all the misery and unexpected that comes with living, it sure beats being dead. Living dead, perhaps, but still alive - and being alive is what counts.

My prospects for the future look grim. It's not that I'll go insane once my girlfriend leaves the country to study abroad - never fear - but I ponder on what will become of me once I fail my family once more. I've no desire to test how tenuous the string called family ties are - in my case, it's almost a certainty, though.

No thesis = no place in the family and house. I could point out that neither my mother nor my aunt-godmother had college diplomas, but then I'm not exactly cooking meals or cleaning the house or washing laundry or being helpful to the family in anyway. Put that way, why would anyone want another mouth to feed, another source of dirty clothes, a non-deductable from the income tax return?

I could find work, I guess - though the chances of a college dropout finding decent jobs is slimmer than for college graduates finding decent jobs in today's market.

Staying to run with the computer shop isn't an option - we close down this coming October, thanks to the greedy bloodsucking landlord who doesn't do anything about spark-spewing wall outlets, faulty toilets, and water and electrical outages. AND HE STILL HAS THE NERVE TO RAISE THE RENT! Madness!

I can't believe it's been almost two months since I've been here. Merry Christmas.

Fanfiction.net has done something very bad to me: they've taken my pen name out of their search function. Don't ask me why, don't ask me how. A friend of mine was witness to this. I logged in, as if trying to add a new chapter. It worked, confirming I was still an author in ff.net. Then I try searching using the site's search function for all variations of Jemu Nekketsu - NOTHING CAME UP.

Nothing came up. I'm serious. I was logged in, I have the document manager and the works, but I could not find my name in the search Author by Pen Name thingy.

I'm thinking of putting up my future stories spun off copyrighted material here, but I can't recall if the Terms of Agreement allows me to do so. Heck, I have faulty memory, and I didn't care to print the stuff.

I'm ready to throw in the towel with this blog. The spacing between paragraphs (or lack of it - see my previous post) is counter-intuitive. What I see I do not get. What I want to see I can't make happen. Fudge.

Why does it work sometimes, and botch on all others? I checked the HTML code, and there is a lot of formatting tags enclosing... nothing. It's all with no text inside. It confounds me. I'm pretty sure I didn't want that to happen.

So much for WYSIWYG, I guess. It's back to Edit HTML for me. Boy, this sure brings back high school sophomore days.

Back to Basics. I hope the bold and italic tags are up to par with the message boards I'm a part of.

This will be my workbook post. Here, I'll try to play around with the text controls. Notice that the fonts here are of different sizes. The rule, I think, is to put down all the text first before performing doodads.

If anyone has noticed, I've deleted my previous post - it's got too much endemic errors to make me let it live longer. The presentation of the topic is also botched - I was explaining the features of a particular side of an RTS game to a reader who probably hasn't played it yet.

I shall rectify that error now.

Dawn of War Basics

Controls and Gameplay

Dawn of War is a real-time strategy (RTS) game. Unlike chess, where each side takes turns, one after the other, in RTS games the sides perform their actions simultaneously, thus creating a sense of excitement as to who can outsmart who faster.

DoW is a point and click game - you select units and structures with your mouse, and click on some buttons on the game screen to give them commands, or on the map to give them orders. No keyboard-pounding action here, I'm afraid. :)

It's a war simulation - you gather resources, build up the necessary production facilities, gather an army, and try to conquer your opponent with it. All in all, a regular RTS pattern - gather, build, and attack.

Distinguishing Features

There are two resources involved in creating an army - Requisition points and Power. Requisition points are gathered by capturing Strategic Points, Critical Points and Relics. Power can be obtained from Generators. Capturing key areas and building Generators increase the rate at which these resources trickle into your reserves.

DoW offers a twist in army management - squads. Infantry are requisitioned in squads of 1-5 units to start with, and can be commanded to recruit more members to increase a squad's capability. This recruitment can be done even in the middle of combat! Squads need not be monotonous - some members of a squad may be assigned different weapons from their comrades (as in a real-life army), and squad leaders may be assigned to them to improve their performance. Lastly, there are some infantry units that do not come in squads when they are created, but may join a squad, increasing their survival chances.

This is because squads take damage as a whole - the damage is distributed evenly to all members, as opposed to direct damage when attacking a unit that is acting alone, i.e., a vehicle. In the crudest terms, a squad is a meat shield for special infantry units, who more often than not are support units like medics or powerful attack units. The more members the meat shield has, the better.

