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[tags] augmented reality games, gaming, persona skins, virtual walls, gaming tutorsofts, virtual reality, AR-Assist

Um, yeah, post stuff and I will be happy.

Everybody's a Doctor! (Afkar ARE Ltd.)

[Score: 1.4 | User Score: 3.4]

Not even the designers know if Everybody's a Doctor! was intended to be parody or serious drama, but having a bunch of Egyptians dress up in lab coats and fake bad Israeli accents to some of the worst hospital melodrama ever put to script this century - well, it's good for a laugh. In theory, anyway. In practice, the game is tedious: forcing players through hours of contrived dialogue and cliched soap opera before they even touch a diagnostic tool, much less hit the OR - where the average surgery lasts just minutes. Usually with the patient dead on the table.

The game would have died, too, if someone hadn't cracked and spammed the code across the Trix where it found an unexpected audience in the family game market. Turns out six and seven-year-olds have enough time and patience to wade through the 5000 lines of if-then codex to perform virtual surgery on their parents, who gleefully lay on the floor for their precious children to cut out their hearts (I swear, one more home sim on "oh look at little Mikey being such a cute little doctor, yes he is," and I'm going to crash uSlot, got it?).

Suddenly the race for expansions was on, with Afkar releasing new episodes as fast as they could code 'em. The good news being that they cut back on story to keep up with the demand for new surgeries. The bad news: the stories are still as horrible and convoluted as ever. The company got clever and released a master set this week, which includes a little plastic doctor and nurse hat that double as trodes, along with deleted scenes (if you can imagine, which you can't because they're that bad).

Microdeck recently announced talks over a tutorsoft version of the game, for the young medical student, apparently. And rumors of a kid actually saving her dad's life with it have been popping up like metagophers on novacoke. There's plenty of spoofs popping up, too ("Nurse, can you sponge me?" being my favorite), but none quiet as painful as the original.

Tribble Trouble (file under hilarity)

[Laughs: 7.1 | User Laughs: 2.8]

Let me guess: you were broke come Xmas and heard your kid whining for a new vPet, 'cause everybody at school's got one and they're just so much fun. Hey, cheaper than a real pet, right? Oh, but they're not that cheap: monthly subscriptions for learned play, emote tracks, and realistic evolution packages... You were broke, so you putt it off until next week, right? And still the next week, then Xmas is six hours away and you've got fifty yen to your name, linking through every vPet site not crashed from all the last minute dads doing the same damn thing...

Then: wham! You're saved, a twenty nuyen Tribble (Cyrano LLC) is purring in the window. It's cute, furry, and warm to the touch. How could you have missed this in all your ten minute searching? It snuggles and wiggles and isn't its purr just so calming and cute... So you bought it, and downloaded it to your daughter's comm. She wakes up and falls in love, how adorable, how cute, she teaches it tricks. Thanks, dad, and a big hug. Aw, a happy ending.

But wait, why is there a Tribble by the toaster? She must have been bouncing it around the room or something. You go to work the next day, and what - the Tribble's on your comm? Crazy, you think, it must be confused, but it insists on snugging and having you pet it, which you do, absentmindedly through the day, logged onto your office network. OK, something's up, there's a Tribble in your car: no, two Tribbles in your car. At home, there's ten. Your wife wants to know what the hell this thing is, and your boss is calling asking why you infected the system with a virus!

You weren't the only one caught in this (pro)creative promotional scam gone viral. Thousands of parents and kids purchased a Tribble in the short three days they were for sale. Hundreds of thousands of systems were infected with the adorable purring pets, which multiplied with every connection you made. Multiplied and multiplied, and even as you try to uninstall the cursed things, you sit there petting them! Brilliant.

Too bad Grid Overwatch didn't agree, the boys and girls over at Cyrano (college students in a garage, natch) are all facing multiple counts of computer fraud, and millions in damages - despite causing no loss of data or hardware to any systems anywhere. There was a flurry of copycats, some more literal than others, but most of the exploits used have been patched up and every last Tribble tracked down and either erased or neutered, so to speak.

