I promised to try to get a few screen shots so here’s this one for now. The story behind it is I was turning round a corner and this Raider decides to take a few shots at me so I switch to VATS and target his weapon and manage to shoot it out of his hands. So remember, ammo’s kinda limited in the Wasteland, so since he can’t shoot at me anymore, I switch to my sledgehammer and go in close for the kill:

Fallout 3: Sledgehammer Kill

As a Mortal Kombat game would say: Fatality!

I’m not a first person shooter kind of game, and although Fallout 3 is largely a role playing game (RPG), there is a lot of first person elements to the game, but yet I have been addicted to the game, so much so I played it until 4am last week when I had an 830 class the next day.

VATS

The best part of the game is undoubtedly the combat. You could shoot like a normal shooter, but if you activate VATS (a targeting system) you can aim at the head, torso, arms, legs and even the weapon of your attacker and attack that limb exclusively. This leads to disabling the limb and if your “killshot” falls on that limb, it will usually explode in a giant mess of blood, gore and flying body parts.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share my best VATS experiences to date:

1) The Raider In The Supermarket
On a sidequest, I was sent to a supermarket to look for food. Of course, it was taken over by raiders and I had to fight my way in. After clearing most of them I was under constant fire by someone crouching on top of one of the supermarket shelves, which gave him a hight advantage and made him very hard to hit.

Deciding to play it sneaky, I crouched and worked my way behind him in an arc, activated VATS and pumped off five shots into his leg. The result? The leg I was firing at exploded, he went tumbling backwards off the shelf, onto a trolley in the aisle and died. Dramatic and gruesome all at once.

2) The Super Mutant Underground
On a main quest, I was walking underground when I met my first Super Mutant (huge Hulk-like creatures). By this time I had the much more powerful hunting rifle so I crouched, activated VATS and shot three times aiming at his head. The third shot took his head off completely and the force of the impact threw his body halfway across the room (the room being an underground train station).

One thing I simultaneously love and hate about Fallout 3, is the absolute massive scope of the game that on one hand gives you a lot of ground to cover, but on the other takes forever to cover as well. Long walks from point to point really bore me. This gripe is made worse with the lack of an in game map (unless you press another button to activate it, which pauses the game) which means you can’t walk and see if you’re going in the right direction in real time, but rather stop every two minutes or so, check the map, re-orientate yourself, and get walking again.

What I do like about Fallout3 is that it’s fairly realistic. It’s a post-apocalyptic world so there’s no reason ammo should be commonplace, and it isn’t. I once ran out of ammo on a particularly long walk to the next “town” and paid the price, getting gored by four two-headed cows with nothing more than a baseball bat to hold them off.

I wish I had screenshots to show you guys, but my laptop is struggling to play the game as it is and it’s hard to capture the exact moment of a head or limb exploding, but I’ll try to do that in the future.

[Image credits: VATS]

So last weekend was spent East in Montreal for a trip with QSEAC (Queen’s South East Asian Club) and it was pretty fun! I had originally planned to go to Montreal for the weekend anyway because the Jack’s Mannequin concert was on Friday (more on that in Music Mondays this week), so it was a wonderful case of killing two birds with one stone (not that I would ever encourage the killing of birds!).

So we set of by bus on Friday at 2pm and were slated to reach in at about 4:30, but reached at 6:30 instead thanks to bad traffic. This is why I travel by train. No traffic jams. The hotel was pretty neat. Definitely enough space for four of us – myself, Ava, Joyce and William – and free internet to boot!

Essentially this was a clubbing trip, with trips to two clubs on two nights. On the first night we went to Tonic:

Tonic in Montreal

I wasn’t too impressed with Tonic. It was a big space but basically if not for the 100 odd people who went on the trip from different parts of Canada, it would’ve been deserted. Music was just so-so.

On the next day we headed to the casino for lunch because there was some discount for the people on the trip, and then headed to Sainte Catherine to do some shopping. We came to regret the move because lunch cost us 2 hours that could’ve been better used shopping (shops close at 5pm on Saturdays). I think the only one who didn’t regret that was William!

Lunch at the Casino

In any case, while Montreal isn’t my favourite city because of all the french going on, I do like shopping around Sainte Catherine quite a bit, and managed to get a shirt and a pair of jeans. Not bad for about one and a half hours of shopping.

The club that night was Tribe Hyper Club, which was a vast improvement over Tonic. Better lighting (dark, the way a club should be) and better music. I honestly got a little bored of two nights of watching barely 20 year old people getting skanky so I didn’t stay long at Tribe, which is not to say it wasn’t a nice place to be at.

So all in all it was a happening weekend and it managed to distract me from Fallout 3 quite a bit (more on that soon), and now I shall leave you with pictures of us getting dressed before Tribe!

Joyce & I

Ava & I

So on Monday we had the exchange party and I’ve been to a few (not a lot) of parties, but none like this. Check it out:


Exchange Kegger from Daryl Tay on Vimeo.

Joyce, me, Ava

I was on my way to Raphael’s house via the train and one stop before his station was the Museum Station. Just had to get out to film this:


Toronto: Museum Train Station from Daryl Tay on Vimeo.

Okay first, I’m actually a person who’s pretty fond of solitude. Of course I enjoy time out too, but as I’ve alluded to previously, a lot of the time I’m my own best company.

The thing about travelling alone is that I guess you have no say about the company at all. It’s just you. Which is fine most of the time because it means I can spend seven hours in the Natural History Museum or sit in Barnes & Noble for two hours even though it sells almost identical stuff as Singapore does, or hang out in a comic store browsing endlessly without buying, and not worrying about someone else getting bored or annoyed.

