Android Character Creation, Fourth Edition Shadowrun Posted 8/24/2008 8:20:15 PM http://h1.ripway.com/Rift/articles/androidcc4e.html I got ahold of the latest Shadowrun sourcebook, and after about a month of overhauling my android system to be compatible with Unwired's new outlook on AIs I've finally got the revised version up. I'm still not entirely satisfied, I want to add more qualities for example, but because I have (as far as I know) all of the related sourcebooks I feel it's good enough to bump up to a 0.9 version. I'm a little upset about how complicated it is now, since my ACC was so quick and easy when I first converted it to 4E. But complications happen the more rulebooks you add, and now my rules are fairly effing convoluted. Everything from android grades, to AI types, to revised mental attributes... Makes me a little nostalgic. But that's why I say nostalgia lies to people; I've got my original version back here, I prefer the new version. But I still think I need to refine it a bit... Again, I'd appreciate any input anyone's willing to give. (2) Comments

Rants: Writer, not a Rift. Posted 8/10/2008 7:52:31 PM Re-reading my work, I began to wonder why I've never finished any of my stories. Why, after 250kb of AdFAQs: Running the Shadows, I can't write the ending. Why A Dark Rift is missing massive sections in the middle. And then I realized what separates a writer like myself, from an author like Tolkien; filler material. I get so bored writing my own filler material, that I lose interest in my own stories. Looking back, I think the biggest reason that I got so far in my AdFAQs screenplay is the simple fact that I didn't know the ending. I didn't have a story, I just wrote one scene at a time with no regard to causality. But as soon as I realized where I was going, I couldn't keep writing the stuff leading up to the finale! When I write, I have a compulsive tendency to connect everything. There is nothing that I write that is not brought back into the story for some reason. It might be something as simple as a character knocking a rock off a cliff in a scuffle, but it will inevitably result in a Deus Ex Machina scenario. Filler is pointless material put in to comprise the bulk of the story, what separates one event from another. I just can't write stuff that doesn't matter! I keep trying but that only makes my story so complicated I have difficulty following it. And then there's the worry that I'll forget something, that I'll write in an event that will cause something down the line; and I might forget about it! So I have to write the event that it effects, so now there's this massive gap in the story that I have to fill. And then I'll add something that changes something, then I have to go back and change the future event because he lost his dang skull ornament or some dang thing that changed the entire flow of the battle! My stories are intricate webs of cause and effect, chance and the inevitable result of prior events. I consider myself a good writer, I cannot claim to be an author because I've never finished anything. This of course leads to why I've been having so much trouble finishing videogames as of the past couple years; I get bored of the filler. I've already figured out the ending by the half-way mark, so now I have to wade through all of this irrelevant crap to get to it. Which is probably why I liked Boogiepop Phantom so much. It was everything I love in an order that was in no way chronological, but still sensical. (2) Comments

Rants: Neo-Ana By Trade Posted 7/17/2008 9:13:08 PM I am a libertarian, mostly because I believe in their goals, but partly because I hate both the big parties. Democrats oppose every effort Republicans have made to secure and want the country open for anyone to walk right over our unprotected borders carrying whatever drugs and weapons they want, and then whine about not being secure. Pure idiocy. Meanwhile, Republicans are so busy trying to make themselves feel secure that they do completely useless gestures like patting down old ladies in airports for concealed weapons. On the other hand, they still haven't secured the fragging border. I'm also tired of anti-war people claiming to support the military, or "the troops." Well no drek, you support them when you pay your taxes. On the other hand, voting against sending them body-armor and then screaming about how we should pull out of a war we've already won because our troops don't have adequate body-armor, is definitely not supporting "the troops." Next up we have the Republicans spending social money out the "Democratic-party-symbol", yeah that's a great job you're doing being fiscally conservative you lying pricks. And then, these unabashedly liberal "Republicans" get yelled at for being "Neo-Cons" when they happen to be doing literally everything the Democrats want outside of mass-murdering children... Oh wait, they are mass-murdering children, they just talk about supporting pro-life movements so that they can get re-elected. Because unlike what either party is doing, that's what the public actually wants. On the other hand, my party is full of idiots as well. Well, it's not so much filled with libertarians so much as it's filled with drug-addicts who don't want to worry about the legal consequences of their pathetic addictions. It's hard to be taken seriously as a political party when the idiot you have in charge is wearing a bright green cannabis-leaf t-shirt on national television. Most of my party doesn't even know what the actual libertarian effort is. Which is why I don't vote for my own party, I instead stick to the lesser of the two incompetents that actually has a chance of winning. (0) Comments

Rants: Gaming News Posted 7/17/2008 9:08:57 PM It's the parent's fault. Everyone knows it, and I'm tired of hearing about it. Some kid goes off and murders a classmate after playing GTA and the news starts screaming "game at fault" and the gamers start screaming "parents at fault" and I sit here wishing that everyone would just shut the hell up. News: Games don't kill people. Gamers: Are you going to be any better when you're parents? No. The fact is it's the parents fault and the parents will never improve, when you grow up you won't be any better than your parents either, and once every month some video-game obsessed little brat is going to kill someone and it's going to be all over the news. I am sick of you idiots playing the blame game and I want it to stop. That's why I agree entirely with Nintendo's approach to online gaming, no it's not convenient and it does kill some of the fun of online deathmatches when you can't yell out an annonymous racist remark every time you die or kill someone. Because unlike the rest of you lame-duck whining little bastards, Nintendo is actually doing something to make their stuff more kid-friendly. They deserve respect for it, and you need to shut your pie-hole. Nothing you say has ever helped, and you will never get off your high-horse long enough to actually do anything about what you hate. This is the difference between proclaiming support and supporting; one is a mind-numbing idiotic gesture that is possibly counter-productive. (0) Comments

Rants: Life is also irony. Posted 7/17/2008 9:07:49 PM Ever since I've arrived at my military-designated tech school, I've been considering the irony of it all. My Dad was convinced that the military would give me more direction in life, I'm fairly certain this is not the direction I'm going to stay headed in. My job is, first, I am a wingman. They pay me to consider the needs of the people around me, so I'm forced to choose between my hatred of those around me, and my love of being paid (I choose the pay). Secondly, I am a medic... I would much rather be guiding bombs to within three meters, or outright shooting people. But I do so enjoy being paid, and the pay is good. Thirdly, I am a Bioenvironmental Engineer. I'm not quite sure what that is, but they tell me it has a lot to do with "Operational Risk Management," which is a fancy way of saying "safety." I don't much care for my safety, nor the safety of those around me. It's not that I'm suicidal, it's that I'm an arrogant young punk who thinks he's invincible. Which is why I drink a can of Mountain Dew before Physical Training every day... Also, even my mints are caffeinated. Not to mention the six scoops of sugar in my coffee before class today. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to have a heart-attack at twenty-five; the good news is, I'll still be in the military and so the healthcare is free. I can see how my job--preventing health issues--maintains my own free healthcare, so at very least I have selfish motivation to un-justify my working for the common-good. Well, there's that and the pay. I can always fall back on good old greed when doing something that otherwise feels charitable. As another irony, I'm applying for a White Rope, or "Chapel Rope." Essentially, I'll be helping other people with religious problems and offering kindly advice and all that. Why? Lots of reasons, for one I already give advice. I'll just have to say it more politely with the rope on. Secondly, I really do enjoy the study and discussion of my religion. I know I'm a hypocrite, but I can be a bad guy at heart and still do good things for people on the surface. I'm very good at appearances! Thirdly, points towards the Phase-system and honor-graduate. And the donuts and hot-cocoa machine at the church. (0) Comments

