Been a little missing in action thanks to Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy and trying to hit level 50 in Rift (and working, of course). But I just wanted to chime in on those that have been asking me my feelings on Rift now that it's been out for a month and I'm level 50. So I figured I'd put up a little post on just random thoughts on Rift as of right now and I promise I'll do a thorough review of the game along with a review of the Xoom sometime in the near future now that I don't have to worry about leveling every night.
Read more about Rift after the break.
Rifting in Rift is actually really fun to do.
So I figured I'd test out how posting from the Xoom would be tonight and so far so good. I have gotten a little more used to typing on it and while it's not over 100 wpm that I'm used to doing on a physical keyboard, it is certainly not as painful as I thought it would be. I had a good chance to do some heavy browsing today and so far I haven't ran into any force closes. The unit is definitely very speedy and for the most part does everything it was made to do well. I played Dungeon Defenders for a bit and found it a smooth and pleasant gaming experience overall.
I haven't spent as much time as I would like with it, switching between doing some work and trying to catch up to my buddies in Rift. So hopefully I'll have my review on the Xoom ready sometime next week. It'll probably be more thorough at that point as I'll have some serious hours invested into it and will be more accurate as to its shortcomings, if any.
Having said that, the onscreen keyboard needs arrow keys to place the cursor where I need it instead of making me poke on the editor. Probably time for me to suck it up and get the Thumb Keyboard app soon to test out.
I'm currently sitting on an Airbus A321, US Airways flight to Orlando from Phoenix and enjoying WiFi for the first time in my life. It cost $12.95 and it is quite possibly the best $12.95 I've ever spent. I was able to throw up two news posts for
Autoguide.com, ordered a
Motorola XOOM and saved $200.00 bucks - use coupon code OCNNSB25 (thanks OchoChinco!), may still work - and logged into Rift to secure my character name and even got a couple of levels. I'm pleasantly surprised just how smooth and quick the WiFi is up here and how stable it is. I don't think I've really dropped connection yet and I can't wait until WiFi is more readily available across all sorts of flights... and hopefully one day be available for free. It sure as hell makes flying a whole lot less painful.
Will be posting this week/weekend my thoughts on Rift's head start. I'll be back in Orange County, CA on Monday and hopefully my XOOM will be there waiting for me so that I can post up some impressions from that.
edit: Code no longer works for Xoom itself, but still works for accessories.
The Motorola XOOM is a 10.1" tablet and is the first to feature Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS.
I have played an awful lot of MMORPGs in my lifetime. Starting with Dark Age of Camelot, I also played Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI, Neverwinter Nights, Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes/City of Villains, Matrix Online, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft (of course), RF Online, Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Age of Conan, Champions Online, Aion, Free Realms, and most recently Final Fantasy XIV. Unfortunately out of this lengthy list of MMORPGs, the only games I ever invested a serious amount of time into was Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft. The rest probably got anywhere from one to three months of my attention before I reverted back to either console gaming or WoW. Not that many of these games were bad, I play MMORPGs and enjoy them because of the friends I play with and the majority of the time, many of us lose interest in the games due to the lack of polish or overabundance of bugs. Worst is when the company does a horrible job supporting its product with a lack of patches and bug fixes. Nonetheless, I don't mind spending a few bucks on a new MMORPG to experience the world, game and character development just to break the routine of whatever farming I may be doing in WoW to pass the time.
I'm hoping that Rift: Planes of Telara might hold my interest for more than three months. And I'm anticipating it just might based on what I've seen in the beta thus far. Read more about my initial, albeit quick and short, impressions of Rift after the break.
March will be an exciting month for me. Not only will it be my birthday, but there's a nice collection of releases that I hope to get my hands on, so expect March to be a starting month for me to start writing some real reviews on all sorts of goodies.
I'll be kicking off the month on March 1st by getting Rift, taking a break from World of Warcraft. For those that haven't read or seen much on Rift, I'll be posting up a Beta impressions shortly as I try to sneak some more time in to play some more. After having played so many MMORPGs in my life, Rift is sort of refreshing, taking the best elements from various MMORPGs and combining it into one. It's definitely not groundbreaking or revolutionary, but the way they handle character classes makes it a sure buy to at least explore for a few months.
Even though I didn't play a ton of Dragon Age, I'll probably be picking up Dragon Age 2 to check out during Rift downtime.
I'll be extra excited for March 22nd, when Dissidia Duodecim comes out, the sequel to Dissidia, Square Enix's treat to Final Fantasy players. I'm a huge Final Fantasy junkie, so I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time unlocking everything - just like I did for the original Dissidia. Expect some lengthy posts on that one I'm sure.
On the 27th I'll get my hands on Nintendo's 3DS, which has been intrigued me since the day it was announced. I'm all about new technology and glasses-free 3D on a portable gaming system is most certainly new technology that I can be interested in. So be ready for a huge write up on my 3DS impressions including videos and photos on launch day.
Then to close on the month on the 29th I'll be picking up The 3rd Birthday for PSP. For those unaware of what The 3rd Birthday is all about, it's the third installment in the Parasite Eve series. The first two were released for Playstation and were an interesting survival horror type third-person shooter game. It's been well over a decade since I've visited the world of Parasite Eve, so it'll be interesting to see how Square Enix has evolved the series and whether or not any actual effort was put into the development of the game. I'll be pretty disappointed if it's just a mediocre product simply cashing out on whatever they can on the series.
Until then, I'll be updating throughout the week catching up on my World of Warcraft adventures over the last few months and Rift Beta impressions.