Dan’s Space on the Web

Since I’m on holiday with nothing much to do, I’ve been checking out the weekly Straits Times feature “Digital Life”. While sometimes most of the articles are old news (hey, can’t blame a weekly feature when the subject is something that changes everyday), it’s still worth a flip through to learn what’s happening on the local Singapore scene.

Anyway, so today’s Digital Life had a segment on “Future Phones”, where they got a few people to say what they want in cellphones of the future. About half of them are ok – things like pedometers, holographic displays, but the other half is… simply silly. Well then, without further ado, here are some silly suggestions for the cellphones of the future.
note: the number at the end of each quote is the age of the person who suggested it.

“The ability to get money from your phone, just like an ATM!” (14)
- Uh…where’s the money going to come from? Well I don’t blame him, the kid’s only 14, so fair enough.

“I want a fully extendable mirror with my phone. Most phones’ mirrors are all really small and tiny.”
- why would you need this? Perhaps to look around corners while playing 007, or for girls to check their makeup, I guess.. except that the person to suggest this WAS AN 18 YEAR OLD GUY.

“I want a portable umbrella with my phone because I am always forgetting to bring my umbrella out!” (20)
- I’m really not sure if you can squeeze/fold an umbrella down to the size of a cellphone.

“A handbag that doubles as a phone – a handphone handbag.” (16)
- I wonder if she realizes that cellphones, as their name implies, are meant to be tiny.

“A handphone pencil case. So I can just bring it to school and use it both as a pencil case and as a phone.” (15)
- Same as the above. There’s usually a reason why certain things are kept separate..

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the best suggestion for phones of the future.

“I lost my phone…I hope there will be a built-in snake in lost phones that will come out and bite the person who has taken the lost phone.” (16)
- When I read the first part, I thought he/she was going to suggest a tracking device. But no, it has to be a snake that will bite the naughty thief. Retribution, eh? A good idea, though – the thief would never expect a FRICKIN SNAKE TO JUMP OUT OF A CELLPHONE.
- Snakes can’t be “built-in”.
- Have fun feeding your snake – dead snakes don’t bite.

I’m pretty sure that most of these were a joke, especially the last one. I really hope they are, if not we have a serious problem. Granted, these suggestions weren’t from grown men and women, but they still are in at least secondary school.

The Enhance Approves: Worth Trying.

note: Rating Scale-

• Better to Read a Book (Disapprove. eg. MapleStory)
• Only if you have Lots of Free Time (Disapprove.)
• It’s OK
• Worth Trying
• Must Try
• Worth Playing/Buying
• Definitely Worth Buying (eg. Guild Wars)

Quick Review:

Granado Espada’s unique system gives you control over 3 characters at once. The result is, as a friend puts it, a very RTS-like experience where you are controlling customizable hero characters. To help you in controlling 3 characters at a time, there are a few commands that will be your good friends throughout the game:

• patrol mode: your characters attack whatever comes close
• hold mode: similar to patrol except your characters do not move to engage in combat
• assault mode: your classic RTS attack-move command
• harvest mode: your characters get greedy and pick up everything along the way

These make controlling your 3 characters at once a lot easier, but one thing that still bothers me is that if you don’t tell them to do anything or are in harvest mode, they’ll gladly take a beating until they are dead. Also, you can opt to either control them individually or entirely as a team. Separate hotkeys and shortcut icons for each of the character’s skills makes executing skills and spells a breeze, without you having to select a character before you can use his skills.

GE isn’t all about killing stuff and leveling up, which is a big factor for me. It features a rather clever quest system, where quests aren’t just simply “kill 128367 of Blah”, and in addition each has a reasonable back-story plus sometimes tie-up with other quests. A minimum level requirement also gives you a sense of order as to which quests to do first. Finally, at the start of each area “Hunt Quests” are issued, where you get rewarded for killing x number of certain monsters in the area, giving you some sense of a target while you are doing your grinding.

GE also features an extensive world with beautifully crafted maps, and each map has a general guideline telling you what level range the map is suited for. This helps you know where you should go next, and when it is time to move on, so that you don’t waste time trying to find a suitable place to level up or staying in the same old boring place for too long.

Instead of just buffing all your characters to the max, GE’s skill system is broken up into different “stances”, where which stance you use is determined by what you have equipped. Stances are, simply put, a subset of your character’s class – each stance can be leveled up separately and give access to different skills. This adds to the tactical side of Grando Espada, making things slightly more interesting.

With the new “trinity” concept, good quest system and a beautiful world to play through, GE is definitely a game worth trying. Let’s just hope you make it through the 3+ gb download.

Note: there is still a lot more to the game (eg. forming factions, having colony wars or something) that I have yet to experience, as I just started a few days ago.