Rants: I hate everyone, but not in an emo way. Posted 7/17/2008 9:06:24 PM I hate everyone. Not just people as a whole, I mean I hate every single person individually. Partly because I see in them my own flaws, but mostly because of their flaws. Now that I'm a military man, I've spent an uncomfortable amount of time within disturbingly close proximity to an incredibly large group of very hate-able people; I've been counting things that I hate about each and every one of them. A common flaw is their inability to shut the hell up. They have this belief that they need to be heard, so no matter what the consequences for everyone around them, they open their yaps anyway. Is that just selfishness? Because I sure got sick of being punished for everyone else's mistakes. I made a few myself, I admit, but over something that stupid? And don't think I'm not talking about you, dear reader. They were normal, average people just like you. I am incredibly selfish, and in my selfishness I understood that I would have a much easier time if my entire flight passed the dorm inspection, so I stayed up until 0300 rolling socks for all fifty people in the dorm. Meanwhile, nobody even offered to help me with any of my stuff, and they all went to sleep on time that night. And I can't understand if I was just that much more selfish, or that much less? Either way, I feel that I have the right to hate every single person who refused to help; individually. Although to be honest I didn't bother to learn all of their names in six and a half weeks... Some of them have the right to hate me for that. Another problem is that every single one of them are sex-obsessed monkeys, even the ones who have never gotten laid. Why the hell are they thinking about their girlfriend when they're being yelled at by a big, bald man with clackers on his boots? What is the correlation between that? Is that really all there is in your life? Back to my last rant; you're a worthless fragging accessory, desperate for someone else to tell you what you're worth. You're in the military now, stand tall on your own! It's for that reason that I couldn't be a student leader, while I possess leadership qualities I do not want to be responsible for all of those monkeys. (0) Comments

Rants: Your Relationship Will Die Posted 7/13/2008 5:15:40 PM Anyone who knows me knows that I have a rather negative opinion about significant relationships. In fact, I've shot down everyone who has ever been interested in me. Why? Lots of reasons, first is that I hate people. Not just people as a whole, I hate every individual personally. Some chick I've never met before and know absolutely nothing about? Hate you too. On rare occasions, when I get to know someone I can overlook my seething hatred for them and their countless, blaring flaws long enough to form a distanced friendship between insults. This is where the "no man is an island" thing comes into play for me; I have friends. I don't need a significant relationship, the twenty-some people behind me are my friends. Loneliness is for idiots who don't appreciate their friends, it's disgusting watching people with dozens of friends be so lost and pathetic without a significant relationship. These people are little more than air-headed accessories, desperate for someone else to tell them what they're worth. Another reason I hate significant relationships is because I've seen too many significant relationships, this goes back to my "common misconceptions about guys" rant. People are kinda like a twisted zodiac, there are only twelve personalities and ironically none of them are compatible with their own sign or any other. Looking at the people around me sometimes I think it's a miracle that humanity's history is filled with so few wars... Of course, while I'm better than everyone else overall, I'm no better when it comes to relationships. My biggest flaw is definitely that I'm selfish. The reward I give is not worth anywhere near the amount of effort it would take to get it. The truth is, if I were to meet the perfect girl for me, I would wish her a gentler life and send her on her merry way. The perfect girl does not deserve to be tied to an arrogant, demeaning asshole like me. (0) Comments

The only Rift to be made since 1987! Posted 7/13/2008 5:02:52 PM With the announcement of Etrian Odyssey 2, I suddenly remembered number forty-two in my list of half-finished games, and remembered that I had foreshadowed that I would state my opinion on it. So here it is. When it was first announced, I was genuinely intrigued by it's retro attack on the genre. Having grown up on Might & Magic 2 (not Heroes of, or Legends of; the fragging original) I couldn't pass up a chance to relive my childhood. This is why I tell people that their nostalgia lies to them. First of all, the story is "you are person number eleventy billion to come to this city for the sole purpose of dying in these woods in search of treasure. Have fun." That's it. This was probably the best thing that I'd heard in a long time, and I was happy to be rid of the baggage of emo Cloud-wannabes and that ridiculous "friendship" drek the Japanese keep trying to shove down my narcissistic throat. And then the gameplay was brutally oldschool, ripped straight from M&M2, you would create a female knight, a female cleric, a female archer and a female wizard, then drop the hapless level 1 schoolgirls into the middle of an unmapped maze to fight their way through hordes of hideous monsters hoping to find a giant squid for reasons entirely unrelated to what I'm implying. Unfortunately they were greeted by squirrels and butterflies. To the game's credit, the squirrels and butterflies were surprisingly hardy, and after only two battles I had to retreat to the overworld to heal my Brownies. When my estrogen-packed party was abruptly slaughtered by the first mini-boss I met, I was actually elated. Finally, a challenge! I then spent about an hour killing crabs so that I could fight the big bad monster. Then I attacked it again and dispatched it easily. This process was repeated on the next floor, and then the next. I was really getting into it, after several hours I started unlocking a few new character types, and my girl-scout troup grew a bit. Although I had to train the gimps up from level 1. And then around floor twelve I had a startling realization: I was bored out of my fragging mind. I had spent several days killing squirrels and butterflies. And there was absolutely no reason for me to be doing so; no character backstories to unravel. No plot twists or new personalities to discover... Just more grinding. While that sounds entertaining in the context I'm painting, it's actually not that great in this kind of videogame... I don't know, maybe I need an angsty (it's a word) idiot to guide around in order to feel special. But then, I don't seem to be finishing any of those games either. Ironically despite my aversion to the first Etrian Odyssey, I still find myself interested in purchasing EO2. I assume that's a problem? I mean, it's not like I can't find other ways to amuse myself... Luckily I have a delegated budget for my amusement, and this month it has been spent entirely on anime. Mmm, that's some good Lain. Also, Tatiana. She's hot, I'll admit it. ~Rift (0) Comments

