It was around lunch time. I had to work on Star Blog. But I was hungry.

And I wanted to play Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Xbox 360 game).

Faced with such intimidating choices, there was naught to do but turn on my Xbox 360.

The Goonfather heard the TV go on and said, “What are you doing?! I thought you’re supposed to finish up Star Blog first so you can go out with us later!”

“I’m hungry,” I said by way of explanation.

“What do you want to eat?

“Mmmm… I want… Katong Laksa nasi lemak.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Of course lah.”

As I was about to turn off my game, he said, “You can play a bit first. I need to go toilet.”

So I played a mission.

Ten minutes later, the Goonfather came out of the toilet and joined in my mission.

(The great thing about CwaCoM is that a second player can jump it at any time to help with the mission. The second player is a monkey so that makes the Goonfather a monkey! Ha ha ha.)

(Quite funny wat!)

After we completed the mission, I got up to change clothes. The Goonfather went to his computer.

A few minutes later, I was ready. But the Goonfather was now working on a phone application he had written for his Omnia 2.

I thought he had completed it earlier because he had proudly shown it to me.

I said, “What are you doing? I thought you’d finished with that program!”

He said, “Er… please take your own sweet time to get ready!”

“But I’m ready!”

“But I’m not!”

“DOTDOTDOT!!!”

From the time he’d said “Let’s go now” until the time we actually left the house, it was a total of 80 minutes.

This has been an eventful gaming week!

There was GCA 2009 with eclusive showcases of Forza 3 and Halo 3 ODST.

I met the great Ian Livingstone.

I also met with some Rockstar people, who shared with us developments in the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

I received five new games to play (and review): WET, Heroes over Europe, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Dirt 2 and Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

So, I really, really need someone to invent a time stopper!

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Table of Contents

1. Cloudy with a chance of meatballs
2. Time Wasters by Swordplay
3. Photos from GCA 2009
4. Win a New Era Games haversack!!

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Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

This funny title started as a children’s book in 1978 about a town called Chewandswallow where it literally rains and snows food.

It’s now a movie and a game, released Sep 18 and 15, respectively.

Well, I have somewhat outgrown children’s movies and games (Hello Kitty not counted because Hello Kitty is for all ages), but of the five new games I received this week, I decided to play CwaCoM first because it looked the simplest and I just wanted to play something brainless after suffering an insufferably busy week.

Surprisingly, I found it enjoyable. In fact, I want to play it right now instead of writing GGF, but we can’t always do what we want, especially since GGF is already a day late!

So I will zip through GGF today and maybe have some time left over to get back to it. =P

In CwaCoM, you play a quirky inventor who invents this machine that makes food fall from the sky so that people can have better lives.

The machine works but then quickly gets out of control. Soon, your townsfolk are terrorised by giant foodstuff raining on them mercilessly.

Imagine being flattened by this giant piece of broccoli!

Or giant burgers!

I must say, though, that playing this game made me very, very hungry.

So, your task is to get out there and vaporise food. You have five different weapons which deal with the monstrous foods in different ways, such as melting them down or hacking them to pieces.

Killing food earns you points which you can use to upgrade your weapons.

Some foods just sit there harmlessly (or obstruct passageways) while other foods are aggro. For example, you could get rained on by sizzling hot chilli sauce or get bitten by cute gummi bears that won’t leave you alone until you slice them into oblivion.

The first mobs you’ll encounter are annoying snowmen that shoot snowballs at you the moment you walk into range. You’ll need to melt them down before they pelt you to death with snowballs.

It doesn’t matter if you die, though. The game just lets you start over where you last died, with no penalties.

In this way, you progress through five acts, each of which consists about five missions. I’ve only completed the first act. It’s fun! And I believe it will get more interesting in the later acts when you get to change weapons mid-mission.

Besides fighting homicidal foodstuff, you also have the challenge of navigation. Once in a while, you’ll have to figure out how to use objects in the environment to help you get where you want to go.

There are some places that are quite hard to get to but you’ll want to get to them in order to unlock the ultimate weapon.

You can probably complete the game without it, or you can redo missions to get what you missed earlier.

I think kids will really love this game. Adults with a sense of fun will like it, too.

I think I want to watch the movie, now!

CwaCoM is available across all platforms.

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Time Wasters by Swordplay

Swordplay is my pesky li’l bro who spends all his time playing time-wasting games. To make him a little bit more useful, I’m sitting on him and making him recommend one fun and simple web-based game each week.

This week’s game: CANABALT

This game only requires one button (I use the spacebar). It’s a side-scrolling game with your avatar running automatically in superspeed mode across rooftops. You have to jump across obstacles and buildings to stay alive for as long as possible. (Crashing into a wall or falling to your death ends the game.)

Great for a quick distraction!

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Photos from GCA 2009

Games Convention Asia 2009 is still on until tomorrow (Sunday, Sep 20)!

Xbox fans are going crazy with the opportunity to play Forza Motorsport 3 and Halo 3 ODST before actual game release. (It’s free. Just walk in to the 4th floor exhibition hall and you can start playing — if there isn’t a queue, that is.)

I was there on Thursday to shoot some videos and do some interviews, but I don’t have time to edit the videos yet, so here are some photos first, taken from the Xbox 360 Facebook Fan Page.

The Forza Motorsport 3 girls.

John Wendl, Content Director of Turn 10 Studios, showcasing Forza 3 on the GCA stage.

Me with John Wendl.

The Forza 3 racing station with three-screen setup.

Xbox 360 booth next to EA booth.

Me with the Forza girls and Kellyn.

