Must come in terms to this fact- she is no more here

It might not be an everyday thing that I study, or I game, or I call someone or even that I think about my future. But what happens everyday, every hour and in every moment of my life is that I keep thinking about her. Thousand of questions, conclusion and repents come in my mind. What I lost? Why cant I stop thinking? Why is so deep inside me? Whom I really miss? Why should I repent? Was all that my mistake? Why did I do this? What now? Will I ever be able to come terms with it? Will I see her ever again? Will she ever talk to me again? And so many more.
I have asked myriad people, discussed with many but what now comes out of those is nothing. No one ever faced a condition like me and no one will feel what I feel. A very common answer, or rather advice, that people give to me is that- 'She was one of many more who will come'. I dont understand. It leaves me nonplussed. Not about the authenticity of what they say or about whether I am that lucky or not. I am clear about these things. What makes me puzzled is the fact that after telling them all that, they didn't understand what I was really telling them. Is that a bloody competition or some award grabbing or some kind of compensation so that I will be happy when I get someone else? Do you really compare all your relations like that? To be honest, what I mourn about is not my girlfriend I lost, it is rather the friend I lost. We were friend from 13 years, 13 really good long years. We might have been detached for 7 years in between, but there was no time when I had forgotten her or she had forgotten me. When I met after all those years, they were some of the most beautiful moments of my life. It was all so beautiful, the rejoice of friendship in same sense it used to be 7 years ago. I, or rather we, recalled all moments we had spent together when we were little. Those fights and those plays, the climbing and falling, the swings and those rolls, that going to school with each other and coming back and every other sweet, sour and memorable moment.
What I am most ashamed of is the fact that it was me who ruined that precious friendship by taking it to next level. There are so many arguments initially I used to give me about this, and later other people started giving same arguments. That it is not really a bad thing to fall in love with someone else and that it was actually who called so much and put our relationship in danger. To me, now, these things dosent matter. Who was the one who first lost the track? who was the one who walked down that road first? Who was the one who started molding that beautiful friendship into something else? It was me. Now I realize that she wasnt really in love with me initially. The reason that she agreed was that I was just too precious for her to be lost, a too precious friend. So precious that she did pay the prize of whom later. I still remember her perplexed weeping when I proposed her. I didn't really understand it that day, but I know today why did she weep. She wasn't ready for that, she never thought of me that way. I was a real good friend for her, probably the best friend. She saw me on a path where there either we could go the way I was already headed or we could go back separately. She couldn't just let me go, so she said yes. I still recall what she said once again after a few days. She asked if we could be friends again. I didn't answer. I got angry. I couldn't see what tormenting she was facing inside, I was too short-sighted to see that. I was angry that how could one ask this after accepting the proposal? Now I realize how cruel I was on her. Now I wish I could go back to that moment and say to her that yes Bhumika, we can.
I disconnected her call without saying anything. She called again. She wept, said sorry. The irony was the even after being so tormented, she was the one asking pardon. Now I realize how precious she considered me.
It might be possible that she did start loving me, especially after seeing the events that followed. But does that matter to me now? Do I think that 'she was the one who called me everyday and wasted 15-20000Rs'? The answer is-Never. People, as I said, do console me by these statements about her wasting money and all.

The ultimate question that I face, from others and even from myself, is that what went so wrong that we went apart? The honest answer is- I don't know. I don't understand that why she started hating me so much when I was so precious to her? There are reasons, that I can think of, but they never mattered to her. She was with me after every hurdle, every setback, after every think that makes a reason for me. Be it her parents coming to know all about all those calls made and the debt remaining or be it me hurting her every time. She even remained with me when I thought it wasn't going to happen. My father went to her mom and smeared her in front of whole town, saying that she ruined his son's career. There was no way anyone was going to keep relationship with anyone, if that had happened to them. But she still called, after some days, and never asked any explained about all that happened.
If she treasured our relationship so much, then what so bad happened in the end that she turned her face completely away from me? The only incident that I recall was me going to her mom and, because of the way talks turned, telling her something I shouldn't have. But still, whatever I did, was nowhere as big as the propaganda my dad did. Then what else was there which I never knew of? Was there someone else? Or was there some misunderstanding? Whatever it was, she never gave me chance to explain. Or I might say that, I myself was responsible for that.

