KREO Transformers 02 - Leadership

If you were the generation who grew up with the 'Saturday morning cartoons', you will know who then was the baddest robot who ever graced the television -- Megatron. So just what was his secret of doing so all these years? We now take a look on at Megatron's modus operandi.

Enter the KREO Transformers

Few months ago I got a buzz from my editor telling me there is a new short term offer to feature KREO transformers instead of the  run-the-mill Brick Gamers. After a few back and forth about the pros and cons it was agreed I will do a few strips for them .... so enter the transformers!

Now a lot of you LEGO fans/users might be wondering how is KREO's bricks compared to our beloved LEGO's, well I have been building and shooting using KREO's bricks and I gotta tell they are on par in terms of feel, texture and quality.

Last but not least... both brands' bricks are compatible, meaning you can mix them up and build! KREO has some variety of their own unique bricks which opens up new building possibilities for you builders out there... if you are not a 'purist' so to speak.

Brickgamers66 Lessons Learned

Our long journey of telling the stories of video gamers with quality bricks has come to a possible conclusion with the strip above, all these years of playing and learning in a platform that has seen improvements over a thousand folds in terms of complexity, visual presentations and story plots.

In this new dawn even term "video game" itself is slowly losing its identity as the ability to play on a screen has jumped from the static TV and computer screens to the mobile laptop, hand held devises and then to the modern smart phones; but we are confident for no matter whatever new form it will take on, playing video game will remain as the favourite pass time for millions of us for a long time to come.

Brickgamers65 Video gamers myths debunked

As playing video game has since become the primary past time for millions around the world, the old stigma and stereo typing of a video gamer changed dramatically over the years. So much so these days you can actually find a lot studies showing positive benefit of playing video games while the old myths surrounding video gamers slowly fades into oblivion.

Brickgamers64 Second Hand Gaming

What do old / retired gamers do in their spare time? Well, personally I have a few friends who kinda reach that stage and instead of playing, they watch online play through videos of their beloved video game franchises latest titles.

While this might sound strange to gamers who are still in their "prime" (i.e those who still can afford the time and resources to sit down and play a modern game), one can hazard a guess this kinda phenomenon could actually be more wide spread then we believed.

Brickgamers63 Great Gaming Experience

This strip was made at the time Batman: Arkham City was released, sequel to the 2009 award winning video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, the game continues to do the miracle no other game does: making you feel like you are Batman while playing it.

Brickgamers62 Reasons To Play Video Games

People used to play video games for the pure reason of to have fun. As gaming went on from fringe hobby to become main stream, things got a bit complicated...

Brickgamers61 Free To Play

The recent economy hardship experienced in the "developed" world can be felt even in the gaming world. Countless middle classes who are the back bone of gaming industry fell into demise and the number of video game players some how become stagnant while the number of game titles continued to roll out ... how is a game going to attract more players in such harsh condition? Well, going "free" is the big way now, "free" but with some price to pay...

This strip concludes the catch up of missed monthly updates until recently, we will revert back to 4 panels from now on.

Brickgamers60 Gaming Influence to Life

In less than half a century after video game was invented, it has slowly but surely showing signs of its influence in our daily life. From introducing catch phrase, showing up in main stream media, inciting political issues, making people meet one another to naming children after video game characters... we have since been there, done that.

Brickgamers59 13 Years of Waiting

In honor of the longest game in development of all time.

Brickgamers58 Facebook Empires

The frenzy of social media connected Empire games, one of my friends was very into this lately, the stories he told about their war council when they were having meetings is simply... fascinating.

Brickgamers57 Closer to Homefront

A few months back ago there was a downer period with not much significant game titles released but this game Homefront caught my attention for two reasons: 1. It has an interesting background story with a kick ass opening video to boot. 2. Malaysia was mentioned in the game with an interesting and LOL twist. The game itself however unfortunately falls a little short of the hype.

I understand the joke might be harder for a none Malaysian to grasp and apologies beforehand.

Brickgamers56 Crysis Crisis

Crysis 2, one of the biggest video game this year was leaked before it was released. On one of my tea session with my friends someone joked all that nano suit technology is no match for the determination of cyber pirates. The image of someone wearing the nano suit and got overpowered by a mere old-fashioned pirated stuck in my head ever since.

Brickgamers55 Gaming Etiquette

The "Hi, Hello, Please, Thank you... " of the online gaming world. Some do it, some don't.