I guess the downside to that is that there’s no one to really share the experience with. I mean sure, you guys have been enjoying the videos (I hope) and “seeing” New York with me, but it does feel a bit different.

It’s like going to the crazy Apple store. It would’ve been fun alone, but it was insane to go and geek out with the rest of the New York mates. Similarly the day when three of us guys braved the rain, snow and hail to hunt down this Chinese place that had awesome food, I know where it is now, but it just wouldn’t be the same going there alone.

And today, the train I was in travelled over the New York side of the Niagra Falls. It’s quite spectacular without even seeing the actual waterfall and I was totally awed, but I kinda wished the seat beside me wasn’t empty.

Okay enough mopey wopey. Enjoy the video!


14hr Train Ride: New York To Toronto from Daryl Tay on Vimeo.

When I was planning my trip up to Canada from New York, I decided I wanted to take the train instead of flying or the bus. I’m not a fan of the bus because it’s cramped and I need to use the toilet often, and flying is almost six times more expensive.

So here I am right now in Train 63 from New York to Toronto, just about exactly four hours in, and having the time of my life! Check out the view!

Train From New York To Toronto from Daryl Tay on Vimeo.

Also the space in here is absolutely heavenly. It’s much more space than you’d get if you fly, with bigger toilets and most importantly for me, power points! It’s like paying one sixth of an economy ticket to travel first class on the ground. Awesome.

Endless rows of power lines

Where cars go to die

I realise of course that for people on business or in a rush the train isn’t always the most economic option because of the time wasted (this trip takes 12 hours), but if you’re pretty much on vacation like I am, then you should really try taking the train to travel around because it’s a new experience.

Finally: Here’s a video of my seat and its’ awesomeness.


14hr Train Ride: New York To Toronto from Daryl Tay on Vimeo.

(By the way, I think it’s clear that Vimeo has better quality than YouTube, check out the same video from my Flip Cam!)

Breakfast!

So while deciding what to do today I found out that the Lion King has two shows today: one at 2pm and one at 8pm. Shouldn’t be too hard to get tickets, right? Wrong.

(oh my God why is my face the bloody frozen preview screenshot)

Anyway since I was at the comic shop on 40th Street, I decided to cross two blocks over to my fiancee’s favourite place…

Cotton candy flavour with gummy bears. I tried to make the gummy bears more visible but they were too mixed in.

Across the street there was this huge ad for Mythbusters literally taking up the whole building

After that it was down to Union Square where I just walked around for awhile. It’s interesting that it was so crowded with people sitting around, because in winter the whole place is a huge outdoor marketplace. I guess no one wants to sit down outside in winter.

Finally, I ended up at Cosi Cafe (surprise!) and had dinner and caught up on a little bit of blogging.

No I didn’t find Meepok in New York (though I think if I really wanted to I probably could), but this is one of my few attempts at doing a Meepok post (ie a “how my day went/what I did today” post) to amuse everyone and maybe embarrass me.

So my day started at 6:30am because I slept at 6:50pm the previous night in an attempt to get rid of jet lag and I’m pretty sure it worked since it’s almost 11pm and I’m still pretty awake. I got some breakfast (damn forgot to take photo) and started working on some stuff for Canada, nothing exciting. Next came a 10am web appointment, the details of which I shall not disclose here.

Heading out I decided to take this video with my Canon IXUS 860 IS, just as a means of comparison with my Flip Cam which I was determined to get today.

After getting the Flip Cam I walked around for a little bit before I was hit by the need to go to the toilet! So here’s a piece of advice to anyone who may head to New York: Use the bloody toilet before you go, because the odds of you finding a place with a toilet is low. I managed to find one at Borders, where they were also pimping the hell out of the “Twilight” books. Yeahbuwha?

Anyway, I eventually wound up at Cosi Cafe which is my favourite chain of cafes in New York (oh another interesting story on that tomorrow) and after I ate and rested for a bit, it was time to test out the new Flip Cam.

As I headed towards the comic shop, there was this homeless guy on the street, so I stopped and gave him my packet of chips from Cosi (you saw them in the picture earlier). I felt good about myself until I turned around the corner, where there was another dude who could’ve used some help. I kinda felt bad that I didn’t have more food to give and that I couldn’t give something to everyone. I bet this comes from my mom.

Next up: Pinkberry! So here’s the story, I was introduced to Pinkberry by the Kudus sisters when I was in LA last December. The New York branch is no less crowded!

Here’s the store.

Here’s the yogurt (complete with raspberries and fruity pebbles).

Oh and here’s a busstop poster for Heroes Season 3: Villains. Ando gets his own poster!

I started heading down for the Comic Book Club which is this weekly roundtable or panel discussion that serves as an extension to The Stack Podcast. It cost $5 and was about an hour and a half of pure comic book talk. The inner geek in me was very thrilled, especially considering we have nothing like this back home in Singapore.

That all ended at about 9:30 and I got back to the hostel at about 10pm and here I am with my very nutritious dinner.

Oh and before I go, here is a picture specially for Reuben (though I suppose the impact is less now)

SURPLISE!

Final verdict: After Youtube compression I suppose the difference in quality between the two videos is negligible. Still, for US$150 the Flip Cam is pretty neat and it takes an hour of photos and is really tiny. Great for on-the-go interviews or travel videos as well as capturing impromptu fun. I’d definitely recommend it, especially for us blogger types. I’m no Sheylara or Nadnut who use video a lot on their blogs, so I’m not that comfortable with camwhoring myself to the world (yet), but I foresee I will be posting a lot more videos after this!