Reviews Without Pity

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In honor of Gary Gygax’s passing, I think it only appropriate that I return to activity with a gaming review.  Today, I’d like to have a look at one of my favorite online games, Star Wars: Dark Horizons.

I’ll freely admit that I’m a world-class geek. When it comes down to my favorite things, role-playing games and Star Wars are both up there. Combine the two effectively and I’m in Heaven. This might explain how Dark Horizons managed to take an initially skeptical gamer and pull him into a lasting addiction. Yes, folks, the game is really that good. I hardly ever grant a five-star review, but it’s well deserved this time.

Dark Horizons is a MUSH. Simply put, that’s a text-based game, which means you’ll have to dust off the ol’ brain and fire up your imagination. The lack of graphics hardly deters from the overall experience. In fact, I think the reason text-based gaming (MUDs, MUSHes, MUXes, etc) has persisted after all these years is because the focus is more upon the experience, and less upon the pictures. Give it a chance before you knock it. The level of creativity this format allows can make all the difference. For the moment, however, let us discuss the specifics of the game.

Remember all of those crazy things in the Star Wars prequels? Anakin building C-3PO, nefarious taxation of backwater planets, a dramatic love story between a painted-up queen and a melodramatic psychopath? On Dark Horizons, none of it ever happened. That’s right, there’s no Jar Jar Binks. While Dark Horizons is technically set in the same era as the prequels, the game follows its own path, telling a story which strives to embrace a more Star Warsian feel. Oh, the Emperor and his Empire will still come to power, and Darth Vader will still be kicking tail. How we get there is another matter entirely, and that evolution has been very entertaining to date.

Dark Horizons’ developers try to make certain that every player shines in their own part of the story. That said, though, one of the greatest aspects of the game is the flexibility of character creation. You can really play anything you desire, so long as it fits with the setting. Want to play a bounty hunter? No problem. Senator? You bet. Virtually any type of civilian, corporate and military role is up for the taking. With the right choices and a bit of luck, you might even be able to play a trained wielder of the Force.

The game employs a vast array of coded systems to bring the Star Wars universe to life. There’s code in place for combat, politics, and combat. Space travel and ship-to-ship engagements are both quite elaborate and full of life. In fact, I’d like to specifically indicate some of the large scale battles I’ve been involved with throughout the game’s events to date. These have all had a truly epic feel. With the element of unpredictability provided by coded combat and character professions, you really can’t predict how they’ll turn out, but such battles have been fairly commonplace. If you like combat, but can still portray a character, you’ll feel at home.

You really couldn’t ask for a better group of role-players than those present on the game, nor staff members. Most everyone is eager to participate in welcoming you to the game. Finding others to play with isn’t challenging in the least, with a minimum of 20 people logged in at most times of the day. The game simply continues to grow on a weekly basis, a testament to its quality in times when other MUs of its type are dying off.

In short, come and give the place a try. It’s more than worth the few minutes it’ll take to get logged in. If you’ve never played a text-based game before, here are some links to help you.

SimpleMU Client: http://simplemu.onlineroleplay.com

Game Address:  starwars.isunlimited.net port 2001

SimpleMU is basically your gateway into this (and many other) games. Once you have it up and running, go to File, then New Connection Wizard. It’ll guide you through the rest. Once you have the game’s connection screen up, just type ‘connect guest’ to have a look around!

I’d like to take a break from reviewing to mourn the passing of a man beloved by geeks everywhere. Gary Gygax was the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons, a role-playing game which continues to entertain and inspire millions.

I’ve never met Mr. Gygax, but his works had a profound impact on my life. They encouraged me to imagine new possibilities and to pursue scholarly hobbies. The act of playing D&D showed me that one could be intellectual without having to be boring or stale. In short, the game was salvation for a nerd like myself, offering joy throughout what might’ve otherwise been a dreary youth.

Gary may be gone, but he’s immortalized in the memories of his fans. Few people can be credited with having invented an entirely new method of storytelling, one which has inspired everyone from the individual player to entire gaming companies.

He will be missed.

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In what has become a world of high-end names and million dollar productions, I find it refreshing to try games developed by smaller, independent studios. Today, we’ll be looking at Avernum 3, by Spiderweb Software.

The Avernum series is a remake of an older trio of games, Blades of Exile 1-3. It follows the adventures of your characters in the subterranean caverns of Avernum, where the tyrannical Empire of the surface imprisons criminals and others who don’t fit in with their ideal order. It was assumed that such people would simply die in the labyrinthine tunnels, but the opposite has been true. The Avernites have built a thriving society in spite of the Empire’s cruelty.

In Avernum 3, the Avernites find themselves in a position of opportunity. They’ve discovered a route to the surface world and have set up a fortress there. With hopes of settling, they send your characters on an expedition to survey the wilderness just beyond the point of emergence. Unfortunately, all is not well beneath the sun. Mysterious plagues of monsters are assailing all corners of the Empire, including the area of Fort Emergence. Ironically, the Empire now needs help from the same creative, innovative minds they’d exiled into Avernum.