Vehicles also can be tweaked - a Predator tank, for example, may exchange its main artillery gun for a laser cannon, in the same manner that a squad may be assigned weapons to deal with various situations. This customization to the point of twinkiness is a direct translation of the War Hammer 40,000 tabletop miniature game into the PC-RTS format (The minis game is turn-based.). The point-value limit of the tabletop game has been replaced with a Squad and Vehicle cap, which prevents massive rushes of generic troops to drown the enemy. Quantity is good, but quality is too. A 16-Ork attack force equipped only with axes and pistols is going to flounder when faced with an Eldar hovertank. An 8-strong Space Marine Squad, half of which are carrying Missile Launchers, with an Apothecary to heal wounds and a Sergeant with a Plasma Gun will take said hovertank down with only minor casualties.

It seems that researching upgrades for your units is a must for any strategy game that wishes to score in the market. It stands to reason - it is easier to maintain a small body of well-armed troops than a horde of spear-wielding peasants. DoW is not without this requisite, which is a trend that Blizzard's games started - if you don't research and upgrade, you die. Upgrades come in the form of extra weapons, special abilities, or in passive bonuses (say, to each unit's health).

My task here is done. Hopefully, I can move on to the wonderfully biased unit descriptions in my next posts.

I didn't mean to allow so many days to pass after my last post, but I got sidetracked by Dawn of War. Dawn of War is a/an RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game taking its elements from Games Workshop's WarHammer universe. The game has a campaign, skirmish mode (where you fight against AI), and multiplayer is supported (though I haven't tried it yet).

The WarHammer universe is big, and its different races are always at war with each other. The campaign puts you behind the reins of the Space Marines, Blood Ravens Chapter. They're pretty much your run-of-the-mill people in power suits that have high-tech weapons and gear, except that they have cybernetic implants. Space Marines have no sense of humor - you might get bored of hearing the same old "For the Emperor!" "The enemies of the Emperor will be crushed!" lines. I was wondering idly if there's a chapter (kinda like monks, their organization is) that has white power armor, and only its commanders wear black. The Space Marines have the nasty habits of hardwiring their crippled/maimed/disabled soldiers into humanoid weapons platforms (read: SUPAA ROBOTTO!), binding a protective spirit in each one of their super tanks, and dropping firepower, troopers, and aforementioned robots from their orbiting battleships. Crazy humans.

The first race you meet and massacre in the campaign are the Orks. Yes folks, that's Orks, not orcs, due to some wish to not be identified with Tolkien perhaps. Green-skinned people with a love of battle, no I'm not talking about the Hulk. Orks do not possess high levels of technology, preferring weapons that go bang, chop, boom, or burn. Only the smartest of them get the stuff that go zap and blink. Still, when it comes to close combat, they are a match with Space Marines and their strength-increasing armor. Their accuracy has a lot to be improved on, but when a full gang of Orks outnumbers a Space Marine squad 2:1, well, now... Their nasty habits include equipping every gang in the field with explosives of all sorts, strapping some huge guns on a big, BIG lizard, and using goblins as spies and workers. The Ork side is full of laughs - one of their heroes says "Where's my trukk? Why am I WALKING?!!!" The other hero says upon entering the field "I'ze the biggest, so I'ze DA BOSS!"

Next up on your plate are the fast yet frail Eldar. For those not in the know, 'Eldar' is WarHammer-speak for 'Elves.' They look tame and lame compared to Orks - none of them have siege capable infantry, i.e. soldiers that can deal significant damage to structures oustside of hand-to-hand combat. They make up for it with their vehicles - three are highly maneuverable hovertanks, and the other one is a humanoid weapon similar to what the Space Marines use. What Eldar infantry are best at is appearing suddenly and disappearing quickly - they run really fast, and they have teleportation gates. Did I mention that some Eldar structures also teleport? Talk about cheating. In fact, they so need to cheat badly, they can summon their war god to fight on the ground with them.

The last race / faction included in the game are the Chaos Marines. They're basically D3V1L W0RSH1PP1NG Space Marines, and its reflected in their structures' and units' look. Their version of the Space Marines' SUPAA ROBOTTO has four legs, two arms ending in pincers, and a horned helemet complete with glowing eyes perched on top of its hull. They can also summon daemons - in fact, one of their big plays is to sneak a squad in, undetected, to your HQ, then transform the squad leader into a Bloodthirster, one of Baphomet's meaner cousins. Oh yeah, summoning the big horned, winged guy doesn't kill the other members of the squad, so they can stick around and provide fire support for the big, strong and ugly guy. They're funny that way.

There is a 5th group, the Imperial Guard, who are in the campaign - you can't play as them in the skirmish and multiplayer modes. They're plot devices, literally. All they have going for them are their 15-man squads armed with grenade launchers, laser rifles, and plasma guns, and their cute tanks.

Graphics-wise and game-wise, Dawm of War has been described as a Warcraft killer. It's so easy to learn - the Space Marines that is, as the in-game tutorial puts you in command once again of a Space Marine force. It has camera controls that allow a player to zoom in and pan the view as they wish to really get up close to the action.

I'll discuss units in-depth on my next post.