First of all, look who’s on the cover of My Paper today!

LOL.

You know what that means? It means that you should now head over to my Xbox blog because that’s what the ad is supposed to make you feel like doing.

You disagree?

Well, then, how about check it out anyway BECAUSE I SAY SO!!

Okay, you may now proceed to devour today’s GGF.

I mean, literarily speaking.

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Table of Contents

1. Tales of Vesperia is THE game to play
2. Give our Singapore champs a chance
3. Question Number 1
4. To party or to game. That is the dilemma
5. Stalking Sheylara
6. Ask the Goonfather
7. Win a Nokia USB charger!!

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Tales of Vesperia is THE game to play

Tales of Vesperia is like a dream come true for me. It combines my two loves — RPG and anime — and I could not gush over it enough. But I’ll attempt to, of course, for such is the nature of Gamer Girl Friday.

First off, Yuri Lowell is unbearably cute.

A good-looking hero is of utmost importance for a game, you must agree.

Also of equal importance is a good-looking heroine to capture the hearts of geeks who spend too much time playing games, and impressionable young ladies looking for role models to cosplay.

Estelle fits the bill to a V. I mean T. Don’t you love her cotton candy pink hair? It makes me want to go out right now to buy a pink wig. Not that I’m one of the impressionable young ladies I mentioned earlier, mind you.

The two cuties look so good together they make me go “awww…”.

What’s that? You don’t really care about how cute they look, you say? You want to know about the gameplay and stuff?

You have a thing or two to learn about appreciating the finer things in life, you know that?

So, Tales of Vesperia is a freaking good game. There is nothing more to be said. Go and buy it right now. In fact, buy an Xbox 360 just so you can play this game and it will be your most well-spent $499 this year.

End of review.

Just kidding.

Tales of Vesperia is immediately immersive with its lush anime illustrations and intriguing plot. You play Yuri Lowell, the game’s main character, who manages to get into trouble with the authorities right from the start.

The game expertly weaves entertaining little cutscenes into the gameplay, which makes you feel like you’re playing an anime. The dialogues are humorous, reminiscent of great anime scripts, and the voiceovers, while dubbed in American English, retain the characteristic kawaii innocence of Japanese anime characters.

Amidst the fast-paced action and delightful adventure, there are liberal doses of comic relief in the forms of cutscenes and optional dialogue playbacks.

In the playbacks (I call them playbacks because you can press a button to play them or you can ignore them), the main characters banter about random events that just happened. Light-hearted and humorous, these playbacks bring out each character’s personality and allow you to fall in love with them.

One of the characters in your party is Repede, Yuri’s pet dog, and he gets to join in the banter, as well, although he speaks in barks, yelps and whines.

A new feature in this latest installment of the popular Tales series of games is the dynamic combat system.

During your travels, you will see mobs roaming about freely. You can choose to engage them or walk away from them (most of the time).

Once engaged, your party will go into battle mode and that’s when it gets really fun.

All the characters in the party (up to four) are controllable by live players. Just get your friends to bring their controllers and join in the battle!

Each character’s combat mode (except Yuri’s) is set to “Auto” by default, but you can set it to “Manual”. There is also a “Semi Auto” mode, which is Yuri’s default and is helpful for newbies.

But as you level up and gain new skills and weapons, you’ll definitely want to perform all those neat combos all by yourself!

Unlike the past Tales games, ToV features real-time combat, so fighting skills are important!

At the end of each combat, you’ll see some stats and the characters will utter some funny remarks to make you laugh, and the game continues.

Oh, yes. ToV is in High Definition, although you can’t tell by my crappy screenshots. But it’ll be a beautiful sight on your HD TV that will bring tears to your eyes.

Tales of Vesperia is out in stores now and is exclusive for the Xbox 360. There is no online multiplayer feature, but you can earn achievements for it!

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Give our Singapore champs a chance

Some complications arising in the recent World Cyber Games Singapore National Finals resulted in a few of our champions not having the funds to fly to Germany this November to compete in the Grand Finals.

That’s quite a shame because at least three of them stand a chance to do Singapore proud by returning with medals.

So, SCOGA (Singapore Cybersports & Online Gaming Association) has started a nationwide fundraiser for our cyberatheletes as part of its program to nurture homegrown talent and elevate the status of gaming in Singapore.

Now, then, please support our gamers and give them a chance to represent Singapore and do us all proud by visiting this site now to see how you can help.

Thank you.

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Question Number 1

This is the first question for the Norton Internet Security 2009 contest.

Question #1: If you do not purchase goods or services on the Internet, you can’t become a victim of cybercrime. True or False?

(Just answer “True” or “False”. Don’t have to elaborate, unless you really want to.)

Aren’t I clever to hide the question here? And aren’t you clever to have found it?

Okay, maybe not.

Now, please do not send me the answer until after the fourth question has been asked because I’d rather receive one e-mail than four e-mails from you.

(But you can send me the answer now if you do not intend to answer anymore questions.)

Okay, watch out for the second question… coming up… I’m not telling you when!

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To party or to game. That is the dilemma

WAR IS COMING REALLY SOON.

One can hardly believe it. We’ve waited for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning for eight whole years. Now that it’s almost at our doorstep, it feels unreal. Like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and be told that April Fool’s Day has migrated across the calendar.

But that’s not going to happen, is it?

Because Electronic Arts has already announced a Warhammer Online launch event on Sep 18 at Games Convention Asia 2008.

Which begs to question: To party or to game?