Still, my daughter loves her Tribble, claims the thing actually wards off hackers. But I won't be buying any last minute Xmas gifts anytime soon - yeah, right.

Monstrona Skins (Evo Avatars)

[Score: 5.1 | User Score: 6.6 ]

As one of the original studios to market interactive personas and hybrid-reality platforms, you'd expect Evo to be on the burning edge of the datatrail with their latest release: Monstrona Skins, but you'd be wrong. Monstrona was supposed to be an upgrade from the typical vPet battle arenas, instead they gave us a watered down first-person sim with little in the way of innovation. I was excited when they first announced Monstrona, almost a year ago: an AR/VR persona dueler from Evo? What could go wrong?

The excitement had time to cool after the first few delays; usual design team troubles, interface issues, multi-platform support problems, repeat drekcetera. I'd all but forgotten about it when the sneak preview dropped in, which nearly killed any enthusiasm I had left with what felt like a slapped together interface and rudimentary gameplay (thank Aneki the final version looked nothing like it - hell, Evo even claims they never released a preview). Then the AR Awards came, and went, and still no Monstrona.

Well, we have it now, and was it worth the wait? Meh. All the major features have been done elsewhere, and often better. Sony's Demon Word: Iryoku! has the arena mesh, with slightly better translation of real world objects - their garbage cans actually look like garbage cans (though Evo claims this will get better as more user-content is integrated). User-content driven? Like MCT's Meishenshi: You, only more buggy and overpowered? Yep. Seamless sound effects? Yeah, just like Battle of the Bands only hosted on that buggy user-content server.

The game's not all bad: the selection of personas is literally monstrous, drawing from classics like Frankenstein to the obscure Bukavac and all surprisingly well rendered. The morph from your normal persona to the monstrona is also amazingly well done, both in tactile and visually. The selection of powers is almost endless, and some of them are brilliant (I laughed at my friend's Candyman with his weak signal Bee Swarm, until he evedup to Mirror Walk).

The ability to customize or create your own eveups is a great idea, but badly implemented. The resolution drop is shameful, the simsense itchy. And the outrageous power scale settings don't help (Level Two instakills are not cool). The designers didn't even consider invisible weapons (which are also not cool), nor did they install enough hacking protection (it's got more backdoors than Sullivan's Backdoor Explosion).

For what you're paying in subscription fees, they'd better patch some of the issues, or Monstrona will slip off the most anticipated game pile onto great big the bin of regret.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (Don't Blink Studios)

[Weirdness: 8.1 | User Weirdness: *.*] No users have rated this game: be the first!

Running counter to the hyperrealistic trend in today's immersives, the Infernal Desire Machines bends us back to the hypersurreal, lending a wild artistic eye from Dali or Du'Brinque in this tale of metaphysics gone awry. The nefarious Doctor Hoffman has set his agents of irrelevance upon the City, and you, as assistant to the Minister, must battle against the creeping madness in a mind blowing metropolis where the normal rules of reality no longer apply.

Or do they? One of the most bizarre aspects of the game is not just the surprising and often hilarious ways in which the world inverts into insanity, but that you control your character by enforcing your disbelief. In an era where suspension of disbelief is tantamount to sanity comes a gaming experience that forces us to reexamine what we accept - and what we expect - from the world around us. The controls can take a little getting used to (disbelief is probably not a muscle you've been working on at the simgym), and it's a bit of an extreme experiment for a casual gamer. On the other hand, if your looking for something different, well, this game delivers. Delivers megapulses of something different.

Lacking is only a diverse decision tree; the plot almost wholly flows in one dimension, even as the sensory experience ambles in to sixteen. The characters are numerous and fully fleshed, if not clothed; the puzzles are wildly entertaining (the first go-around), but it all leads inevitably to the same conclusion. And a strange conclusion at that: when the final stroke is made, victory over madness assured and reality reasserts itself, the game cold dumps you into RL. I'm sure it's meant as some grand artistic statment. Or, perhaps, as a shock to our sense of disbelief.