Rants: Pity Parties Suck Posted 5/6/2008 8:04:31 PM I have a t-shirt that I feel is especially accurate about me. It says "all that you will receive from me is mockery, scorn and contempt." So why people come to me expecting pity week after week is just baffling. What part of "I am a heartless prick" do people not understand? Especially when I warned them before hand. I don't give pity, I don't think that I have ever given pity. And yet here you are again, crying a river over the stupid mistakes you made... What's that? It's not about your mistakes, it's about how much of a jerk the guy you're dating is? Dating him was a mistake. I told you that shortly after you introduced us. I hate you so much. Furthermore, you're rich and I'm poor, to say I don't understand your pain is like telling a paraplegic how hard shoe-shopping is. He really can't understand your pain, but for entirely different reasons than you're thinking... Are you even thinking? That's probably what I hate most about emo people; I can't afford those clothes, let alone the makeup, and they're crying about how hard their life is. What's so hard about it? Your girlfriend dump you? I have literally foraged for food. Did you know that--if cooked correctly--milkweed stops being poisonous? Now doesn't that put the mascara in perspective? You shouldn't be whining at all, let alone whining to me. I have better things to do than insult your intelligence every time you screw up some asinine detail in the glorious, gold-lined tapestry you call "life." You'd think that coming to me for pity is one of the things that might actually warrant it from someone else. The advice I have for your pity-party is to only throw them on occasions when you deserve it. Crying about every stupid thing in life only makes people callous, so when you actually have a problem, nobody cares. This is the same moral as the story of the boy who cried wolf. Of course, even when you deserve it, don't expect it from me. (0) Comments

Rants: Life is Regret Posted 4/29/2008 5:20:32 PM People who say they want to live without regrets? They're morons. It's a stupid philosophy. If you don't have regrets about life, then you obviously haven't been living it. They honestly believe that "living without regret" is doing every stupid thing that comes to mind. That's not living without regret, that's doing every stupid thing that comes to mind! I regret doing stupid things, usually immediately after I do them. In fact, I'm fairly certain that pain is a physical representation of regret. That's why I've become so arrogant that I believe I'm above doing stupid things, no matter how often they come to mind. My friends went skinny-dipping in a lake; I sat on the peer and laughed at them. And then I laughed at them the rest of the week as they all got over their colds and firework-burns... Some roman candles were involved in that stupidity. I missed out on all the fun of getting naked and diving into a freezing lake, do I regret it? It's possible, after all I still remember it and decided to bring it up here. Did they regret doing it? Yes. Yes they did, they regretted their stupidity for a whole week. That's what that philosophy is: stupidity. Life is regret, and no amount of impulsive behavior is going to change that. Those of you who "live without regret"? You'll probably get AIDs. I'm not joking, I'm not saying that to be funny: Impulsive decisions are stupid ones. You will regret the stupid decisions you make in life. Maybe not immediately after you make those decisions, but I've heard too many people lying on their death beds say "I'm sorry" to believe for one second that they don't regret their mistakes in life. So please, don't live by that philosophy! Don't waste your life making poor decisions, because you will regret it anyway. Think about your future, and for the love of yourself, THINK OF THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU! I don't date because I know that anyone who dates me will regret it. I don't see why I should encourage others around me to make poor decisions. Part of that is because I don't want to listen to them whine about their stupid decisions, and I may be a prick but that doesn't mean I go out of my way to make enemies. In fact, I'm an inexplicably popular guy. (0) Comments

Rants: Common Misconceptions About Guys Posted 4/22/2008 6:33:17 PM Common misconceptions about guys: We don't change. At least, not for the better. Or, at very least, not for the better when a girl is involved. Honestly, why should we change? You started dating/married us when we were jerks, why should we work to improve when we've already got what we wanted out of the relationship? This works especially in our favor if the girl puts out before marriage. We're practically animals, why do you think we're going to do the trick when you're giving us the treats before the orders? Girls think they understand guys, they might have... Back before the whole equal rights thing. Now we see more girls being used and abused by losers than we care to count. We remember in sitcoms and movies when the girl was always right and the guy usually admits it. Pfft. Not this generation, gals. I remember reading a webcomic, years ago, about high-schoolers. In this webcomic, the main character was a nice guy (but an unpopular one) and at one point he took dating advice from a popular kid. The popular kid's advice was that the more of an arrogant, aloof, insulting, demeaning jerkoff you are, the more girls want you. When I read it, I thought it was a pile of drek. But as life went on, I found out it's actually right on the money. The dick gets the chick. And it all goes back to the misconception about guys changing. Girls love to feel special, and when you convince them that you have to strain to show concern or whatever, they feel they must really be special in order to have warranted the attention. Even better, is when they think they can change the guy--they can fix him. Then they'd be really special, so they keep crawling back to him. What they don't realize, is that guys don't change. We're just evil to the core and we'll milk your pitiful attempts to improve us for all the sex we can. And you're putting out on the first date now, so it doesn't even take the effort that it used to. The guys of today are manipulating the girls, because the girls don't want a "knight in shining armor" anymore. Most often, the actual good guy gets tossed out like trash. At that point, the girl deserves the jerkoff she ends up with. I, am an evil prick. I'm a narcissistic perfectionist, to be exact. Dating me? Bad idea. Mostly, because I will never change--I like who I am too much to change for some girl. But unlike the popular kid in that webcomic, I'm not going to use you. I don't think you're good enough for me to use. It's that simple, really. Even if you actually were better than me at everything, I'd just grow to resent you. So, you're better off just ignoring me. Find a nice guy, and remember that if you take advantage of him, you'll deserve the prick you end up with. Because I told you how this works, you don't have an excuse anymore. Don't ask for pity either. (0) Comments

