Oh, gosh, is it Friday already? While people are thanking god it’s Friday, I’m raising the panic alarm for a worrying number of deadlines unmet.

Nevertheless, Gamer Girl Friday is still in business, even if I have to sacrifice my Age of Conan game time.

In fact, I only had time to play for one measly hour since receiving my AoC registration key on Wednesday. But that’s enough to talk about AoC at great length because it gave me enough lasting first impressions to fill a book.

You’ll want to read my “Adventures of Sheylara the Barbarian” series because it’s funny!

And don’t forget to take part in this week’s contest. I’m giving away a Grand Theft Auto IV game! Ooh!

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Table of Contents

1. Playing Age of Conan on dual-monitor setup
2. Adventures of Sheylara the Barbarian Part 1
3. Age of Conan first impressions
4. Ninja patrol squad terrorizes Bugis Junction
5. Results of last week’s contest
6. Ask Sheylara
7. Win a Grand Theft Auto IV game!!

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Playing Age of Conan on dual-monitor setup

Here’s a quite useless and self-indulgent video showing you Age of Conan played on dual-screen mode.

I was on a dual-monitor setup when I logged in to Age of Conan for the first time and found that I couldn’t force the game back to one screen, so I decided to play it like that just for the heck of it.

Of course, the game world looks incredibly beautiful spread across two screens, but it was a pain to play because of the gap between the two monitors, where your character is stuck the whole time.

So, bad idea. Next!

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Adventures of Sheylara the Barbarian Part 1

Once upon a time, onboard a slave galley, there lived a kind-hearted and innocent barbarian girl by the name of Sheylara.

Sheylara had been kidnapped from her hometown in Aquilonia to be sold into slavery. Her talents include looking cute and owning an outrageously daring bikini (for that era).

One day, as luck would have it, the ship got wrecked by some fearsome squall or something and everyone got thrown overboard. Sheylara passed out before washing up on some scenic beach shore, just like in the movies.

Shortly after, a strange old man, who just happened to be hanging out at the beach, came along and tried to wake her.

Amazingly, Sheylara wasn’t dead and even managed to wake up looking like she just stepped out of the latest issue of Swimsuit Illustrated.

The strange old man said to Sheylara, “Since you’ve washed up on the shore anyway, I might as well make you do some work. There’s this cute little thing got herself captured by an evil man. Go save her, would you please, if you’re not in a hurry to go anywhere.”

Sheylara, being kind-hearted and innocent and, in fact, not in a hurry to go anywhere, agreed to the old man’s request even as she coughed out the last drops of seawater from her lungs.

Now, it didn’t take her long to find the cute little thing that needed rescuing.

“Help!” said the cute little thing, whose name is Casilda. “You look like you have the stomach for a bloody encounter (even if you resemble a swimsuit model). Wouldn’t you please kill that meanie over there and get his keys to free me? Please?”

“Okay,” said kind-hearted and innocent Sheylara, and off she went waving the broken bottle that the strange old man had given to her to use as a weapon.

Incredibly, Sheylara managed to kill the meanie with nothing but the broken bottle and her charms.

She returned to Casilda and freed the bimbotic wench. Then, the two ladies had a nice conversation about the latest trends in swimwear.

Casilda said, “Hey, you know what? The city of Tortage has some really nice shopping spots. Why don’t we walk there together and I’ll show you around?”

“Awesome plan!” said Sheylara.

The two provocatively-dressed ladies then proceeded to leisurely stroll through the jungle, chatting and giggling as if they’d known each other forever.

Suddenly, Sheylara was attacked!

“What is this?!?!?!?!” she screeched. “You didn’t tell me there were more bad men around!”

“Oops, sorry,” said Casilda as she scurried off to hide behind a tree. “My bad.”

Just as Sheylara was about to get slaughtered good and proper, a strange feeling overcame her.

A fascinating blue light descended upon her, like a deus ex machina, and infused her with the strength of a panther and the courage of a man who’s about to get a root canal treatment without anesthesia.

“I can take on the whole world!!” she declared. “Come and get me if you dare!”

With that, the thug in front of her dropped dead with fright. He also dropped some loot just the way mobs are supposed to, when they die.