Virtual Vixen Unlimited - X-tra Edition (Vixen Studios)

[Score: 6.8 | User Score: 8.3 ]

With the integration of full personality tuning and their nova hot appearance generator into what has been for years the best Virtual Personality Engine on the market, they had an instant success in Virtual Vixens Unlimited.

Following up on that success is the newest version, which is proving to be even more popular then any previous version before with its integrated adult options and extensive user made content, much of it cleaned up and hosted on Vixen Studios node.

What has always made the VV series so popular, even before the availability of adult content, is the quality of the virtual personas personality and its ability to grow and learn. It has been one of the most powerful Virtual Companions on the market with only the developers’ strong stance against “whoring up� their baby keeping it from being the most popular.

The beauty of VVU-X is that it is fully backwards compatible with every previous version, allowing access to a massive number of Persona. Want Snow White as a girlfriend? There are over 100 different versions of her, covering the full range of appearances from the original Disney movie through the latest remake and several popular live actors.

Another wonderful thing about VVU-X is the ability to create your own Persona by whole or part from any other Persona. In fact, you can a broad range of Appearance, Personality, and History packs for download. Want Dana Woodcrest, the lead actress from last summers super hot ‘Caress of the Dragon’, as your personal sex slave? Combine an Appearance and History pack made for her with any of the thousands of ‘Sex Slave’ Personality packs on the net. I’m sure you’ll be able to find one that perfectly fits your individual kinks if you look hard enough.


Virtual Vixens History

[ Spoiler ]

The original Virtual Vixen was an enjoyable and well done virtual companion, even though it only had minimal options for personality and appearance (along with lacking… adult options). Despite these drawbacks, the core driving it was their skillfully designed Virtual Personality Engine which from version to version has managed to remain one of the best available.

With the lack of available options holding VV back, Vixen Studios updated their engine and set about releasing a veritable horde of expansion packs. User created content however was not allowed, with Vixen Studios maintaining tight control.

That is, until a small group of hackers in Denver cracked the expansion loader and coded up a fairly easy to use expansion pack generator. Vixen Studios moved fast but it was already too late. The code was out and snagged up all over the Matrix. This was immediately followed by an explosion in the popularity of VV. Vixen Studios saw the writing on the wall, integrated a cleaned up and smoother working version of the cracked code along with a polished version of their in house character generator. Virtual Vixens! was born.

That little hacking group in Denver wasted no time in working on the new version, but it took them over a year to finally crack and code up a usable interface for their new target, the Virtual Learning Engine. Their first release only added two options beyond what Vixen Studios allowed. However, one of those options was what had taken so long to build. Its single word label said it all though. “Adult�

The months that followed were a race between Vixen Studios (releasing updates to block out the crack) and the hackers (cracking the updates and expanding the options) until one thing became clear. VVU was extremely popular with more and more sales, but the number of subscribed users was dropping.

The hackers were “integrated� into the company, working with the development team to produce the Virtual Vixens Unlimited, with everything but the adult content. Pressure from users refusing to upgrade lead to the release of a second version, the X-tra Edition.

Maestro's Wand (DeMeKo Surroundton)

[Score: 7.1 | User Score: 6.7]