You might be as crazy as Rift if you've counted the scientific impossibilities of Zinv Posted 10/1/2007 1:30:47 AM Hey, long time no update. We decided to take our birthday's month off, so we left you losers without your unnecessary dose of Rift for a little bit longer than you may have been used to. We'd appologize, but we don't really care about the slaves. *Whips* The PSP seems to have been given a booster-shot with the release of Crisis Core: FFVII on the Japanese market, which means nothing to us. But of course, the new FFVII spin-off can be bought in a collector-version package of the new PSP model! The new model, you ask? Yes, Sony finally revamped the PSP so that it's profit-margin is slightly higher--also, it comes with new hardware that allows it to become a portable television if you're willing to pay fifty bucks for an adapter. Network television, no less. We don't live in Japan, so we honestly couldn't tell you if a six-inch TV was worth that price. Even if it can play terrible PS2 ports without a second analog stick. They're going to send the new version over to America, without that little piece of hardware that allows it to become a TV, but they're still going to charge the same price even though we don't get everything the Japanese consumers get. But we're getting off-topic. Crisis Core; we'd actually buy the collectors edition if it came to America, we mean, a PSP with a promising game for less than the average price of a PSP with a game off the shelf? We'd hit that like a level 36 Ancient. There's also an online Final Fantasy Tactics hitting the PSP soon, which, combined with the twenty good titles that have been released during the entirety of the PSP's lifetime, would make the PSP worth owning. Meanwhile, we've been sitting exactly one dungeon away from completing LoZ:TP. for the past month. We figured out why it's not the best LoZ ever, despite how amazing it is: The pacing is backwards. The game starts off like a beating from Zinv but it doesn't keep up the pace. We mean, after fighting the boss in the Sand Temple... how was the boss from the Sky Temple supposed to compete? It's just not fair to the designers to make them live up to what they did in the first half of the game. It would have been the best game--possibly ever--if they had been able to keep up with themselves, but alas they are only human. We're glad we don't have that problem... On another note, we've had Metroid Prime 3 sitting next to our Wii since the day it was released. We've decided that we will not play it until we finish LoZ... So we may not have an opinion on it 'til '08 or '09, depending on whether or not we can force ourselves to finish it before the next game comes out. Back to the topic of Final Fantasy sequels, prequels, spin-offs, spam, profits and obsessions; Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for the DS hits Japan on the 25th. America? No idea. Didn't look into it, too busy carefully weighing the pro's and con's of the PSP for this half-baked article. Dementium: The Ward for the DS looks to be fragging amazing. You all can go on about Mass Effect or whatever, we're going to sink into our giant end-couch (that was free, which makes it better) and obsess over half-finishing the next onslaught of awesome DS titles to flood the market. Like Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, Orcs & Elves, FFXII: Revenant Wings and LoZ: Phantom Hourglass! ...What? LoZ is out today? ...Huh, guess we'll pick it up on Friday or something... Well, guess Metroid Prime is going to sit on the shelf for a while longer... Crap, we need another job. Who would have though becoming a Tae Kwon Do instructor would be so expensive? We still haven't given up on the Air For--is this still on? ~Rift (0) Comments

Rift's DS hasn't exploded from overuse yet... Yet... Posted 8/1/2007 12:48:39 AM After a long week-and-a-half, our DS finally got shipped back to us from Nintendo. The problem? A worn-down main circuit board. How there weren't any other problems than just random shutdowns is a complete mystery. But now that we've finally reobtained our DS, we can finally go back to ignoring our half-finished games without an excuse! On that note, half-finished Children of Mana? forget that! Heroes of Mana is coming out for the DS! And it's a... real time strategy? Wait... uh... yeah. Holy crap, it is. The DS's unique hardware makes that sort of thing sound reasonable. The possibility of an RTS was one of the bullet-points we used to champion whilst the PSP was a threat, somehow, there was only one horrible RTS on the system, and the DS is still crushing the PSP. Who woulda thunk it? Strategy-wise, there's also the turn-based-strategy Panzer Tactics coming to the DS. It will supposedly be along the lines of Advance Wars DS, which is one of the few titles we've bothered to finish. That could be fun, but unfortunately--like Advance Wars--there's no download-play. Not that it matters, since we're down to only one friend with a DS and he's not exactly a strategic genius. Then there's Front Mission DS. It's a remake of the PS1 game, which was a remake of the SNES game. On the subject of cash cows, there are like... six Harvest Moon games in production right now. Six. We'd be worried about the Megaman/Sonic syndrome if three of those weren't being developed by totally different companies. Actually, we're still worried. Meanwhile, there's an unfortunate dirth of FPS titles for the Wii. Crash Bandicoot, one of the titles that launched the PS1 beyond the N64 is coming to the Wii. Is that good news, or does nobody care anymore? What's that, everyone who remembered enjoying that game isn't nine anymore? That's too bad. Maybe Need for Speed 32 will make up for it. Because there are no new FPS titles taking advantage of the unique controller. Unfortunately for the entire world, Nintendo doesn't seem to be reading our mind like the little pink dragon insists. So we're going to have to take drastic measures and demand on this blog here; Nintendo, you make approximately $45 on each Wii you sell, and you've sold many a million so far and this number is rapidly growing. You need to take all of those profits out of your pockets, and put them into an entire new building dedicated solely to the production of new games for the Wii. And you need to release a new game every other week with this building. The games don't need to be up to the Zelda franchise's standards, they just need to be out every other week. Make some new franchises, for the love of Mario, don't let what happened to the GameCube happen to the Wii. The Wii is perhaps the best thing to happen to the gaming world since the DS, don't waste it! Because the Wii really doesn't have the coming lineup that the 360 and PS3 have. Because no matter how generic Heavenly Sword looks, for some stupid reason it's getting a huge amount of hype. What does the Wii have, MySims? The Sims are soo 2005... ~Rift (0) Comments

Rift is reliving his youth. Posted 6/22/2007 1:31:27 AM We finally put down Pokemon Pearl. Naturally, long, long before we got all fifteen hundred Pokemon. With a long list of half-finished games to get through, we of course put a new game into our DS and left them all on the pile to wait endlessly. The game? Etrian Odyssey. It's a first-person dungeon-crawling RPG. That was bleeding edge awesome in nineteen eighty-eight. This is so old-school they make you draw your own map. Story? Screw story. The game is solid grind. And we are totally digging it. All we need now is a remake of D/Generation and Vikings: The Strategy of Ultimate Conquest. Then we can relive all of our childhood memories. It's probably hard for you to swallow that we once did not possess the body of a Greek god nor the magical ability to reference things we have neither seen nor experienced, but it is so. We could buy remakes of all of our favorite games from when we were seven. Or we can enjoy new games with a retro feel and not waste our money. Jeez, it would take a lot more than a graphical update to make us storm the eighty floors of Genoq again. A lot of those old games really did suck. Seriously, why the haell would anyone want to play these old games again? To realize how bad they were? YOUR NOSTALGIA LIES! There are of course the rare gems that survive the test of time, but they are a very rare breed of games. And believe us, the games you loved all suck now. And they hate you. Besides our revived obsession with FPDCRPGs (now that's an acronym that hasn't been used in over a decade), the Sci-Fi channel has a new anime lineup. That's great news, especially since it's not just flavor-of-the-month crap straight from Japan like Eureka 7. We mean, fragging Noein?! Tokko! Shows that don't suck! WE LOVE YOU SCI-FI! WE'LL NEVER RIP ON YOUR ORIGINAL MOVIES AGAIN! ...Well, as soon as you spit out Comic Party we'll get right back to the shunning. But we don't feel guilty for making empty promises. Maybe a little Black Cat can build up some karma for you? Eh? *prods* Anyway, among the sixty-two currently scheduled releases for the American DS-market, we're most enticed by Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth Remix. Never played the original, but heard very good things. We're sort of "meh"ing the latest Harvest Moon for the system. Our recent experiences with the franchise have been disappointing at best, and the RPG elements probably can't distract us from the inevitably lacking social structure of the title for long. And our least-anticipated title goes to the THREE SIMULTANEOUS MEGAMAN RELEASES on 09/04. As if you haven't flooded the market with enough cookie-cutter games, Capcom. We're actually more interested in Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol, to give a little perspective. Nintendo launching Pokemon Battle Revolution right now may be an accidental nail in the PS3's coffin. Unless you've covered your ears and have been yelling "LA LA LA" at the top of your lungs for the past three months, you know that the PS3's having a really rough time competing with the 360's headstart and position, and the Wii's runaway popularity despite being by far the weakest console. The Wii going online with PBR opens up other games... Actual games that don't rely on an electric rat, to go online as well. SSBB hasn't been given a date yet--how does "right before the PS3's hopeful killer-ap" sound? There are five Wiis for every PS3 right now... Wait, will Nintendo's combined servers be able to handle that? ...We hope some of the profits from the Wii's obscene sales are going into about a thousand extra servers. Otherwise Nintendo could have some problems with their online service when SSBB comes out. ~Rift (0) Comments

