Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded in rappyrapport's LiveJournal:

Thursday, June 2nd, 2005
10:10 am	Beat-em-ups, the lost genre When I say "Beat-em-up", I hope that games like Final Fight, Streets of Rage and Double Dragon come to mind.  Those classic side scrollers where it was simply you and your fists against the world.  Those were GREAT games. The next gen games like Fighting Force and Gekido were okay too, but even by that time the genre was looking dated. The Bouncer was a cool game, but really didn't get the appreciation it deserved. The genre, if not already dead, is dying.  It's a pity. But why?  All beat-em-ups (BEU for short) suffer the same problems: iffy controls/camera, bland environments, goofy fighting/ability systems and bland everything else. So if we know these are the problems, why is nothing done to address them? First of all, what made Streets of Rage so fun?  It was such a simple game, you had a basic set of attacks, you moved side to side (rather slowly, too), and it all built up to your special move.  You know how friggin rewarding it was to get that special move. It's now 2005.  realism is emphasized in everything, why not BEU's? First of all, Controls and Camera should be fully customizable.  Camera's "snap-to" point should be customizable, i.e. which side does the camera look at, what is the pitch, how far out or close is it?  The camera could be static or dynamic, thats up to the player.  DON'T RESTRICT THE PLAYER!  It's such a delicate genre, you want to give the player the feeling of comfort without making them stressed out about where the camera is at any given momment.  If the camera is dynamic, there should be a snap-to button to snap it back to the set position.  Controls should be intuitive by default, "The way it's meant to be played", yet everything should be assignable.  Why the heck not?  Why not use the right joystick as square, triangle, X and circle?  Why not use L1 and L2 to move forward and backward, and use the D-pad for turn left and right and up and down shoot and kick?  Give them a chance. Bland Environments?  The question is WHY!?  Generic couch over here, standard plant over there...I don't care WHAT it is, make it look like it's functional, like someone actually wants it to be there.  And for cryin' out loud, make it destructable and usable!  So what if it doesn't make sense to sit on the couch, throw it in there!  And let me pick it up, for that matter!  I want to knock the papers off the desk, I want to take all the drawers out, I want to bludgeon my opponent with the desk chair.  So LET ME!  And why do weapons disappear?  Is it because they're cheap?  Then why did you make them cheap!  Even though I have a baseball bat, it doesn't make me invincible.  Oh, but if I HIT someone with that bat, make that hit mean something!  I want some serious SFX, I want my controller to rumble, I want to see the camera zoom in and slow-mo the hit.  Do Everything it takes to make the impact of that bat felt by the player.  IT'S A FRIGGIN BAT!  I don't want it to go down like any other blow in the game.  Oh, and stop telling me where to go!  I don't want to go to the top floor yet, I wanna explore the floor I'm on!  Let me do it.  I don't want to enter non-descript restaurant no. 1, I want to head in the back alley!  Let me.  Oh, and why do I keep fighting joe burglar no. 1 and 2 all the time?  yeah, how about HUNDREDS of grunt models, where I will rarely see the same guy.  If San Andreas can have 3 cities, countryside, ocean, tons of missions and extras, then you can give me hundreds of joe enemies.  And yes, I can take more than 3 at a time, so bring em on! Okay, I got the answer to the fighting and ability system problem too.  How about, since you're throwing in character creation/customization (You ARE throwing that in), why not let me choose the fighting style too?  Brawler, Lythe, Wrestler, street fighter, martial arts...make it varied and make each style count.  Brawler doesn't have to be big, slow and powerful.  Brawler can be quick and slightly weaker, let the name mean one thing but the stats mean another.  Maybe I wanna be able to football-punt my enemy but don't wanna be a slow ass brawler, well, let me do it!  And hey, why not have a move list editor ala Smackdown!?  I see no reason why not.  Oh, and leveling up is great, but don't you think the emphasis should be on having fun rather than doing the right combination of something or else I miss the coolest thing in the game?  Sure, secrets are great, and strategy is fun, but having me choose one ability over another that may kick my ass later is not what I call fun.  Let's make every ability count, and make it fun to attain it and even funner to use what you got.  Yeah, I Wanna choose my abilities, but don't make me regret my choice.  As I said, character editor/creator.  Okay, maybe creator won't work too great with the format you're going for...but for cryin out loud let me CHOOSE how Jordan looks.  I don't wanna play as generic metrosexual, I wanna play as sephiroth rip-off, or perhaps biker dude.  