Brickgamers54 Multiple Platform hazard

The blast from the past continues.
The thing about corporation is that in order to maintain maximum profit or simply when venturing into something with elements they cant handle outsourcing is the natural outcome.

Things gets more complicated when a game is done by a company, relies on another company for game hosting AND yet another company for digital distribution.

The above strip is based on real life experience.

Brick Gamers 53 - Modern Gaming Field

The update monkey for the monthly comic died at the start of this year for some weird reason and I was in real life hot water then resulting in none of the monthly comic being posted thus far. Well time for some catching up to do.

Yes, any proper hard core gamer would have gone through a period of time when the individual played so much video games the subject's parents would taunt ceaselessly about why not the individual get a job that pays for playing video games.

Now that the modern video game industry is a juggernaut rivaling the movie industry itself such statement would have become an encouragement instead, how time has changed.

Brick Gamers 52 - Credits Owns All

For the last BrickGamers of the year, we wanted to touch on a topic that we believe is quite close to gamers' hearts which is a far cry (pun not intended) from the glory golden good old days of gaming before Wall Street came and bastardised the holy sanctuary that was the domain of gamers everywhere. Yes, we're talking about the ever-pressing need for money in modern games to get by anywhere - just as how it works in the real world, which was what gaming was originally NOT about - a fictional world where you can escape it all...

Well, asides for the last game, StarCraft 2, which depends on your strategic skills to mine enough minerals to build Supply Depots, many games today depend on expansion packs and the purchase of special items to get you ahead in the game - as merely purchasing the game alone is not enough anymore. Granted, free-to-play MMORPG games may use this business model to earn money, but when you already pay for World of WarCraft, and if you're rich you can buy a fancy horse to upgrade your character in the game, then gaming doesn't really serve it's purpose anymore as it once did. Perhaps one day in the near future gaming will return to its awesome days again - or when gamers are rich enough that they can have disposable incomes to play!

Brick Gamers 51 - Game Expo

You're a gamer right? Why else are you reading BrickGamers if you're not? Oh, right - you're a LEGO fan! Well if you're also a gamer, chances are you've been to a Gaming Expo or Show to catch the latest showcase of upcoming games, make it an outing for fellow gamers to catchup on good times, and in today's Japan-crazy Anime / Manga world, catch some good CosPlay (Costume Dressing) people too! Plus there's chance to get great bargains on games or even gaming hardware to upgrade your game experience! However, the highlight would probably be girls...since most gamers are guys...and we don't mean girl gamers as our previous post...

Urm, no, we're not giving out passes to any gaming shows anytime soon - anyone wishes to sponsor them? :)

Brick Gamers 50 - Girl Gamers

Wow, it's been 50 BrickGamers comics since we started in GameAxis, the South-East Asia regional print gaming magazine. Hard to imagine we've come so far so we've still a far way more to go! Well done Jack! 

For the 50th issue, we decided to do something we're seeing a trend in the gaming scene - female gamers! 

That's right, girls are beginning to enter the scene while it has mainly been a boy's game all these while. Thanks to games like Sims, and Web-based Flash games like FarmVille and other Facebook social games, more girls are beginning to game and some are beginning to take up professional games like First Person Shooters (FPS), and of course, many girls are known to play Computer Role Playing Games (CRPG) like Baldur's Gate - not so much of Fallout, since it's more of a guy's game. It remains to be seen if girls enter the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) arena though - have you seen StarCraft 2 girl gamers? We've seen WarHammer 40,000 table-top girl gamers, so you never know! What about other gaming genres? Have you seen any girls?

Erm, sorry, no contest for this topic - what, you think we're giving out a date with a gaming model? Right...

Brick Gamers 49 - StarCraft 2 Campaign

Hell, It's about Time! Famous words by the Terran Marine which StarCraft 2 fans will recognise and in the case of BrickGamers, it's about time for our flagship comic which we somehow forgot over the past month! 

Whoops! Our bad! Must be all the SC2 gaming sessions! Speaking of which, we did a take on the SC2 Campaigns to showcase the different types of SC2 gamers out there - do you see any of yourself in this comic? Feel free to share your comments so we can know if there are other types in the SC2 universe or what's the most types out there! We got a pop quiz for you - what type do you think Jack is? Any guesses? :)

Best entry wins a copy of SC2. Now how did that get in there? Let's see if we can do it - first, start guessing!