I knew Anvi Bauer had made something special with his odd addition to AR musicals when I came home to find my SO standing in the kitchenette waving a spatula in the air. Eyes closed, head back and swaying, oblivious to the world, he'd never looked hotter. I watched for a minute before logging into his node, it was like he was dancing in place to some capoeiran rhythm. But then the environment loaded, and it's got a nice fade-in, too. Music slowly swelling to catch up with the new user, objects gently lighting up as they are struck, but it doesn't dwell. Soon enough I was caught in his wild symphony, his wand flicks striking the toaster into a bellowing trombone section, the microwave bursting into bassoons, the cans of soda blasting into explosions, even the piled dirty dishes were pounding cymbals and snare drums as his wand found them. Everything in the room was vibrating with color and sound, all measured out to the mad beat of his food crusted spatula. He hadn't noticed me still, until his wand pointed at me and a choir of tenors added their voices to the orchestra. (And can I say how strange it was for that choir to be rising up from all about me? It gave me chills.) Then he looked around surprised, then embarrassed. The whole environment paused the second his wand stopped, and we both stood awkward in the silence.

The games ability to incorporate almost any object into an instrument, often in innovative ways, is part of the fun. But users can program certain objects to have certain sounds, or have certain directions equate certain sections (say, 12 o'clock is strings, 3 is woodwinds, etc), would they prefer more control. And DeMeKo is offering new choreographies for subscribers, in addition to the hundreds of classics they've already converted and the thousands of scripts users have uploaded to the server. Finding a piece of music you really like, though, is often a lot harder than just playing around until things start to sound good - which may sound surprising, but there's just something natural to a good tune. If you have a sense of rhythm, that is (unlike me, who can't get Maestro's Wand to sound like anything other than a farting elephant). Not to say browsing USlot for nighlarious pieces of peeps playing composer is worth a few hours, and it's not a bad way to find some real gems of music, too. Like this elf in leather playing novahot steel guitars using high-tension wires and his guitar-pick for a wand. Can anybody beat that?

DeMeKo, and co-producers Sol Muxxic, are sponsoring a tournament in addition to the content updates. Despite lukewarm sales, PRman Lance Nidos claims there's an underground drumbeat for the tournament, enough for the two companies to offer a 5000 nuyen grand prize, along with the usual fun and games. I hope he's right, because those sweet sounds in my kitchen need to keep on keeping on into the bedroom. Sound off on our message boards about whether you agree with him, or just to make some noise. Peace!

Horizon's Money Clip: Hacks and Cracks (Horizon Entertainment Group)

[Difficulty: 3.0 | User Difficulty: 4.2]

If you've played Evo's Shibanokuji Prix, then you've already experienced their tripped-out, vertigo-inducing zero-g and variable gravity simsense. As an immersive, it's pretty good, but what I really wanted was to plug that zero-g into my meditation suite (NeoNET's Nothing Else Mtters with a Zeiss Touch Ex-Amplifier and Horizon's ZenSin feed) for some freaky zoning with the ladies (you can check out my feedback loop here). But Evo had intergrated the gravity so tightly with the environmental effects that I could never quite get just the gravity sensation without heat or light or sound, or some random piece of the orbital popping in (we've got code holos for Shibanokuji Prix, too).

So, I was drek out of luck with my dream of weightless cybering... that is until Horizon made its latest foray into financial psychology with its Money Clip. It's a pretty simple idea, for those cave dwellers who don't have one: people spent less money back when they used cash for everything, and turns out the reason was that their brains would register a loss when they handed over the cash but not while using credsticks (it just doesn't activate those same neurons). Well, Horizon's widget keeps an eye on your virtual wallet (or whatever else you tag, we'll get to that crack, hang on), and then induces the effect you've chosen to activate those sense of loss neurons. Besides letting people know when hackers were filching their bank accounts, I'm not sure the thing actually saved money.

We're all pretty familiar with the host of effects Horizon stocks the Money Clip with: papercuts, pound of flesh, a thousand pricks, the tear jerk. But down near the bottom of the list is plain old weighted wallet, the sensation of actual weight to your digital money. I didn't think anything about it when the clip first came out, mind you, though I have one. Now, the first people to crack the clip's code were brokers, who tagged certain stocks or even the whole stock market to the widget. Most of them set the clip to feed weight, so they could feel the market's ups and downs. Really ride the market, as they say. Most brokers thought it gave them an advantage, a sort of intuitive sense of where things stood. One guy described feeling the markets crashing one day as "going into free fall". That got my attention.