Harvesting Rift, it's the uncola thing to do. Posted 5/15/2007 10:30:11 PM Anyone who knows us, knows that we've been fans of the cult hit "Harvest Moon" for nearly a decade now, Harvest Moon 64 may be our favorite title of all time. We've sank more hours into HM64 than the Diablo, Command & Conquer and Final Fantasy series' combined. We've played it dozens of times, over and over and every time found something new. No game since has ever gripped us like HM64, but it wasn't because of the mechanics. Later Harvest Moon titles, such as Friends of Mineral Town (GBA), Magical Melody (GCN) and HM:DS (duh) lost our interest before we even finished them. These titles were much larger, containing hundreds more items and records to accomplish. Hidden houses for millions of G, legendary "kingfish" and over a hundred Harvest Sprites or notes. Meh. What drew us into Harvest Moon wasn't buying the greenhouse, it was the characters. These people were almost real, problems like alcoholism, peddlers, horrible accidents leaving them shallow husks of their former selves. Even when things went right, there were still problems; with marriages, with said alcoholism. It wasn't a magical world where the only problem was that you didn't have the 1,000,000 extra home by year 4. Harvest Moon 64 may have been repetitive and slow, but it had the deepest social aspect of any game to date. We enjoy the new Harvest Moons, for a while. But eventually the fact that every title plays exactly the same makes us yearn for a game like Halo. Where one lucky stray rocket can end our killing spree at any time. We could enjoy the mechanics of the new Harvest Moons, if there were the social aspect beside them to make them worthwhile. Who cares if you've got a cottage house if your wife and child will never even set foot inside it? No one in the game even notices. Why should you bother having a full barn of cows if the most you'll get out of a character you've befriended with milk is an uninspired and obvious current weather report? Yes, it's a clear spring day today. Boy do we miss the days when friendship level decided what you said instead of the weather. And boy do we miss the days when you had something interesting to talk about. And DANG, do we miss the days when ANYONE talked about ANYTHING but the stupid fragging weather! WE KNOW IT'S A NICE DAY TODAY, WE DON'T NEED EVERY CHARACTER IN THE GAME TO TELL US THAT! Scripted events taking place once every heart-color being the only time we get to read anything even remotely interesting; we lose interest quickly. How do they fix the problem? Unlike us, who fix a problem by just getting it done. They tack on more repetitive mechanics to slow the game down further! The mechanically-identical-to-the-cow goat was supposed to help? Or how about the ducks, which added absolutely nothing to AWL? Adding new animals doesn't add anything to the game, it merely gives an illusion of improvement. Improving the livestock so that they're more than Affection/Grade/Age would improve the game. Give them a range of personality types that affect behavior and how close they group together, how they react to other animals and changing how much affection they get from being brushed so that cows don't all go up to the next grade after exactly 90 brushings. Subtle changes that slightly impact gameplay, like character moods that are affected by events that change how much affection different gifts give. That would improve the game. Ostriches? We're more than happy with the same recycled chickens. The point is that we don't play harvest moon because we want to collect all 350 pokemon, we play Harvest Moon for the characters. We don't need a dozen useless animals, we just need a cow so we can give milk as gifts to whoever is the bakery or restaurant girl this time around. We don't give a trog's hoop about ostriches, alpaca, swans or Gomamons. The farming aspect left over from HM:DS is enough to keep us absorbing Iron Golem souls for the next nine years, if we wanted to spend hours grabbing letters to spell "Uncola", we'd pick up a copy of Banjo Kazooie. We just want our Harvest Moon back! (0) Comments

Tastes, bastard children, and out of context Rift nonsense. Posted 4/24/2007 8:57:31 PM So, Karas part 2 was released on April 4, and we still can't find a copy anywhere. Does this insanity mean that our tastes are more obscure than a reference to The Circle Trilogy by Ted Dekker? Or does this mean we're a part of a massive fanbase we were completely unaware of? Either is equally plausible. We don't exactly hang out with a bunch of baka gaijin otaku like ourselves. There might be a small army or so of them living around us, we wouldn't know; we hang out with "cool" people. Who suck so much they don't even own DSes. But that's probably for the best, if we hung out with otaku we'd probably lose interest in anime altogether. But enough about our life, interesting as it may be (ha ha!). Super Paper Mario: Not that great. Another in a long list of titles we probably won't finish, and this one is really because it's just not interesting. With a 2D side-scrolling Mario title, the action is fast-paced and skill-reliant. In the Paper Mario series, well; it's an RPG that distracts with timed button presses. This game is neither; it fails as a platformer because every fifteen seconds or so you have to "flip" into a 3D mode to get around a stupid obstacle or go down a hidden path that only serves to slow the game down and there is absolutely no skill involved. The game also fails as an RPG; there's no grind, no in-depth plot or character development. Skills and special moves are practically non-existent, as each character gets one. We don't care what the "purpose" of it may be, the game just isn't as fun as either a Super or a a Paper Mario title, and we think it's kind of sad that it's getting such rave reviews. The only part of this game that's interesting--at all--are the bigger boss battles, which are unfortunately very far between. You can play for seven hours and have only had fun twice. That's too bad, we really wanted to enjoy it. Speaking of interesting; we are practically frothing at Etrian Odyssey for the DS--as any RPG fan would. We never finished Lunar:DS, Mario & Luigi 2, Contact or FFIII--but we're still an RPG fan. And this game looks like the bastard child of Diablo and FFT; with an RPG outlook. Normally, we'd be suspicious; good things mashed together badly make very bad things (GBA + FFT = ...). But this is being made by someone who is well known for making quality mixtures: Kazuya Niinou. We expect--we demand after FASA Studios' debauchery--a good, Ansatsukin-style hybrid. On another note, we're back on Advance Wars: DS. Why are we going back to a game we've finished when we've got a pile of half-finished titles on our shelf? Multiplayer. Though only two of our friends own Nintendo's mutant handheld, they both also own copies of AW:DS and we are enjoying it, even if they're too pussy to take a beating from us personally; highly over-powered computer opponents fighting all of us has proven itself to be fun enough to drag the three of us away from the Xbox LAN for hours of turn-based brutality. Colin/Sasha with money/teamwork skills? Totally unfair. But we're finally getting all those ridiculous "build 50 aircraft carriers" medals. Who the haell builds aircraft carriers? Get hit by cannon fire medals?! Why would we want to get hit by cannon fire?! And then our friend tells us there are "C" ranks. How are we supposed to suck bad enough to get a single "C" rank, much less enough for the three fragging medals?! Delete half our units on the final turn? Keep a single infantry alive and surrounded by neotanks for a dozen turns? HOW?! This game sucks, we're going to go buy a new game... Like Tank Beat. Possibly. We'll have to read into it a bit more. When we first heard about it, we were thinking "is it... is it like Battle Tanx?", which was the only series that could go head to head with Rare's FPS titles in the multiplayer ring. And multiplayer was the most important thing for us... back when we had gamer friends. Turns out it's not much like it, it's like... It's a rail-shooter, only... you get to draw your rail? Yeah, yo no comprendo Espaņol. It's real-time tank-combat, but you don't get to drive. Only man the turret, which is realistic. Unfortunately realism means jack to us. We'll really have to wait and see, but keep your beady eyes trained on it; potential is there. Unlike in the three or so upcoming pinball titles for the DS. Critter Flippers? What's up with that? Sim City DS? Blowing out fires with the mic? That's gimmicky. ~Rift (1) Comments