Give me more options than goofy jeans guy with weird wardrobe mishap.  Oh yeah, and plenty of unlockables in the shop and secret outfits.  Collecting the secrets should be fun, not a nuisance.  If you make it fun, we'll probably play your game more than once.  LEveling up is a good concept, but when the game is over what does that mean for my character?  Why, make the difficulty increase with the character's level, let it carry over into other difficulties.  I shouldn't exhaust the new abilities, nor should I max out my level until I've gotten some serious play time and have played through the game several times.  I don't want the game to sit on my shelf after one play, "Oh great game, but I'm done".  This is for Metal Gears, RPGs and other story driven games.  Not for me.  I want new variations, maybe randomly generated maps, and I want unlockable environments.  MAybe create-a-level?  Yeah, we don't want you to skimp on the story either.  If it must be generic, don't let me think it's generic.  Be generic enthusiasticly.  Even the most boring subject matter is interesting if the people communicating it are pumped up about it.   Voice acting, character interactions with objects and just randomness can be great ways to liven things up.  Okay, there is generic mirror in bathroom.  I approach it and press action button and "hey there handsome" and a second time "Is that celery in my teeth?"  a third time "Okay, I look good but I got better things to be doing".  Simple, yet makes it more accessable. I could get really in depth, but why?  I'll save that for another day. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 28th, 2004
3:06 am	The Bleak Future of PC Gaming Ever since the first marraige of modem and gaming, fans of the computer gaming market have clammored for more and more innovations as well as copycats. Since modem gaming, the internet was then implemented for broader multiplayer mayhem, and soon came the MMORPGs. It has been quite an evolution over the ages, but fans will always clamour for the "next big thing". However, and quite unfortunately, along with innovations in gameplay come innovations in safety's, and more often then not they punish the legitimate gamers rather then those that would exploit, pirate and sell the pirated games. I cannot emphasize this enough, no matter what safety you implement, someone, somewhere will always find away around it. The code can be debugged, spliced, disected and rearranged to find the loophole or backdoor to get around it. So what is Valve's answer to this timeless nuisance? They call it "Steam". Before we can weigh it's positives and negatives, one must first have knowledge of what "Steam" is. Essentially, Steam is a hub for all of their games. It provides servers for the games, fast updates, a forum for it's members, and the option to buy and download any of the games in the Valve catalogue. Steam is a completely free utility, and can be downloaded at www.steampowered.com . Of course, any games you wish to purchase will have to be paid for, but membership is free. However, what Steam has done is borrow security methods used in advanced MMORPGs (which stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, this includes games like Everquest and Final Fantasy 11) as well as legal MP3 download programs to lock up their software. Here it is in a nutshell: Any game released from Half Life 2 on will HAVE to pass through Steam before you can play the game. This means that you will NOT be able to simply install the program and bypass Steam's installer, that will not work. Simple enough, right? But Steam is not simply a registration hub, it acts like a library. You can check out your game whenever you like, it's on you computer after all. And you can also import it to anyone else's computer using your account free of charge. However, when you are done playing you must "return" it. This means that your friend cannot play Half Life 2 on his computer under your Screen name while you are playing. Doing so will cause your game to end while his begins. Simultaneous play under the same game for the same screename is impossible. This is good, right? No more bootleggin! Well, thats one of the dim positives compared to the vast negatives. The kicker to this system is that every time you play it goes through Steam. Think about that for a second. What is Steam? An Extension of Valve. What is Valve? A developer, but more specificaly, a company/bussiness, just like ENRON, or K-Mart. Which means, it is succeptible to becoming defunct just like any other business. 2+2=4, and you get a computer with a lotta gigs eaten up with no playable copy of Half Life 2, just a locked up copy that you will never be able to check out again. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you buy an MP3, it's YOURS! You should be able to do with it what you want, burn it to whatever medium you want using whatever software you want. You should be able to transfer it to whatever device or computer you want as well, within legal boundaries. Same with computer software. Once it is purchased, it should be yours to do as you please. What this is is a violation of rights. Yes, everyone must sign the terms of agreement, and you forfeit that right when you check the box, but there is ethics here that must not be ignored. It is important to interrupte here and inform you that Whether you buy the retail, on-the-shelf version (which only comes in bronze, and only includes Half Life 2 and Counter Strike: source) or the Steam version (Bronze comes with store versions except also includes Deathmatch, silver having a few more goodies and Gold having everything). Regardless of which you buy, store-bought or Steam download, you MUST pass through Steam and you MUST run steam every time you play. If you decide to download via Steam you do NOT get the instruction manuals nor do you get the physical CD's. You do have the right to download your game any time you like. If you are a business man who is also an avid gamer, you are probably already arriving to this conclusion: What about the incentive to buy the physical version? What about the producer's cut? That is the second largest negative point against this. You have absolutely zero incentive to purchase the physical version. Steam's Bronze version is cheaper, provides you with more features than store-bought, and gives you the same rights and freedoms as you would have with store-bought, plus you don't have to leave your house. Unless you plan on hacking the game if/when Steam goes down so you can play HL2, I would suggest Steam based on incentive. Morally, I would choose store-bought IF I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO! Half Life 2 is one helluva game, in fact, it rocks. But Valve has done nothing outside of the game's wonderful code to provide us, the gamers and the all important market, with the information and freedom we need. They kept the world in the dark for years, refusing to tell us any details. All they told us were what the rumors were and why they were untrue. We had no idea of progress, completion or any other communications normally provided to us. They treated us coldly, and then they took away any possibility of avoiding Steam. Amidst their legal battle with Sierra (essentially, Vivendi) it is ludicrous that they would commit such a stunt. In what used to be an uncertain battle it is now clear who the evil person in the lawsuit was, Valve. And while I understand I'm growing less argumentative and more into mud-slinging, all I can say is viewing the facts, Valve has done nothing for the consumer outside of what they had to. They created a A+ game, and that was it. I hate to say this, but if you have an X=box, but it through Xbox. As far as I know they do not require a Steam visit for that version (if/when it is available). I can only hope that this trend does not spread to the console market, let alone infest the PC market more than it has. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 2nd, 2004
2:46 pm	GTA: San Andreas - The Conspiracy Greetings fellow gamers and would-be petition signers. I'm here today to discuss the topic of the Grand Theft Auto series and the people's reaction to it. I have read several letters, and I feel that many of the people that hold the position that the games are wrong will find themselves agreeing with the letters. I've read people complain that the games "promote crime, gang relations, treating women poorly, and drug use". Before I delve into GTA, I got one thing to say: WAKE UP AND LOOK AROUND YOU PEOPLE! Take notice of the number of people you know or see smoking blunts, drinking excessively...heck, look at the number of SMOKERS in the world. OPEN YOUR EARS! Listen to the radio stations that blare the R&B and Rap music. Listen to the lyrics that are so popular, the ones that the young people listen to and idolize. I assure you, the people that hear those words and want to follow them, the ones that "fall in love" with the crime and gang relations and drug use are not playing a PS2, and if they are, it's not Grand Theft Auto. Now calm down a momment, I'm not saying that Rap music is to blame totally, obviously people make mistakes and it's their own fault. But For a rap artist who, having "gotten out of the ghetto" to glamorize and perpetuate by aural means the lifestyle the desperately tried to get out of, it's ludicrous. What I'm saying is this: Before you blame GTA for any of the nation's problems, you should correct the areas where it starts. If someone sits down to a session of GTA for the sole purpouse of plotting a crime, that person is already past the point of influence and was driven to that outside of GTA's gameplay. With that said, I will make my points. For someone to criticize San Andreas for the aforementioned reasons shows that the person either a) has never played the game or b) has played it but refused to see some of the positive aspects of the game. These people, though not entirely, are narrowminded and close-sighted. In San Andreas' crime riddled way, it promotes loyalty, both to family and friends, promotes abstinence from drug use, promotes treating women