Could Horizon have invented a stand alone zero-g sensation without knowing it? Well, turns out they knew it, they intended it for people who linked their income to credit ratio (a normal function of the clip). When your credit drain is greater than your assets and income, you feel like your underwater, weight-wise, not drowning and panicking. Oh, snap, I thought. Finally, I could have my zero-g dream. And while I've hacked my meditation suite to include weightlessness, I've got a buddy who went the other way and made a Monstrona Skins weapon that shoots out heavy. Get hit with his gun and it feels like the world has landed on your shoulders! (Try it out!) I wonder how big your bank account would have to be to feel like that?

Anyway, we've got the guide to cracking your own Money Clip, and you can download the sim and holos, all for free, right here.

Tetrahedron Mage (Indie)

[Confusion: 8.4 | User Confusion: 3.3]


Some indie developer thought it'd be cool and retro to make a dungeon crawl experience of the old 1990 days. Features full 3D graphics and 32 bit sound. The game markets its self as a "Roguelike" and fans say say that it's actually an ingenious game, despite the fact that it's based around a magic system that clearly doesn't make any sense at all: casting a spell uses up some of your knowledge about the spell and doesn't cause any detrimental effects to the player, other than how long until they can cast their next spell. Every spell effect goes off instantaneously but takes up the user's time afterwards in some kind of mental exhaustion or something.

The fact that you use up your copies of the spell is the most bizarre part of the game. You find spells laying around on the floor (and they're everywhere) and by picking it up you "know" one copy of the spell (that is, you can cast it once). Unless you pick up a higher storage value (which is in itself another strange mechanic: if these are "magic scrolls" of somekind, why can I only store 1 of each?) or pick up a "spell regeneration"...trinket. Which apparently will slowly regenerate more copies of the spell for you, until you reach your storage limit.

Despite the game's full 3D aspect, it takes no advantage of the VR system it was designed to run on, and all of the models are terribly low quality (the player himself is actually a tetrahedron). The spell effects themselves are quite spectacular, and it's never been so much fun to call down lightning to kill dragons, zombies, and giant rats (most of which are depicted by a 3D model of a letter, that is a red dragon is a giant capital letter D for some reason only known to the programmer). While most players end up learning what each of the symbols mean, it is entirely possible to not care and just blast things to pieces with your arsenal of mighty spells (until they run out--at which point you can stab your pointy corners into enemies and hope you kill them before their pointy corners kill you).

The only thing about the game that's actually true is that Death is Permanent. Though in a repeat play through you might run into an old character, as a zombie, goul, ghost, or even resurrected and willing to fight along side you, which is a little disconcerting.

Anyway, the fans of the game think its brilliant, I just don't get it. But if you want, you can get it here.

If anyone wants the game I based this off of, you can get that here

DocMorton's Language of Love: First Look

Publisher: DocMorton Stuidos (Soysoup for the Metahuman Soul, Fixerup Love)
Catergory: Linguasoft Plus
Cost Range: 1,600¥ - 9,600¥

Guys, you ever feel like your woman is speaking another language? Or howabout you ladies, does your man talk in grunts and nods like an ork? Well, DocMorton's new linguasoft program attempts to translate all that macho prehistoria into emotional mumbo jumbo so metahumankind can finally bridge the ancient divide between woman and man. But does it work? Well, if sounding like a pixie-loving keeb is what women want to hear, then Language of Love delivers, in spades. If you can stand spouting the agglomeration of Sperethiel and French blended (on liquefy) with emotional psychobabble, that is. Let's just say, it gives the mouth a good workout.

Having test driven the program on my wife, I can say three important things about it. First, you have to be in the meat for this thing to work well. Turns out the little commlink accessory isn't optional device, but a distilled sensor package from the new deploy of emotoys. Second, it takes time for the program to learn what any one woman wants to hear. Though it did better than me: in just one week it learned everything I'd learned in two years of careful study.