Lost in Rift 2: The Unfinished Tale Posted 4/5/2007 11:23:41 PM Now that we're finally somewhat settled, we can return to the giant pile of half-finished games on our desk. Including, but not limited to, great titles like Legend of--fragging--Zelda: TP. How can we not have finished this game after having it for several months? It's not that we don't have the time, we're just compulsive quitters. We run out and buy new games, so that we can quit three quarters of the way through them. Yeah, it's stupid. But we do it anyway. We also just realized that Newblog is about four hundred pixels too thin for our resolution. Don't they know that in today's world widescreen is commonplace and that they should program to accomodate it?! Back to the subject of games worthy of beating: Our DS gets hours of playtime, at gamenights, at midnight (we also quit sleeping; compulsion, you know? We'll quit insomnia eventually), but do we ever beat the game we're playing? No. But, boy, do we get half-way through it! Just a few years ago, when a friend or us bought a title, we would play it exclusively until we had 100%. A friend would often call us in to beat a single seemingly impossible challenge, simply because he knew that once we started there was nothing that could deter us from that lofty 100% mark. We would achieve it, or our nickname wasn't "Mr. 100%". One of the reasons we played Harvest Moon 64 so much may have been because there was no possible way to achieve 100% on a single save-file and we were still obsessively trying... we loved HM64... We have lost our title of "Mr. 100%". We are now "Mr. 75%". What could have changed us so? Time? Or maybe it's because we're no longer playing with an ecstatic friend yelling over our shoulder. The gamer trio of Allen's Grove; Wisconsin now lives in Whitewater, Darien and Delavan. It's also diluted with the blood of infidels whose first consoles were PS2s and XBoxes. We grew up pummeling each other with pills in an old NES game. The retarded midget and albino giants are a distraction to the single-player obsession. That's our story and we're sticking to it. Meanwhile, we're playing through Lost in Blue 2, which seems to be getting left half-finished by a growing number of gamers. Which is odd, because we're enjoying everything the reviewers hate. The first few days of desperate starvation may have been the best hour of game time we've had since we put down our half-finished copy of LoZ:TP. Sure, it's a little frustrating not being able to run around like an idiot exploring every scale of the island, but it would be more so if we could and had nothing left to do after day 10. We doubt we'll finish it, but we might get one of the half-dozen or so endings before quitting. It's really not a bad game, it's just not the reaction-screamer that the Halo generation is used to. Kind of reminds us of some of our old DOS games... (0) Comments

Will someone please talk Rift out of it? Posted 3/26/2007 9:00:03 PM PSP. Yet another handheld in the long list of handhelds that have failed to knock Nintendo down a notch in the handheld market. Why? It has a shorter battery life, an oppressive pricetag that never seems to drop, and because of things like the D4 and Play-Yan it's multimedia capabilities can safely be ignored. As the GBA did that years ago. There are of course the few die-hard PSP fanboys out there still screaming about the superiority of their portable, but they are becoming fewer and further between as they realize that their system had no games. Well, except for badly made ports that desperately need a second analog stick. Sony's futile marketing machine making things worse as their memes are forgotten, their viral marketting campaigns are discovered and vaccinated before even a single purchase is made. Their sleek, wireless portable slowly filling up the GameStop "used" rack... Had. You probably missed that little word. We had mostly forgotten about the PSP, since there were so few people still championing it's graphical and multimedia prowess. One day we turned around and suddenly there were twenty exclusive good games available for Sony's misplaced effort! And not just ports of good games--actual, new and playable titles! And on the 'coming releases' list, what do we see? More games! Suddenly the pricetag on them PSPs doesn't seem so high! That's when we start thinking... 'Gee, we've always kinda wanted to play this game...' Oh drek. We want to buy a PSP. For the love of hatred, someone talk us out of it! We can't honestly be considering buying a PSP! Sure, it's a decent system; is it worth it? None of our friends have PSPs, none of them would buy the games to play multiplayer. Not with Download Play and cheaper titles for the DS. Sony's losing pretty bad on the handheld front, they can't possibly keep the third party support that's making these good titles. We have a gigantic (growing) pile of DS and Wii games that we haven't finished, why would we add another system--another expense--to that pile? We just finished Advance Wars DS two days ago! WE'VE HAD IT FOR LIKE, TWO YEARS! We're not the gamers we used to be, why on earth would we spend over three hundred dollars for a bunch of games we'll never finish? Or maybe we will finish them... When we're retired and cranking about the new games for the PS6 and XBot-Jr. But then, buying them now is just foolishness. ~Rift (0) Comments