In the real world, it makes sense to have a launch party on the very day of the launch of a game.

But gamers do not live in the real world as we know it. Especially MMORPG gamers.

On MMORPG launch days, gamers are camping their computers at home, waiting to log in the very moment the game servers are open for business.

Who has time to attend a party??

Okay, maybe EA has timed it so that the event happens just before the servers are brought up so you’ll have time to party and then rush home to zerg the servers, but I don’t know. We don’t have exact times yet.

There is also the fact that Collectors’ Edition owners (one of whom is me, bwahahaha) will already be in the game, enjoying our expensive headstart privilege, which we have to make full use, haven’t we?

Of course, there are the posters, but I’m not sure how the lure of exclusive posters for the first 500 pre-order card wielders will stack up against the reality of actually playing the game.

What would you choose?

OH. This just in!!!

The WAR servers will be brought up some time tonight for the Preview Weekend Plus event, open to Preview Weekend players! Details here!!

Patch your beta client NOW!

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Stalking Sheylara

Yesh. I’ve created yet another way for nutcases to stalk me. Not that I want stalkers, but I couldn’t resist signing up for a 360voice.com account.

This is the very cute website that syncs with your Xbox 360 to tell the world when you logged in and what games you played, using the voice of your Xbox 360.

I never knew my Xbox 360 was so clever and witty. It can blog and it blogs well, too! Here’s the latest entry it wrote:

So, yes, go check out more posts by my Xbox 360. It blogs daily, too. How diligent!

But please try to keep the stalking to a bare minimum, thanks.

Thanks to Dimenxion for recommending this site.

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Ask the Goonfather

The Goonfather is on Q&A duty until such a time as he threatens to set my Neopets on fire if I don’t take him off duty immediately. In the meantime, he is allowing me to force him to answer questions that come in.

Please send your questions to .

Andy asks a comparison question:

Is it advisable to get a PS3 versus an Xbox 360 if I don’t care abt Blu-ray or online gaming? Seems to me that 99% of great games on PS3 will be on Xbox but not the other way round, and I am afraid if I buy the PS3, it will become obsolete like the Sega Saturn back then.

The Goonfather Says:

If you do not care about either, then get whichever you think is the best looking in your room. Or you can choose based on which controller you feel more comfortable with.

Among the three consoles, PS3 has the least chance of becoming obsolete. Anyway, I would recommend the Xbox 360 if you are a Singaporean. Though I am pro Sony PlayStation, the dedication of Microsoft to its consumers has moved me. Unlike PlayStation Asia, which doesn’t give a sh!t about you.

Zhixian asks a Patapon question:

How do you save the Patapon game?

The Goonfather Says:

It you look at your PSP, there is a small hole on both sides of the screen at the bottom. These holes are the speakers which also double as a mic. To the left hole, you need to say, ”Pata pata.” Then, to the right hole, you say, “Pon.” Then back to the left hole, you say, “Pata.”

Now, if you look at the bottom of the screen, an icon of the select button will appear next to the word that looks like “Save”.

Anonymous asks a relationship question:

Should I date my best friend’s sister? My best friend told me if I do, he will thrash me.

The Goonfather Says:

Well, first you need to define your meaning of date. If it’s just a meal and movie, I don’t see a problem.

Second, it depends on your relationship with your best friend. If he is against it, I don’t think you should consider him as a best friend. Best friends are like brother and sister, and what other way could there be to attain this status legally?

I’m also thinking, are you the type who openly share your sexcapades? If you are, then maybe he doesn’t want to listen to stories about his sister.

Steph asks a Wii question:

I was recently in Hong Kong and bought my twin boys Wii Fit. I also bought them Wii Freeloader because the man in the store said it makes them able to play any game in English. So far, our game is only in Chinese. Is there a way to convert the Chinese to English or do I need to go out and buy a Wii Fit in America?

The Goonfather Says:

The only way to play Wii Fit in English is to buy the English Wii and the English version of Wii Fit.

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Win a Nokia USB charger!!

Here is this week’s giveaway!

Offcially, it’s called the Nokia Charger via USB Port CA-100 (I don’t know why it has to be so complicated) and it can be used on the following Nokia models:

Mobile phones: 3250, 6070, 6080, 6101, 6103, 6111, 6125, 6131, 6136, 6151, 6233, 6270, 6280, 7360, 7370.

Multimedia devices: N70, N71, N72, N73, N80, N90, N91, N92, N93, N95

Others: E50, E61

This handy gizmo allows you to charge your phone on your PC or laptop, but I don’t need to tell you that, do I?

If you want it, please post a comment for it. One winner will be picked randomly! How very exciting!

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The coming week is going to be hell week for me. Let me list the things I have to do:

1. Blog on Sheylara.com.
2. Blog on Xperts.com.sg.
3. Blog on a new IDA microsite for a new campaign that will be launching on Tuesday (will tell you more soon).
4. Play Tales of Vesperia.
5. Play Warhammer Online.
6. Attend meetings, events, photoshoots, interviews and whatnot, as usual.
7. Hang out with my dear friend Elyxia because she’s scheduling a rare pop in Singapore towards the end of the week.

Well, how I’m going to fit everything into 24 hours a day, I DON’T KNOW.

But you can help me by being understanding if I don’t reply your MSNs, e-mails, comments, Xbox LIVE messages, gaming requests, Twitter messages, SMSes, voice messages, etc, immediately.

Thank you for reading Gamer Girl Friday and we’ll see you next week, different time, same place! =)