Finally, and most importantly, you never know what's going to come out of your mouth. Example: My wife says, "Hey sweetie, what do you want for dinner?" Now, my typical response is, "Meh, whatever," and I'm pretty sure that's what I intended to say - but that's not how DocMorton translated it. What I said was, "Oh, my belet-delara, my tastes are piqued for the Chateau Bandeaux." WTF? Chateau Bandeaux, the 250 nuyen per plate with the six hour wait restaurant? She tells me that's a little expensive, and I try to agree, but instead I say, "It's a small price to pay for an evening with you." Argh! And don't even try to argue with your girl when this thing's active, you'll just agree with her.

Corporations have been trying to make money off heartbreak since forever, and the new slew of tools they're offering to ease that gap are about as effective as love potions ever were. However, if you're the type who has Soysoup for the Metahuman Soul on your harddrive, then nothing I say will stop you from downloading this bad boy. Except maybe, before you press Confirm, consider putting the cred to a real romantic getaway. It'll be just as effective at winning her heart, and a little easier on the jawbone.

[Final Score: 3.3 | User Score: 5.2]

Similar programs: Evo's Heart2Heart, the Zeiss Liebes-Anschluss 24, Regency's ToughTalk, and the Shiawase Amotion Plus

The Martian Gauntlet: Valles Marineris (Evo Simultaion Studios)

[Score: 7.6 | User Score 7.4]

So you're a bored rigger, tired from a long day mapping the Martian surface (or whatever it is they're doing up there), it's time to call it a night and head back to the base before the dust storms hit. What better way to unwind than howling down a massive canyon with a couple of your best chummers and redlined engines? It's clear from the game's intense rez and dynamite response that these riggers logged many an hour doing just that in the Valles Marineris, the longest canyon on Mars. The game is amazing in its technical mastery, probably the smoothest rigging translation ever produced. Even my rigger pal agrees the simsense is realistic, down to the odd gravity and feedback. Real right down to the pangs and stings of scratching up your ride on the rocky terrain.

The immersive gets a little old after a few thousand runs, even when you activate in the opposition and challenges. Getting all the engine tweaks and mods keeps you pumping away long after the gauntlet becomes a looping red blur. Evo's promising biannual expansions, but it's hard to see what they can expand on... New vehicles, new mods, new tracks?

What caught my eye was the AR companion game we kept hearing about, and now finally have a teaser for. ULAV racers, OMG. They look so insanely dangerous, I can't wait to get my hands on one. How fast isn't known, Evo's tight on the final design, and their partner, Cyberspace Designs, is even more closed mouth. But if the teaser is accurate, we're talking fast with a capital Trouble. Can't wait! They floated a price at the last press conference: over 2,000 nuyen. And whether that's set in stone or just to test the markets, it's not cheap. I imagine a lot of broken hearts and a few broken piggy banks as these bad boys start crashing in street races and AR rinks, but still...

Evo announced something else when they gave that press conference. They announced the tournament's Grand Prize. Now, we all know the regional prizes, small soy nuts in the tournament scene. And we all knew they'd been planning something big for the Grand Prize finalists, something big enough to arrest people suspected of leaking information. But who would have guessed they were giving them control rig cyberware installed at an Evo deltaware clinic! Dates for all this and rules are suspiciously inconspicuous, but we'll keep you updated as they come in.

Sandman Sleepaid (Mesa ARTech)

[Headache 9.0 | User Headache 6.5]

When Mesa designed Sandman, they were probably hoping to cure (or just curb) the epidemic of insomnia plaguing more than just the Pueblos. Simsense Induced Sleep Deprivation can lead to serious health conditions and is suspected of causing hundreds of accidents - in addition to the hundreds of support groups it's spawned. Their hearts might have been in the right place, but they didn't count on teens slotting Sandman all day like some kind of new fashion drug.