I remember the last time I talked to her (March 20th, 2005). She had never talked to me this way. Her words were- 'I hate you and nothing is possible in this lifetime' I kept asking her about the reason she was angry, and she kept saying that it dosent matter cause she dosent care about me anymore. Dosent care? Those were the words which probably hurt me most. There was a time when she cared more for me than anyone else, and then that was the time when she just didn't care!

All I ponder on now is 'why' she became so? What exactly was the reason? Not to say that I dont want her back. I want her back more than anything else in this world. And I dont want her back as a lover or girlfriend, I want the friend back whom I lost, I want our friendship of 13 years back. There is no day, no time when I don't wish that if only I could go back and keep the friendship alive. But after all I have tried, it really seems impossible in this lifetime. So all I realistically want to know is the reason why she became so cold blooded towards me, why she stopped caring.
But still, there is in some corner of mind, a voice that keeps telling me that my friendship was not so week, and it can overcome any hurdle. I don't know what the future holds, but one thing which has become clear in past 3 years, that I will never be able to forget her, the friendship which illuminated my life for a long long time and the care she did for me.

Review- Bioshock

If someone asks me the pinnacle of quality of video games, my answer, without hesitation, is Half life 2. It was a game playing which was experience of a lifetime, something that should be treasured.
After watching many promos, after reading many previews and finally after reading those pre release reviews, I was very much hoping the same kind of experience from Bioshock. So, did it deliver that kind of experience, is it all I was hoping for? We shall find out.




First of all, let this be clear that Bioshock is a great game. The only question is, how great it is?

It starts fantastically. Those people who played only demo initially and didnt have the whole game, would surely understand this. After plane crash, you find your way on strange light house in between the sea, Seeing no way out, you go inside and descend. And then Rapture, the under water city, is unveiled. This sequence is almost breathtaking. I call it 'almost' because of aliasing. This game dosent support aliasing, as most of the UE3 based games. You can force though, but that comes with a big performance drop.
After the great sequence, the game begins. You follow orders of a man named called Atlas. He is your guide who takes you into the depths of Rapture and shows you the path. I dont want to spoil any part of the story so play it yourself to know what happens.

First of all those things where Bioshock hits the chords perfectly. Foremost is Art direction. For those who thought it is impossible to combine art and game, this is the perfect example to prove what can be achieved. From 'My daddy is smarter than Einstein' girl to perfect differentiation between man and slave to grand theme of Rapture, there is art. If you get immersed, you will do nothing but marvel on how much attention was given to the setting and environment.

The second is sound. Every sound in the game is perfect. From the grunts of Big daddy to 'angel' of little sister to 'daemon' of splicers, there is no flaw to be found. Music adds another aspect in the whole setting. Many times you will listen 60s songs playing on tape recorders as you enter a new room. The perfect example of this is the room where you encounter your first Big daddy. Even vending machines are perfectly voiced (yes they have their own dialogues).




For me, perfection ends here.
As far as gameplay is concerned, it is just a bit different than Doom3. Yes, many of you wont agree. You will say Doom3 was a game where you couldnt get lost, even after trying, and Bioshock is not like that. But to be honest, I never got lost. I found everything linear, where there was nothing to do other than killing splicers most of the time. Almost all of the levels were like where some voice was asking you to do this, to do that. While comparing, in Half life 2, everything was much more intuitive and verbals orders were far (anyone remember reaching Black Mesa east?). Still, there are differences which Bioshock contains in terms of gameplay. The weapon system is unique and gives you at a load of different weapons than the traditional ones. The concept of plasmids is innovative.
The whole 'big daddy-little sister' thing adds some twists. As most of you would know, after killing big daddy, you must make choice of either harvesting the little sister (which she wont survive) and you will get adam, or to rescue her and you will get less adam. As for me, I harvested only once and still never had dearth of adam throughout the game.
No enemy in the whole game is much challenging, even the bosses and big daddies. And no, you can't kill little sisters.