This entry in the Avernum series is different in that the underground world doesn’t see much use, except for a small section at the game’s beginning. Instead, your adventurers spend most of their time on the surface, where they explore the Empire and complete various quests. This is a nice change of pace. It’s not that the subterranean setting wasn’t interesting - it was - but we now get to see the lands the Avernites were robbed of.

If you like large, open-ended RPGs, you’re really going to enjoy Avernum 3. The game has more than enough content to keep you playing for a long while. What I really liked is that the game has so many towns and other features which aren’t necessary to the plotline. They’re just there to add color and be explored. You don’t see that much in modern games, which insist upon holding your hand and guiding you along a narrow path.

Character creation is highly customizable. It does use classes, but you can create your own if you don’t like the choices already available. Statistics are point-based, and all characters can raise all stats and skills. If you wanted, you could have your soldier learn a bit about spellcasting, or your cleric dabble in picking locks. Some classes spend more points to raise things than others, of course. Such a system opens up many possibilities for development, and really allows you to make the character your own.

I really like how learning spells is handled in this game. Each spell has three levels of effectiveness. In order to learn and improve spells, you must seek someone out who can teach you. These people can either be in easy and obvious places, or in backwater towns where you might not think to look. Most third level spells require that you find them in tomes stashed away in dungeons and other locales. It’s kind of a subquest to find them all, not that you need every spell at third level in order to finish the game.

The verdict: buy it! The graphics are dated, yes, but give the game itself a chance. I think you’ll enjoy it, and you’ll be supporting a great company at the same time.

Where To Buy: Click Here

As interested as I am in politics, I couldn’t resist taking a look at the results of yesterday’s primaries. If you’re not from the US or are otherwise unfamiliar with the process, the primaries are when each state votes toward a party’s nominee for the Presidential campaign. You will eventually have a Democratic nominee and a Republican one, who run against each other to decide who’ll be the next President of the United States.

I’ll admit that I’m a Democrat, and a fairly liberal one. Barack Obama has received my support for some time now. I believe he can provide the country with a much needed breath of fresh air, a new approach. Change for a rapidly changing world, you might say.

It appears that residents of certain states disagree with me, if yesterday’s results are any indication! It was commonly accepted before Tuesday that Obama had a large lead, and that Clinton would have to win big despite those assumptions in order to stay in the race. There was doubt that she could do it, given the polling, but the voters came through for her and broke Obama’s winning streak.

Clinton ended up taking Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Obama took Vermont. This still leaves Obama in the lead by 101 delegates, with a candidate needing 2025 in order to win the nomination. Things are really tight, and it looks like they’ll continue to be so until the Pennsylvania primaries come around (at the least). Some sort of break really is needed, though. As we run out of states to hold primaries in, and the gap stays too tight for one candidate to be nominated, we increase the chances of having a brokered (read: negotiated in a back room) nomination.

On the Republican end of things, McCain has pretty much snapped up his party’s nomination. An invitation to the White House from President Bush, most likely to endorse, only solidifies the fact. I don’t support him for the Presidency at all, but I must admit that he’s made an impressive comeback. A year ago, his campaign was on the edge of bankruptcy and his staff was dropping out. Everyone assumed his attempt at the big chair was seeing its final days. I don’t know whether the Republicans decided to rally behind him for lack of a more attractive option, or what.

Exciting times ahead. Please, remember to vote if your state hasn’t held its primary already!

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Today, we’ll be looking at a very nice product for those of you wanting to make some money online. It’s an eBook set called My Secret Articles, written by Steven Wagenheim.

I’ve mentioned how much respect I have for Mr. Wagenheim in a prior review of mine. He’s a good, honest businessman who doesn’t crush peoples’ hopes with a lot of empty promises. You’ll notice on most of his sites that the income potential tends to be both modest and realistic, which is a great thing. Most people will not strike it rich on the internet, but it’s certainly possible to make reasonable money if you know what you’re doing.

If you’re entirely new to making money online, then My Secret Articles is a superb product with which to educate yourself. Over the course of the 98-volume set, Steven Wagenheim guides readers through pretty much everything he knows about earning cash over the internet. Yes, that’s right, 98 volumes. When the product’s website claims that it contains over 1000 pages of information, it’s not kidding. It’s actually closer to 2000. You might think this is excessive, but there’s never such a thing as knowing too much when it comes to risking (and profiting) in an online venture.

I can’t possibly provide a point-by-point review of this eBook set, as doing so would consume many times the size of my front page! That said, I can tell you that Mr. Wagenheim examines a wide variety of critical issues in the course of this set. The earliest volumes start off with the basics, which people really don’t focus enough on. You’re offered guidance on how to choose the type of business that’s right for you, which ventures are scams and which stand to profit, and how to set up a web site. He then goes into great detail about the various methods of advertising, which range from free and simple to complex and costly. As with most of Steven’s writings, he builds over time, starting you out slowly before gradually escalating into advanced opportunities and techniques.