properly, and promotes taking action to better our world. The protagonist is Carl Johnson (CJ for short), who returns home after hearing that his mom died. After a few scenes it is very apparent that CJ and his brother Sweet were very much devoted to their mother, and that they loved her. Later, a mexican named Cesar begins dating CJ's Sister, and since they are from different gangs, Sweet is violently against it. He yells at his sister, but not in a way that treats women poorly, it is the love of a brother not wanting to see his sister hurt. Later, Cesar shows that he treats her well, and respects her very much, and every scene she is in shows how much the people around her respect her. People that misinterpret this are not accepting that there is a subculture in our society that they don't understand nor want to try to understand. There are people in this nation that don't think the same as they do, and therefore their manerisms are different. It's a fact, it's not a black or white thing, it's a culture thing. CJ is sucked back into gang life, and there are elements of gameplay that show unabashedly gang-banging lifestyle, but this is also helpful to show how violent and short a gang member's life can be. It's a good source of "how not to live". CJ's put in difficult situations involving his gang members, which are friends that are more like family, and how he has to deal with them. It's not easy for him. Every twist and turn of the gameplay, while very fun, shows the carnage unfiltered, and this best works to prevent the lifestyle. I don't think that anyone, after a session of GTA, thinks "I wanna get a gang together and kill a bunch of people". I think the game shows that you die when you live that way, plain and simple. Also, the protagonist in San Andreas fights drug use every step of the way. You are rewarded for killing drug dealers. This is a gameplay mechanic that not many will pick up on, but it's a side note that Cj stands against drug use. Every time he is offered "wet" he turns it down, and to my knowledge, he is not shown using drugs. This to me doesn't mean anything as far as inspiring a person, he could be using it, or not, it doesn't matter to me, but it's a little way to show that drug use is not okay. I know it's bad, and many other people do too, but again, not everyone is brought up like you or I, and not everyone thinks the same. The drug users wind up being the villains, and many missions involve thwarting the drug opperations. One more thing people need to realize is that Grand Theft Auto is a satire. From the commercials, to the radion DJs, to the talk shows to even the gameplay and script, it's dripping with satire. Through this literary convention it shows us our weakpoints, it shows us that we don't agree with the remarks in the game. The feeling of "hey, thats not right" that so many commercials and talk shows in the game make you think, that's exactly right. It isn't right, and they don't expect you to think it's right. Thats why it's satire, while it's comicaly implemented, it's meant to make you think and make you want to act. This society of ours has problems. We are so devoted to school strictness, equality, censorship, that we put stress on SOCIETY raising our kids instead of the people that should be: the parents. Each and everyone of us is in some way responsible for making sure that the next generation of kids turn out okay. Part of that is to make sure that we are good examples for our kids. It's not about censorship, it's about deciding what is healthy for your kid. Take the thoughts away from the negative and see the positive aspect of it. Every day, a child absorbs information and wants to test the boundaries of it. That is why children should not play violent games. A parent should keep these from the kids so that the boundaries they test are tame, not because it's "M". Some children under 17 are mature for their age and can play these games. Some children will lie or sneak around to play them regardless of their parent's warnings. Game makers put the game on the market for those who can handle the games, and rating it M will not do it's job alone. Rating our games won't raise our children. We need to focus on putting POSITIVE things back into society first, and I think the rest will follow. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 18th, 2004
8:57 pm	dear diary: Quite the lucritive weekend in the world of PSO! It all began with my aquiring an Agito, 2001 model (it's a fake but it still kicks butt). I showed it off to my brothers friday morning. Then, after all was done sunday, I started excavating for a victor axe from a love rappy/.///FINALLY one popped up and I got it. Then a few minutes later I got a supressed gun from a garanz in VR spaceship. Then this morning I defeated a GAl Griffon and got a photon claw! I'm rakin in the rares! (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 10th, 2004
9:58 pm	a couple reviews this entry is a work in progress, I'll finish it later... ( Guilty Gear Isuka review ) ( Gungrave: Overdose review ) (Comment on this)