That's of course exactly what's happened. Kids all over are "daydreaming" as it's called, and it's causing accidents and issues everywhere - along with spawning yet more support group pollution. There's even a purported BTL version of the software, though I can't imagine what it's over-peeking.

One thing I can say is that Sandman does its job. Even a few minutes after slamming some extra-strength soykof, the soothing feed has my eyes drooping and feet dragging. Mesa coded an auto stop to make sure people could wake up in the morning; but that's the first thing kids cracked. Never mind the why, how do they resist the lulling effects of Sandman to walk around their schools, homes and parks in a semi-stupor?

It's not just youthful exuberance, I can tell you that. Mixing Sandman with common stimulants, amphetamines, and simsense like Alert! seems to be the most common method; though there's a disturbing new trend of kids mixing flipside and Sandman. The DEA has started pushing to ban all sleepaid simsense, saying it's causing more harm as a gateway drug than in helping people. Opponents, including Mesa, claim (probably correctly) that kids will simply switch to pills if the simsense is outlawed, and are calling for more education on simsense abuse. Of course, simsense abuse is what got us here in the first place...

Slum Buster (Indie)

[Sadness 7.0 | User Sadness 5.8]

Slum Buster is one of those odd games that no one's quite sure where it came from, where it's going, or really what it's about. Every level is a logic puzzle solved by performing one of two actions with game elements. What results these two actions result in from these game elements depends entirely on the level being played and the element in question.

Levels rang from easy (kill that thing with your gun to proceed) to infuriatingly complex (shoot that with your gun, then use the other....tool/action you have to activate it, which gives you an item that allows you to fall more slowly so you can spin the windmill which raises the water level in the area, get wet and you lose the outfit (it makes you into a witch with a broom, go figure) so that you can go back to the other end of the level, shoot your gun at the water which makes a water spout throw you into the air up to a platform you couldn't reach by jumping.

And later on the same outfit can be put to a different use: sweeping away piles of sand which uncovers more interacables, or acts as a switch! (Sand in some places is covering some kind of air valve that when free of sand moves a wall into an "open" position and when covered with sand pushes it back into a "closed" position. The rules of the game seem to change with every level, though never more than one or two things are modified at any given time, so tools still have recognizable use from level to level.

Levels groups seem to alter back and forth between a "light" side and a "dark" side, the light side can fly in any direction and is unbound and has merely the two tools available to the player to solve puzzles, while the dark side is the platformer with temporary collectible tools. Beyond that the game appears to have some story about the main character getting out his depression and getting a life.

Social commentary? We're not sure.

Parody of Glum Buster.

Fortune Kookie says: You hotter on Pico (file under privacy violation)

[Violation: 8.0 | User Violation: 4.2]

By the time you hear the cookie crack, your status updates, your profile, your blog, and even your news feeds have all been scanned by this once innocuous pastry turned haruspex. After gorging on spongy soy noodles in a salty soy sauce, I don't need my fortune cookie reminding me to watch my weight with Weight Watchers Witch's Brew, the only beer that magically makes you lose weight. Can't we just have some pleasant little bon mot or proverb and leave it at that? You don't need to match-up my religion with my catechism, either. I didn't even know Pyrrhonism had catechisms.

It's one thing for subscribers of X-Horoscope, who've agreed (and even pay!) to have the entrails of their daily lives splayed out and examined by the clinical expert systems at Renraku or MCT, and, hell, we've all learned to deal with the intrusive ads attempting to induce our consumer desires, but can't we draw a line at memenetic desserts? Please!

► Used to be a great way to send messages, 'till the secret got out, natch. The only brand in town is LaChoy; every noodle stand from the Sound to the Salish has 'em, and as a fortune cookie factory, they didn't need the best trix security. Slip a little message into the personalizing code tree, have it look for something random, but not, and voila: anonymous messaging anywhere in the city. Fantastic... until it wasn't. 这就是生活
► Demongoddess