All action-button and no diversity makes Rift a dull boy. Posted 3/26/2007 8:59:08 PM Halo 2, Gears of War, Resistance: Fall of Man, Red Steel. These are the recent and popular shooter titles, some of them considered by many to be "defining" or possibly even "groundbreaking". Despite offering nothing new, and in fact omitting dozens of features that were available in many previous shooters. They all have the same shortcomings and fallouts. "But Rift," you say, "[previously mentioned title] is the greatest shooter ever!" To play the part of Cranky Kong; Graphics a good game do not make. They lack diversity. Sure, you can melee-attack with any weapon now, but they've sacrificed so much that should have been made standard by previous--let's just come out and say it--superior shooters. For an example, we give you this simple chart: Gears: 9 guns Half-Life 2: 10 guns Red Steel: 11 guns Lost Planet: 13 guns Resistance: 16 guns Halo 2: 16 guns Goldeneye: 24 guns Perfect Dark: 35 guns That is one blaringly obvious thing that is wrong with today's shooters. There are more than twice the number of guns in Perfect Dark than in any of the new shooters. There is no real diversity, we didn't even mention the number of mines, grenades and devices. Multiplayer options? One quick look at all four available Gears options: "Deathmatch, team deathmatch, team deathmatch with leader, and team harder deathmatch." We're not going to say these aren't fun, but they get old. Especially when you can't choose ANY OTHER OPTIONS! Halo 2 was supposed to be this great multiplayer title, created this huge online community, blah blah blah, but can you decide weapon layouts like you could in Perfect Dark? What if you want to cut down on those prick campers and move the sniper rifle and ammo to the very center of the most used deathpit in the level? Or remove the sniper completely while still having a variety of other weapons? No, you've got predetermined weapons: You can pick pistols, rockets, swords, random set or "variety with sniper rifle ammo in nice, pre-built camps to encourage hiding in a hole somewhere". Custom options? NO! BUNGIE GAVE YOU DREK FOR CUSTOM OPTIONS YOU WORTHLESS NEWBIES! How about all-weapons OHKO, a staple for previous reaction-wrenching skill-based FPS titles? Gone the way of chivalry, sadly. What if you want to add a bot or eight to your rockets-only Midship battle? Too bad, the developers got lazy. We would be playing N64 instead of Xbox at our weekly LAN parties if our N64s could hook up and play with more than four people. Sure, no one used the Klobb, but at least it was an option. Sure, killing friends is fun, but so is gang-raping bots with your friends. ~Rift (2) Comments

Rift Excites you... Trucksually... Posted 3/26/2007 8:58:09 PM Excite Truck is the Nintendo Wii's slightly overlooked launch title. Actually, when Zelda is a launch title, not much can really be considered overlooked. We recently picked up this racing game, along with a couple of the fabled "extra controllers" we had until recently thought were myths, such as a box set of I-Man or morning wood. We now have renewed hope of waking up one day with a set of DVDs in our shorts. But until then, we decided we'd do a quick rundown of this very Arcade style racing game. You--as we're sure you've heard before--turn the Wiimote on it's side as though it were a NES controller, and then twist and turn the Wiimote itself to steer. There are two buttons and a D-pad, 2 is gas, 1 is break (which has no purpose outside of aerial stunts), and pressing any direction on the D-pad will amp your turbo. That's right, V-tec just kicked in, yo. Your ultimate goal is not to come in first; No, your goal is to collect "stars" throughout the race, by placing in the top-five, performing various stunts, and doing terrible, terrible things to your fellow drivers. Crushing an opponent right out of the gate with your Wolf is a very quick and effective way to score five out of your 100+ required stars on most courses. In the first difficulty, "Normal" difficulty, they call it, this is not so much a feat as it is a mild annoyance. Your opponents seem as wobbly as you, perhaps a bit less trigger-happy with the NOS but prone to driving into walls, trees and off cliffs nonetheless. However, these are effectively the "practice" rounds, as even someone with no experience or knowledge of the course can easily score a basic win, meet the star requirements. It takes a bit of practice to achieve the passing "S" rank needed to unlock the "Excite" difficulty. Which is the real game. We once again state that it is a very, very Arcade style racing game. Including the annoying as haell 'Rubber-band AI'. That's right, you come in first place at 3:38 seconds on the clock, unlock a faster car and retake the level, you can break the time record and hit 3:24 and come in dead last. You will find yourself desperately grasping for a scoring position no matter how flawless you drive in Excite difficulty, but if you just drive for first you won't come anywhere close to the 240 star requirement. The good news is, crashing--and oh boy will you crash often--is not really penalized. In fact, you are partially rewarded with a "Nice Crash!" and a star for it. Quickly tapping the "2" button will send you boosting down the track as though your tire didn't just fly into that other truck's windshield, in some situations giving you a much better chance of making a jump or smashing an opponent. You just lose a few seconds, while that means nothing in the beginning of a match, if you were doing good that means that you stopped for two seconds while the rubber-band AI put you in last place right before the finish line. "Normal" trucks ain't up to the task by any means, so spend some time pulling off some insane "Super" tricks to unlock you a fun car like the Saguaro. Which we're almost positive can get "Super" air without a turbo-jump... In fact, we're fairly certain it gets "Super" air simply by looking at a small rock or a lip in the ground. Also, if you thought pounding the truck next to you at the starting line with the Wolf was fun, get a Kodiak (Hummer) and you can smash two or three trucks before the first jump in most courses. But really, the only way to go is through the trees; passing very near two or more trees will steadily give you stars. Sounds dangerous? Try it with the over-sensitive Wii controller. Or when fighting off the FRAGGING BOOST automatically given to you whenever you land correctly after a jump. Or even better: Try dodging trees when almost any attempt at all to make a turn results in a drift. We've got feet-drifted records in the thousands, generally while barely snaking between trees. On another console, this game would have been an interesting distraction. There really aren't many unlockables, besides bigger and better trucks, the difficulty goes from negligible to staggering in the time it takes you to select the "Excite" difficulty, and two-player multi just isn't up to par anymore. But that controller, that fragging Wiimote makes the game stand alone as a great title. At least, your first play-through is great. Because there are only two difficulties: "Your opponents need a running jump to kick you in the shin" and "Your opponents are GIR, Chuck Norris and God" you probably won't ever want to go back and redo it. In addition, with only two players, your multiplayer time will be devoted to more party-oriented games. Excite Truck is a definite rental, but probably not a buy. ~Rift (0) Comments

The world! ...According to Rift. Posted 3/26/2007 8:57:05 PM It's a casual gamer's world out there. Or, as far as Nintendo is apparently conserned, their first-party games recently have been incredibly casual, from the game even our Saudi friends have heard of, Nintendogs, to the even more popular Animal Crossing, Nintendo's latest games have been designed to only be played an hour a day. Now don't get us wrong, we love AC, wouldn't be caught dead with a copy of Nintendogs, but AC is very good. While we were disappointed with the lack of different things to do while in another person's town, running around smack-talking with friends is actually quite enjoyable, and we anxiously await the ability to actually talk using the built-in mic in future titles. But what we were most disappointed in was the lack of NES titles in the game, especially with the Wi-Fi. Imagine this; us schooling you in the original Pinball from a thousand miles away. That's a dream come true for all but the most mulish of Rift-haters. Well, there's also... Mario & Luigi 2, which so far has been completely identical to the previous game. It's also definitely not a complex game, with no side-missions, no secret unlockables, nothing but the main story. Like the last game, you're being dragged through the story at the whim of the main character(s), that you are not. Your only goal is to swoop in, kill the boss, and steal the glory from the real hero, which may or may not be Professor Egad... Or Prince Peasly, if you're familiar with the last title. The days when RPGs had distractions are apparently gone, as far as Nintendo is concerned. We miss the days when SquareEnix wasn't making Gauntlet knock-offs for Nintendo. There was nothing quite like chasing down the three Musty Fears for the useless Ghost Badge or running down Boshi on Yoshi's Island. ~Rift (0) Comments