“Cool!! A new bikini!!” enthused Sheylara, as she changed into her new outfit right there and then, never considering prying eyes hidden in bushes.

Casilda ran out of hiding.

“Aww, pretty!” she crooned. “I told you, didn’t I? There’s a lot more of that where we’re going!”

Sheylara blushed before rolling her eyes and said, “Yeah, okay, let’s go. But next time, warn me before I get hacked almost in two pieces again!”

With that, the two happy maidens went on their merry way.

(To be continued next week…)

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Age of Conan first impressions

Like I said, I could fill a book with my first impressions, but I’ll just pick a few things because I’m sure you don’t want to read a book.

Impressing me right at the outset was the character creation screen. It’s so dynamic I thought it was another intro video sequence.

As the story goes, you’re a captive on this ship on the way to being sold into slavery. The character creation screen shows you being on a ship, surrounded by oarsmen busy at work rowing and making a frightful din.

It’s a dark and stormy night and all that and you’re alone and frightened, but you have work to do. You have to choose a gender and race and class, following which you have to choose hair colour, eye colour, body shape and size, and all the rest of it.

From here, you have the option to go into an advanced customisation mode to tweak every single last detail, from boob size to eyebrow angle. Never has character customisation been so detailed since Star Wars Galaxies.

Past the character creation stage, the game world is truly a sight to behold.

The colours are vibrant, the landscape is lush, the avatars so detailed. Everything is just so beautiful it makes your heart sing with joy.

Once in a while, you get these cutscene animations when you initiate contact with an NPC.

These are pretty cool. Makes me feel like I’m playing a console game. And the voice acting is really good. The only complaint I have here is that the character animation seems a little blocky, lacking the natural fluidity of real-life motion.

Not that I’m expecting a lot. Remember Beowulf (Angelina Jolie)? Even that didn’t achieve 100% fluidity. So I don’t expect any better from a game for which cutscenes are only a minor feature.

Age of Conan is not a game for MMORPG newbies. There is no newbie-friendly tutorial such as you would get in World of Warcraft and EverQuest II. You do get guides that pop out when the game feels you need some, but they are not as intuitive as those in aforementioned games.

But that’s fine because I’m not an MMORPG noob and I managed to get a quest and kill some mobs right away.

AoC is very bloody, which is a first for an MMORPG.

It’s very tantalising. If you’re playing a female avatar, you’re staring at a pair of perky butt cheeks 95% of game time.

There’s also the option to disrobe your avatar almost completely but I’m not showing it here!

Oh, did I forget to mention spell animation?

I totally love it! If it’s so beautiful even at starting levels, I can’t wait to see what I’m going to get at higher levels.

I took a video with the built-in video recorder (also an MMORPG first, I think) but it’s in a weird resolution (1274×992) because I was playing in windowed mode and, somehow, YouTube isn’t able to play that.

I love the built-in video recorder, except that it doesn’t capture sound. I have no idea why.

Well, I think that’s enough AoC for a day. If I talk anymore about it, I’ll never be able to get out of my house and I do have an event to attend in a couple hours.

If you’re in Thog, look me up!

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Ninja patrol squad terrorizes Bugis Junction

There are only two days left to the Ninja Gaiden II preorder promotion and the current preorder figure stands at 327 (needs 174 more for the release of the second tier freebie of the NG2 notebook).

For such a popular long-running game series, I’m surprised the figure isn’t higher.

But then, it’s not my job to worry about preorder sales figures. My job is to worry about properly terrorizing random folks in the streets with my scary Ninja demeanor!

As you can see, we were completely and utterly menacing.

In fact, people had to literally beg us not to harm them.

Ferocious Ryu Hayabusa says, “You. Yes, you there. I’m watchin’ you, kid, I’m watchin’ you.”

That was unfortunately the last of the ninja patrol tourist attraction pose squad, although we will be making a couple of appearances during the launch event on June 3 at Funan, which will be on from 12:30 pm till 8 pm.

There will be a lucky draw going on every hour for people who have pre-ordered the game. An exclusive NG2-themed Xbox 360 Elite will be given away! I wonder who the lucky person will be. Will it be me? (I wish).