When it comes to graphics, Bioshock, although not a letdown, isn't that great either. Water effects are good and lightning is nice, but thats about it. My biggest concern, as I already said, was the aliasing. No support of anti aliasing sucks. Other than that, I didnt like the blood.



I mean the color is fine, but how is it like a mesh?
Other than that, there was over use of particle effects. Rapture, despite being underwater, is shown so dusty that half of the time you would sneeze only. So much dust was distraction, not to mention it gave performance hits too.
On the brighter side, game is optimized very well. It is probably the smoothest Unreal Engine 3.0 experience.

Controls are fine. You cant complain about not finding particular plasmid or weapon some times cause there are so many of them that it would be hard to have perfect controls for them.
A.I. is good enough. No enemy is hard to beat, but they are smart enough to spot you and follow you. Bots are specially troublesome.

All in all, Bioshock is good game. More evolutionary than revolutionary and finally, I got to say it how harsh it may sound, not worthy of reviews as good as Half life 2.

Summing up-

Presentation- 10/10
Graphics- 8/10
Sound- 10/10
Gameplay- 7.5/10
Controls/A.I. etc- 8/10

Overall- 8.7/10

Bought a PSP today, my first console this generation

It was as sudden as these kind of things happen. I thought of it two days ago, and bought it today.
About it? Well....its as cool as I thought, probably more. What I am impressed from currently are its multimedia capabilities. I never thought that being a gaming console, it will be real good at multimedia functions. But I must say, its darn good. Sound quality (you must have real good earphones though) is real good. It feels like a theater. The video quality is real good too at default options. But if you have gor firmware 3.3 or above (if you have a PSP slim, then you have), you can play videos in its full resolution (480*272). Its a long process but I will tell you. First you will have to format your Memory card (if you bought one) through PSP (remember, not through a computer). Then, when you will connect your PSP to a PC (by USB), you will notice that there is a new folder created named 'Video' in the PSP memory disk. Now, the thing to notice here is that if you search google about playing videos in PSP, you will find many sites saying that make a folder 'MP_ROOT' in the disk, then make a 'Video' folder in it. Then put your video inside it with right naming system (that the file must begin with M4V etc.). While this works if followed, but the new 'Video' folder which PSP created automatically when you formatted, is much better. In this folder, you can give any name to the file and PSP will recognize it, you can put a JPG with the same name as video in the folder and the PSP will show that as a screen on video file in PSP and the best thing is that you can play full resolution videos on PSP only in this folder.

Now, download Xvid4PSP. You can download it from here. You will need Microsoft dotnetfx3.0 too.

After installing Xvid4PSP, run it. Click on Open, select the file you want to encode. In format, choose MP4 PSP AVC. Leave all other options as they are. Now click on 'Encode'. It will encode it (might take long time depending upon the file). After its done, copy the video (and the JPG pic which it will create, if you want) to the 'VIDEO' folder PSP created when you formatted. And now, you are ready to play videos on highest possible resolution and quality on PSP. In my opinion, the quality is real good. I am really surprised that a handheld can output such good videos.

Again coming back on my thoughts on it. I didnt buy any game as of now. Only downloaded some demos. Out of them, I liked Syphon filter and Killzone most. Initially it was awkard as I am a PC gamer and so wasnt able to control properly. But after a while, I started liking it. Probably I will be good at playing in a few days.

Browsed the net too through Wi-Fi. Settings were not that hard, and especially considering that I am on Proxy server of our university and the access point was a PC! The browser is quite decent. Almost as good as it can be on a handheld. Picture quality was good and text was easily readable. Obviously one wont find entering the URLs so easy, but it cant be easier.

All in all, PSP is a real good multimedia device on a very reasonable price. I would say that if you are thinking of buying an 8 (or more) GB iPOD, then buy a PSP rather than that. Many of my friends have iPODs and now I see them saying that why they didn't buy a PSP rather than an iPOD.