Rift, devouring the souls of those who would oppose us. Posted 3/26/2007 8:55:17 PM So, this Christmas, we got our greedy little fingers on the new Castlevania game for the Nintendo DS. Dawn of Sorrow, so it says. It's the "dawn" of Sorrow, yet it takes place in the future? But this isn't about the title, this is about the souls. In Dawn of Sorrow, you kill enemies, and collect their souls for your later use. Not completely unlike Kirby, or Megaman. This game isn't so much an action RPG like it claims, it's more along the lines of a collection game. Not completely unlike Banjo Kazooie. The difference is, Banjo Kazooie was a platformer, where skill was the sole deciding factor... Wait, no. You didn't need skill, BK was easy. This game on the other hand, relies on chance. You see, there's a random possibility of whether or not you'll get to eat the bugger's soul when you reduce him to a bloody mess on the floor. This random possibility is slightly modified by your luck attribute, which can in turn be modified by items and other souls. Now, anyone who has ever met us has heard this one, simple fact: Our luck sucks. Playing Axis & Allies we have literally launched eight bombers at Germany, only to have a single AA gun shoot ALL of them down. If you do the math, the possibility of someone rolling eight ones is one in one-million, six-hundred and sixty-nine thousand, six-hundred and sixteen. On Risk, we've literally rolled Snake Eyes ten times in a row on defense. In Dungeons & Dragons, we've rolled a character without a single stat being above a five. In French Foreign Legions we've missed at point-blank range, with the sun at our back and pointing down hill at a charging Arab army. We refuse to talk about the time we spent playing Fire Emblem... We don't like the luck attribute. We've killed that Ouija Table more than a hundred times and IT STILL HASN'T FORKED OVER IT'S FRAGGING SOUL! We've got a natural luck of seventeen, we're using a Joyeuse (luck+5) and have the souls of four Ghost Dancers (luck+8), and haven't so much as found a single Ouija soul. We killed a good three hundred ghouls before getting one of their souls. We have half a mind to go over to Konami headquarters and devour the programmer's souls ourselves! Collection RPGs are annoying, especially because we're so fragging unlucky. This could easily be fixed by putting in a limiter, such as, at two hundred kills without getting the soul, you automatically get the soul. That would make games like this so much more playable, it's simple, it's low-memory, and it would save so many people so much time! ~Rift (0) Comments

Rift Runs Shadows. Posted 3/26/2007 8:52:04 PM Now we're sure you've all heard of Shadowrun... Right. It's a pen & paper RPG, a lot like Dungeons and Dragons. Only it's based about fifty-some years in the future. So trolls with metal arms firing a portable cannon at a dragon. Oh yes, we love Shadowrun. We've loved it for years, since we first played a Shadowrun game for the Super Nintendo. Now, Shadowrun (SNES) was by no means an accurate representation of anything but the attitude of the Shadowrun universe. The rules are completely different, but it got us hooked. Now we're the proud owner of the Core rules and several Source books, of the Third Edition. We're anxiously waiting for the Fourth Edition to hit shelves on the hobby shops near here. Of course, we'd recommend it to almost anyone. We've been GMing for a group of players every Friday for a while, we write fanfiction based on Shadowrun. Frag, we even use Shadowrun slang in everyday conversation! Boy were we full of glee when we found out the makers of Mech Warrior were developing a new Shadowrun game for the Xbox360. We squealed like a Chibi in the Keebler factory. Then the debates began. Eventually, it was decided that the best way to make a Shadowrun game was in third-person-shooter perspective, to our dismay, FASA Studios weren't listening to our debate. They decided to make it an FPS. The next part is online modes, which seems extremely difficult to work in FPS, because the only real advantage enhanced reflexes could give would be bullet-time effects. Then all players, even without the boosted reflexes would get the advantage. That's just not worth it. But it HAS to be online! You can't have a Shadowrun game going solo! You need your friends there, to help you shred security systems, snuff out guards in tandem, and fill the hallway with white-hot lead! The entire point in Shadowrun is using a 'Runner team to get the job done! So how does this work? Good news is, FASA Studios did an excellent job with the recent Mech Warrior games. So they are obviously very capable of making great games, we're really looking forward to this title. They very well might make something that, despite our reservations, lives up to the Shadowrun name. Of course, being a realist we know it's probably not going to be "teh best gam evars!11", but we hope it'll be good. Especially since we're planning on buying a 360 for it (and a few others). ~Rift (2) Comments

Nintendo, Mario, Rift. Posted 3/26/2007 8:50:21 PM Dear Nintendo, for years you've been talking about Mario 128, and for years you've been putting out Mario games that send us jumping for coins, Stars and Shines. And recently you've taken to this "innovation" thing, where everything is brand-spanking new! Well stop it, dangit. We love you guys, seriously. But you annoy the frag out of us. We're sick and tired of hearing about innovation, and new game types, and the sixth Mario Party game or Wario Ware Twisted. You know what we've wanted since the 64 came out that you've avoided? A 3D Mario platform adventure game. We're tired of redoing the same stage eight times to collect shiny objects that may or may not have any effect at all on the game. This idea isn't novel, it isn't innovative, it's just something you should have done TEN FRAGGIN' YEARS AGO! We want to see a vast world, with Mario collecting coins and jumping through a gigantic lava-filled dungeon to get to the fragging END like days of old! It's something you have yet to do! Why have you avoided the very staple of the Mario series? Why do you keep making Mario sports games when Peach should be screaming from Bowser's flying clown-thing for Mario to save her from the three-dimensional turtle? And no more collecting Stars, no more Shines, just Mario leaping his way through a perilous dungeon for the Fire Flower he needs to open the way to Bowser's massive, treacherous castle? That's what we want: A Zelda game starring the famous heroic plumber and his cowardly brother! Why have you neglected it for so long? It needs to be done! Bowser's wacky mushroom minions and turtle-trouble-makers have been trapped in paintings and pollution for too many years! The Hammer Bros are tired of turn-based and 2-dimensional mayhem, they need to be bosses attacking the portly plumber with classic music playing in the background. The Hammer and Tanuki suits need to come back. You know it, we know it. Everyone knows it. Just stop innovating for a minute and look at the obvious! ~Rift (0) Comments

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