Me with the Forza girls and Ian Livingstone.

Taken with my crappy camera.

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Win a New Era Games haversack!!

I have an attractive haversack here with an interesting single strap at the back, and the words, “Gaming at its best!”

I wanted to give this out last week but didn’t have time to include the giveaway section, so here it is today!

If you want it, just post a comment telling us what are the items always found in your bag! I’ll randomly pick a winner.

Closing date is Thursday, Sep 24, 11:50 pm!

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Whee! Back to playing kiddy games!!

Bah, who am I kidding? I have more (other) work to do, lol.

Enjoy your long weekend and Selamat Hari Raya!

I really didn’t expect to win so I think I’m still in shock.

Not that I lack confidence. I do believe my blog is good enough to win, but there are always so many factors involved that you can never really tell, especially with contests that involve public voting.

But I won and I’m sure I will be ecstatic once I get over the shock!

Posing with my trophy at Supperclub.

Most of my thanks go to you readers for supporting my blog all these years, and especially to all of you who voted for me. You guys must have worked really hard in the voting. You all rock!

I am deeply humbled by your support. Honestly, I couldn’t have done it without you, without your constant support, encouragement, feedback, interaction and understanding (when I have no time to blog or reply comments).

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And, of course, big thanks to Omy and sponsors for making the S’pore Blog Awards happen!

It’s been a busy week and I’m going to have to cut this blog short. I just need to express my appreciation to everyone who played a part in my win.

It’s 2:30 am now. I have to wake up at 7 am to attend Games Convention Asia 2009. Will be filming all day, then it’s off to a film screening in the night. No rest!

That’s why I’m blogging this in advance and post-dating it.

I want to tell you about my crazy hair! And my prizes! And show you loads of photos! But those will have to wait.

Cheers and love!

I normally take about 1.5 hours to make myself public-ready. This includes showering and washing my hair, blow-drying my hair, lotioning and sunblocking my whole body, putting on makeup, making my hair presentable, and putting on an outfit.

Yesterday, though, I took 3.5 hours to get ready for a Microsoft press event.

And I wasn’t even fully ready after 3.5 hours. I had to do the last touches of my makeup in the cab because I was seriously late.

Tonging the hair

As you all know, I just did my hair at the salon. At home, after washing my hair, my temp curls disappeared and I realised that my new brown hair looks awful being straight. Which means I will have to curl it myself every time now.

Yesterday was the very first time I attempted to use a curling tong.

It was a disaster!

With the first tonging, my hair looked like this.

I tried different techniques on different segments of hair. Most of them turned out really bad. After 45 minutes, I looked like I had been electrocuted.

I tried straightening and recurling spoilt segments but it seemed like it didn’t work that way. The funny kinks refused to go away.

In the end, I gave up and tied my hair into a ponytail.

Blackening the eye

Besides having to make my hair look human, I had to blacken my eye.

The Microsoft event was held at Hard Rock Cafe with a rock theme and I was told to dress like a rocker. Supposedly, everyone in the Microsoft team and PR team would be dressing up. (Not the guests.)

So, I Googled “rocker makeup” and learnt that rock means black eyes, so I proceeded to give myself some.

This was another first attempt. I have never done rock makeup on myself before.

I have learnt over the years that good makeup isn’t just dabbing on the colour. It’s about blending. So I slowly and painstakingly blended the black onto my eyelids together with some white shimmer.

Half an hour later, I turned into a zombie.

Then I spent another half an hour trying to unzombify myself.

So, to hell with blending. In the end, it was just dabbing on the black.

The final touch

Rocker is not my look of choice, but I have a number of black things in my wardrobe, so I dug out the most outrageous pieces I had.

This was at a time when the event was just about to start, and I was still at home fretting about my wardrobe.

Frantically putting stuff together, I concocted this outfit.

It probably looks more goth than rocker, but I don’t have any rock stuff, really.

I took this punk-emo photo in the toilet, which I like quite a lot:

A picture after the event, practising drums at the studio:

It feels fun playing drums in an outrageous outfit!

A picture at the event, where I took a photo of me being captured by the new Microsoft LifeCam Cinema webcam. It’s a good cam, possibly the best out there now, if you’re shopping for a webcam.

Although I love playing dress-up with all kinds of looks, sometimes I wish I were a guy. Life would be so much simpler without having to tong hair and put on funny makeup.

I could have completed an entire video game in 3.5 hours!

New hairdo!!

I’ve resisted doing a dye job for years because I really hate going to the hair salon. It’s boring sitting there for hours.

Hated, anyway.

Now that I have Minou and Wang Wang to accompany me, I don’t mind going every few months to retouch and trim. (I used to visit the salon only once every two years or so.)

So, I decided to take the plunge and colour my hair!

I went with a very safe colour to start off.

I know, I know. You can hardly tell the difference from black. But we need to take baby steps. I think the Goonfather might faint if I step out of the salon with pink hair.

So, maybe I’ll kind of do it progressively.

Can someone good with photoshop pinkify my hair to show me how I’ll look?

The curls aren’t permanent; they were made with curling tongs. My stylist was nice enough to spend extra time curling my hair just for the heck of it.

I might go for permanent ones next time cos I like how it turned out. But Wang Wang said my hair will be horribly damaged, so I can’t decide now.

I didn’t think I could ever recreate this look on my own (I’ve never used curling tongs myself before!) so I took lots of photos.

But my stupid camera auto-adjusted the lighting in this following photo so that I look like a corpse.

With Minou and Wang Wang:

Maybe, maybe, next time, I’ll really go for pink.