Crysis demo impressions

After a long run of announcements and disappointments, finally Crysis demo was released today. As soon as I got the news, I started downloading, anticipating decent enough performance and some great visuals and gameplay.
And I must say, Crysis didn't disappoint.





The demo, comprising of whole first level, was huge when compared to some recently released demos (Jericho taking the crown of shortest demo ever).
It looks like Crytek has taken those complaints about Far Cry, of bad voice acting and second grade plot, seriously. Although the story isnt stellar, it has been told in believable manner. The voice acting is pretty good in Crysis. Gameplay is quite varying, but I am quite sure some users will find it a bit empty. Why? I dont know. It is just that I found so. But wait, play it a bit more, just like I did and you will start liking it. Yes I know all of you know about the Nano suit, about the modes and all. Dont worry, I am not going to rant about those. The AI is really something worth mentioning. They seem pretty alive. not like other dumb heads of other games. The best part in my opinion is that they try to bring you out. If you are hiding, they will throw grenades towards you. Since almost everything in Crysis is destructible, even if you are in a room, you will have to come out or the room will be shattered! They are pretty accurate and spot you from a distance. So I think going commando isnt very good option while playing Crysis. Use nano suit as much as you can and try to be as much stealthy as much you can.
And the famous soldier grabbing part. Yes its pretty funny to grab a soldier from neck and then throw him, but that actually can be done only when there are very few enemies around. If there are many, you wont get the chance to go near and grab one of them.



But the heart of Crysis are its graphics, no doubt. And thats where the performance phenomenon comes in. As far as my system was concerned, it ran pretty smooth with about 35FPS average and no slowdowns (8800GTS 640MB, C2D E6600, 2GB 667MHz) at 1280*1024. It looked great and played well. But I am seriously doubtful that users with med-high or medium range machines will be able to play it in its glory. It still looks good at medium settings too, as far as I can see in screenshots. To argue whether Crysis is optimized properly or not will be waste of time. There are so many things going on in this game, so many high end techniques used that it will really be job of a game programmer to tell how well its optimized. I am happy that it runs great on my system.
For users who cant play it on very high settings, I would say one thing. True that graphics are adding depth in this game, but after a while I wasnt looking at them. What I was doing was playing. The core gameplay is still there and Crysis is no slouch in that department. Try the demo and play it for a while. Its not just about the graphics, although it is about the graphics. The gameplay is good and worth giving a try.

Got Hellgate:London demo today. And its utter shit!

I agree that I am not big fan of RPGs. But its not that I hate them. The Elder scrolls IV: Oblivion stands as one of the best games I have ever played and has some of the best gaming moments of my life.
But to say that I was excited much about Flagship studios' long in making RPG Hellgate:London will be a lie. I wasn't must excited, but I was hoping that it was going to be good. So when I heard that a demo was coming out, I waited in anticipation. It didnt come till yesterday night so I woke up today and went to class after putting it on download. It was done when I came so I quickly installed it to see how it was.
And as soon as the character customization screen came, I knew it was going to suck. Why? Because it was all so cheap! I could choose from two classes, and could customize them. While they performed their monkey stunts on side screen.
I fired the game after a quick customization and graphics were...hmmm......utter crap! It felt like I was playing some 2003-04 game! The game is severely unoptimized. I was getting 60FPS in outdoors initially. Then when I went indoors I was getting 80FPS. Then when I came out again I started getting 25-30FPS!!!!! WTH?
And then there is AI which is utter fool. A man who, in a mission, had to follow me, was starting revolving around me whenever I stopped! Other NPCs, whatever the moment, always kept talking trash to me. They were talking something else, related to storyline and serious thing on text and at the same time, they were saying 'will you love me. please done leave me, oh lover!' It was so annoying! I choose my character a female and still the female NPCs in game were saying the same things!
This game has serious issues in every department. I am not sure what will happen to it when it gets launched. I hope that the final game is better and the story line is good to suck the player in. Otherwise, this game will go down shit which was over hyped.