You have until Sunday to preorder the game. I swear it’s really fun. Go for it!

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Results of last week’s contest

Last week, I put five Grand Theft Auto IV stickers and three Grand Theft Auto IV coasters up for grabs. The response was really quick and all items were snapped up within a few hours!

Congratulations to the following winners!

GTA4 coasters
tedbear
bedlamite
Aves

GTA4 stickers
Leo
Bartman
modchip
Ayane06
siegeholler

The items will be mailed out to you as soon as I can find some time to zip down to the P.O.

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Ask Sheylara

Ask me any gaming-related questions! Post them in the comments or e-mail me, I don’t really care. I will try to answer all questions (unless I get like 500 questions a day).

BC asks a Wii question:

I wanted to connect to the Internet using my Wii and its in Japanese so I downloaded your site’s translation. However, when I went to press the wrench icon to go to system settings, it gives me an error message saying that it can’t connect to this certain url and that I should check if I typed it right. I have never touched the settings until now. Please help.

Sheylara Says:

This is one of the most common problems faced by users of a modified Japanese Wii set. When you insert a game disc of another region code which contains a firmware patch update, it will overwrite your original menu. You then get an error because the system is trying to locate the Japanese menu with the address “marc:JP/JP/JPN/index01.html” but it’s not there anymore.

This is known as semi-bricking your Wii. You can still play games but you just can’t access the settings menu. In some severe cases, you will get a fully-bricked Wii, in which case your set is totally unplayable.

You can fix semi-bricks by inserting a Japanese game with a firmware update that is higher than your Wii version. That will overwrite the menu again with a valid Japanese one.

Matthew Chua asks a DS Lite question:

I just bought a DS Lite for my girlfriend. But, being a gadget idiot, I’m lost trying to load music into it. Do I need any software to do it? I’m using an ezflash card.

Sheylara Says:

Please note that Gamer Girl Friday does not advocate piracy! But I will answer your question this once. If you’re using EZ-Flash V, it should have an MP3 icon which you can tap to launch the media player. If not, what you need is Moonshell. I can’t explain to you in detail because it’s not exactly legit. But you can Google it.

David Lee asks a console comparison question:

If you were totally unbiased, how would you rank the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360, in terms of games, performance, satisfaction?

Sheylara Says:

It’s really hard to rank them strictly, so I will tell you what I like about each console!

PS3: It’s sleek and shiny and it has Blu-ray capabilities so you save your money on a Blu-ray player.

Wii: It’s cute and the games are a totally different experience. I love the great workout some of the games give.

Xbox 360: For now, Xbox 360 has the best games library and the Xbox Live experience is unbeatable.

You know what, I’m going to open this last question out to all you readers. It’s really hard for me because I do like all the consoles almost equally. But there must be dedicated fans of specific consoles out there. So how would you rank the three consoles?

Post your answers in the comments here.

Best answer received before next Friday will get a small mystery prize!

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Win a Grand Theft Auto IV game!!

YES YES YES. I’m giving out a Grand Theft Auto IV game (Xbox 360 Asian version) because I’ve got a kind sponsor this week. And because it’s a bigger prize, the contest will be a little harder than last week’s (but not that hard).

This week’s prize is sponsored by The Xbox 360 team in Singapore. (Yaay! Give them a standing ovation!)

Here’s how you can win it!

1. Write a review of Gamer Girl Friday.
2. Post it on your blog or in a gaming-related forum (but don’t spam).
3. Link the post to www.sheylara.com.
4. Post a comment here when you’ve done it so I can check it out.

Rules:

1. There is no word limit and it can be any style you like.
2. Entries will be judged by me! I will pick the one I like best.
3. You need to be at least 18 to win this prize. (ID verification will be required.)
4. Closing date is June 5, 2008!

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Oh, my. Today’s issue seems very long. I don’t know if you read everything but thanks for reading!

Remember to take part in both contests! There is one sneakily embedded in the Ask Sheylara segment. Haa.

Okay, Gamer Girl Friday needs to sign off now to go play Age of Conan (after attending previously mentioned event).

See you next week!