The Zone

Hullo, missed me? :D I didn't update the blog last week since I was in Singapore (courtesy of Sendi Mutiara Multimedia) to check out the debut of Hellgate: London and Granado Espada at the IAH Game Conference.

I got to try out both games and they're sweet, especially Hellgate: London. It was really fun hacking and slashing hordes of demon, and the first-person view when using ranged weapons really felt like an FPS even though I was shooting all over the place.

Developers Bill Roper and Kim Hakkyu were like superstars at the event; dozens of people were asking them to autograph their Hellgate/Granado T-shirts and posters (I, too, also asked for their autographs). With so many game journalists circling them constantly, I was lucky enough to get one-on-one interviews with both Bill Roper and Kim Hakkyu, so look forward to their interviews in the upcoming GameAxis issues.

It wasn't all fun and games as upon returning home to Malaysia, a few sample products came in the mail for me to review. Here're a couple of stuff that you can look forward to next month's issue of HWM:

This punkish-looking card that's right now sitting on my desktop is the latest XFX GeForce 7950 GT, using a very nifty-looking radiator grill heat sink as its passive cooling solution. Considering the 7950 GT is the single GPU sibling of the 7950 GX2, I'm looking forward to running it through our benchmark tests tomorrow.

Sitting on my lap is the new Asus ultra portable W5F notebook. Despite its size, it's packed with 150 GB of HDD, 1.5 GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo processor. Yum. :9

I've more notebooks and graphic cards than you can shake a stick at, so look forward to their reviews in next month's issue of HWM!