Hung Truong: The Blog!

Wii Fit Anomalies! (Easter Eggs?)

So I’ve been playing Wii Fit for a while, and I’ve noticed some weird stuff happen. For example, some days I’ll just get the male trainer (I typically like the female trainer) and he’ll say something like “Hey there, I’ll be your trainer for today” but he goes away after one exercise. Also, my normal trainer will just say random stuff sometimes, like she’ll act sleepy and talk about how she didn’t get enough sleep last night. Hey trainer, let’s try to keep it professional, huh? I don’t want to know about your personal life.

Another random thing I noticed was that my playing time would just randomly reset sometimes. I finally figured out what was going on last night. It turns out that Wii Fit just counts the minutes you work out per day. So since I was playing late last night, the time reset. I think it would make more sense to count minutes on a per session basis, but whatever. The whole midnight cutoff thing works too, I guess.

Finally, I noticed that my trainer’s hairstyle changed! It’s in a short ponytail now:

Before it was sort of a short hairstyle. Don’t ask me why I noticed this. Let’s just say it was only about last week that I noticed she didn’t actually move her lips. I’m not usually staring at her lips… Previously I thought it would be cool if you could “dress up” your trainer. I guess that’s kind of a uniquely Japanese thing that culturally people might want to do. I guess it’s cool if the trainer just has a mind of their own as well. I think that the outfit for the female trainer might’ve gotten a bit more conservative. It looks like in the old Wii Fit commercials she’s wearing a shorter top (and showing more tummy) as seen here:

Anyway, I should probably be paying less attention to the actual trainer and more attention to working out. Which is working pretty well for me, actually.

(In)Famous Hung Truongs Who Aren’t Me

My friend Patrick sent me a link in an email about a news story. Sweet! I love seeing news about me! But this Hung Truong was definitely not me:

The suspect, Hung Truong, 24, appeared in court Monday morning on a manslaughter charge. His bond was set at $50,000. Investigators said that the charge could be upgraded to intoxication manslaughter depending on the outcome of toxicology tests. Officers at the accident scene Sunday said Truong was nonchalant and at times laughing as if he were impaired by drugs or alcohol, or had a severe mental deficiency.

C’mon, other Hung Truong! You’re giving Hung Truongs like me a bad name! Also, I happen to be 25 now, so there shouldn’t be any confusion as to which Hung Truong is the “bad” one!

Perusing Google News, I also dug up this recent story about a Canadian Hung Truong:

Hung Truong, 39, of Markham, faces charges of arson endangering life and production of a controlled substance.

Seriously now! Aren’t there any other good Hung Truongs (besides me, of course) around to spread the good name(s) of Hung Truong!? I got us that WSJ article, but how much more can one Hung Truong do!?

Also, this sorta reminds me of a time way back, when a Google search for Hung Truong brought up this news article:

Last week, women from 13 different rooms told police a stranger entered their rooms while they were asleep early Sunday morning. Six women said the man climbed on them, pulled off their clothes or fondled them.

Man, I’m glad I upped my Google PageRank!

Anyway, for anyone checking out my blog (like, for a job or something) and wondering, “is this the Hung Truong who was arrested for X?” No. I’m the good Hung Truong! Or perhaps I doth protest too much?

Bonus!: Hung Truong the Diver

The Land Before Time – It Goes To XIII!

So while I was checking out IMDB and getting lost in cross-references, I came across the Rob Paulsen guy’s filmography. Rob Paulsen is the guy who does Yakko from Animaniacs and is pretty much in anything that requires voice acting.

Anyway, I saw one of his recent jobs was on The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends. Read that again.

Yes. There are 13 fucking Land Before Time movies!

I think all of them besides the first one were direct to video affairs, but still. Gosh damn! 12 sequels! I guess they must still be profitable if they can still churn them out as much as they are.

Baldur’s Gate II: Like Crack, But A Computer Game Version

I reinstalled Baldur’s Gate II today. Bad idea. I’ve been sort of nostalgic for the past glory of the turn-based RPG and I finally just had to play it. But I pretty much didn’t get anything else done.

I don’t care what anyone says; old school 2D D&D games like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Torment rock. They’re just too damn fun to play. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s how your enemies explode into chunks if you hit them hard enough. Maybe it’s how Magic Missile grows more powerful as you gain levels. Maybe it’s the actual role-playing.

But once I start one of these old school adventures I can’t stop until hunger or weariness takes priority. Which is just about to happen. But I thought I’d blog about it first. (I guess Baldur’s Gate is then a sort of offline equivalent of World of Warcraft, which I never really got myself dependent on, thank god)

I tried playing Mass Effect kind of recently. It just doesn’t have the same fun factor. I mean, what kind of RPG expects me to actually aim a gun? The KOTOR games at least handled all the blaster shots and stuff. Why does everything have to degenerate into FPS? Oh well. I still never beat any of the Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale games (or Torment) so I guess if I ever run into a period where I have a lot of free time (probably will never happen) I’ll have plenty of things to do.

P.S. This time I rolled a Half-Elf Chaotic Good multi-classed Fighter/Cleric. Usually I go for the Ranger but I found they kind of suck. A vanilla Fighter would be too boring so I multiclassed! I’m a nerd!

Metal Gear Solid 4: Sorta Review

I pre-ordered MGS4 from Amazon.com and beat it over a weekend. While it was pretty cool and definitely displayed all the neat stuff you can do with the PS3, I felt like it was getting out of “MGS” territory.

Metal Gear is supposed to be sneaking around and grabbing people, snapping their necks and stealing stuff from them. It’s about shooting their heads with so many tranquilizer darts that they look like the dude from Hellraiser. Basically, I think the Metal Gear Solid franchise peaked at around the end of the boat part of Metal Gear Solid 2. Don’t get me wrong, Metal Gear Solid 3 was also good. But it just felt like the series has been losing its original focus and going after too much, especially with the whole behind the back camera thing.

Also, in terms of story continuity, the Metal Gear series has just gotten insane. I “sort of” understood what was going on after Metal Gear Solid 1. But after the insanity of #2 (with the entire game flipping out at the end when you find out you’re really just in a simulation or something) and the prequel hijinks of #3, it’s too much to handle and tie up in the final 4th iteration. There’s a downloadable encyclopedia that you can get on the PS3, but that thing would take forever to load!

I agree with the Beta-Waffle guy that the boss battles seemed a bit contrived. In all the other games, you’re taking down an elite force of bad guys and you know you’re gonna fight them at some point. Remember in MGS1 when you were wondering exactly where Decoy Octopus was? In MGS4, you just kind of know that you have to fight these B&B chicks. And they don’t really have a back story until you’ve finished fighting them. And their back stories are dumb anyway. The bosses just turned out to be really generic and more tedious than anything.

Finally, I just couldn’t get used to the controls. They’re so messed up! You have to press R1 to aim, and R2 to shoot, but you need to press triangle to get to first person mode. When you’re in first person mode, you have about 0 mobility. So if a guy finds you and you need to shoot him, you go through a crazy set of button presses that will probably end up failing because he’ll shoot you first and you’ll just fall down. The controls just don’t work for the kind of FPS fighting that’s expected in some points.

Having complained quite a bit, MGS4 still is a pretty neat achievement. The graphics are great. The story is epic (but makes no sense). There’s lots of inside jokes referring to previous MGSes. But just like in the game itself, it looks like Snake’s job here is done. It’s time for him to take a vacation. At least we’ll always have the continue screen yelling. “Snake, what’s wrong? Snake? Can you hear me? SNAAAAAKKKKEEEEEEE!”