Rifts And Whatnot

I haven't updated this in a little while, but theres now new material to cover for you people. Iv gotten a new computer that doesn't tweak out every minute and a half and make any game regardless of graphics settings or age to drop to 3-10 frames a second. So Iv taken to playing games i haven't been able to in some time now. I received a beta invite to "Rift" which is an upcoming subscription based mmo. For the most part its actually better than i had expected, with some pretty pretty visuals and story cut scenes to start out with and an extremely unique class system which allows you to pick a calling (rouge,warrior,mage, and cleric) and each calling has a multitude of different "souls" to choose from further specializing your role. For example the rouge calling can further specialize to be a sneaky stealth bastard, a dot'ing combo DPS powerhouse, or a ranged fighter with explosives, yes you heard me, fucking explosives. Each calling seems to have a "buff only class" of sorts which means it really has no use outside of raiding, or pvp buffs and utilities like the rouges bard class. Right now I'm playing a "nightblade,rift stalker, bard" and so far seems to be pretty fun and really quick. I'm not going to go further into it though since i haven't played too much and just about anything in the game anyway is subject to change, but that's all info you can get from the site. Either way its pretty fun though a sort of rip off of warhammer online more than anything though and I'm not sure if its worth 15 bucks a month, unfortunately i think WoW still holds the only game worth paying a sub for and that's just barely worth it at that. Other than playing this four day long beta i recently bought Gran Turismo 5, which iv actually been sorely disappointed with. I haven't played online or any of the arcade mode play yet so i cant speak for those areas, but iv gotten a little ways into the A-spec mode races. Its got everything you'd expect from a GT game, nothing is really new except for the whole online lobby system, a ton of new cars and tracks, otherwise its the same exact thing as the last 4 and half (that GT4:prologue doesn't count worth shit as a full game) and as the overall quality goes its shit. I think the developers ran out of time or money at some point after focusing all of their attention on the premium cars and tracks, which look and sound and handle amazing, yet all the non premium cars sound exactly the same, look like shit, and the same goes for the non premium tracks, in fact you could play the nurburgring track side by side with GT4 and the only differences in look would be a little anti aliasing and shadowing. Otherwise it doesn't look any better than 4's version of the track. Needless to say i was sorely disappointed at that. The game now has external as well as internal damage which once again for the premium cars the car can get trashed as all hell looking but the non premium cars look barely dented, but for any car your in when you hit a wall or a car weather your going 20 mph or sailing at 170mph into a wall you'll hear the same dull "thunk" sound and dear god does it get really annoying really quickly, especially when your in the middle of the pack of mindless AI that is the opponent cars who will full on break in front of you or slam into you like your not there and hear nothing but "thunk thunk thunk thunk" Although extremely annoying its not nearly as bad as the walking sound in the other total disappointment of a game Final Fantasy 13. Which brings me to my final point about this whole game. I waited at least 3 years for a new Final Fantasy to get that linear 15 hour long tutorial movie posing as a game, and now i waited at least 4 years for a new Gran Turismo just to get a shitty hastily assembled remake of 4. I'm really hoping this trend doesn't extend to the other two games iv been waiting years to play like guildwars 2 or Duke Nukem. I swear to my heathen gods if GW2 is just as shitty as those shit games I'm jumping off a cliff.