One of my favorite volumes in the set, which I wanted to mention here, is the one about marketing blunders. Steven reserves this section to explain some painfully common mistakes which have toppled more than one marketer’s dreams. These are things which might seem obvious to you and me, but which so many people do anyhow. Just getting this stuff out of the way will do more than enough favors for your venture to have made buying the set worthwhile.

The volumes go on to cover just about every other facet of making money online. If you’ve heard of it or can imagine it, it’s probably there. Advertising, different types of marketing, spotting scams, technical info (such as Search Engine Optimization), and even highly detailed courses in writing advertisements and articles. I really can’t say enough about how much useful material you get in this product. It hasn’t been inflated with a lot of fluff or useless chatter. Everything here is information of good, practical use to anyone who’d like to earn some bucks from home.

As a bonus, you get a free membership to My Secret Articles for one year, during which you’ll be sent four new volumes each month. That’s in addition to everything I’ve discussed above. You’ll also get free copies of Honest Income Program, which I’ve reviewed on RWP, and Honest Income Program Advanced. Score!

Steven provides 24/7 support with his products. From personal experience, I can tell you that he’s extremely diligent about responding and has never sent me anything resembling a form letter.

To summarize: Get it. Don’t wait, just pick up the set before it goes up in price. Regardless of your experience level, there’s something for everyone in My Secret Articles.

Where To Buy: Click Here

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Yes, it’s a rare 5-star rating! Today, we’ll be having a look at Nonni’s Biscotti Cioccolati.

Nonni’s sells baked goods with an Italian theme. As far as I can tell (and I may be wrong), their product line is comprised solely of biscotti and panetini. It’s a small selection, but that’s okay. The company sticks with what it knows and does best.

In case you don’t know, biscotti is a traditional type of Italian cookie. They tend to be both crunchier and drier than American cookies, as well as offering a subtler taste. Anise is a popular flavor, but there are many more varities. In the case of the cookie being reviewed, you might have guessed that we’re discussing chocolate.

Nonni’s Cioccolati biscotti are hands down my favorite cookie. The cookie itself is sweet without going overboard and carries a hint of anise. It’s laced with generous amounts of crunchy almonds, which are also sprinkled on top in tinier pieces. The long, flat bottom of the biscotti is dipped in bittersweet chocolate. It’s the real deal, not any of that fake mockolate junk that’s making its way into the dessert and snack markets.

That brings me to the nutritional content of the biscotti. Obviously, a cookie is not health food, but I really do want to applaud the product in this area. This is one of the few cookies I’ve reviewed where I actually recognize every ingredient. They even contain real butter and eggs. Imagine that! Crunching the numbers on a serving of one biscotti: 4.5g total fat, 2g saturated fat, 110 calories, 20mg cholesterol, 70mg sodium, 16g carbs, 9g sugars, 2g protein. Overall, a very reasonable profile for an all natural, indulgent snack. The lack of hydrogenated oils makes it even better.

I would strongly encourage you to go and try a box of these biscotti when you have a chance. If you like Cioccolati, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy the other Nonni’s varieties.

Where To Buy: I purchased my box at Publix, but I’ve seen them at other stores.

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Just to be fair, I’ve decided to use today’s review to examine Tic Tacs Citrus Twist, the counterpart to yesterday’s reviewed flavor of Tic Tacs.

Having examined the brand in my last review, I won’t bore you with those details. Given the product’s name, one should not be surprised to find that it contains citrus flavors. To be more specific, this box of Tic Tacs consists of a pretty even assortment of lemon and lime mints.

I have to be honest in saying that I didn’t enjoy these. It’s not that the idea’s bad; the pairing of lemon and lime is a classic. My dislike is rooted purely in how they taste. Both offer hints of their respective citrus fruits, but they’re overshadowed by what I can only describe as a Lysol-esque note. It’s not a great thing when a candy reminds you less of lemons and more of Lemon Pledge. Well, unless you have a fetish for furniture polish.

As with most Tic Tacs, these have a medicinal aftertaste, only I found it to be much stronger with the citrus flavors. The unpleasant extent of the bitterness was almost like Listerine. It really turned me off to crunching my way through the box as I did with the Cherry Passion variety.

Nutritionally, these are pretty standard for candies of this size. The brand likes to prominently advertise that each serving (one mint) contains less than two calories. To be honest, though, a single serving of Tic Tacs doesn’t contain much of anything. No fat, no sodium, no protein, less than a half gram of carbs and sugar. To its credit, the Citrus Twist variety does contain some fruit juice in addition to artificial flavoring. It’s not a health food, but there are far worse ways to satisfy your sweet tooth.

In the end, I’d have to suggest that you go with Cherry Passion over these, if given the opportunity. To summarize: blech.

Where To Buy: I purchased mine at Walgreens, but you can probably get these mints at any grocery store.

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I apologize for the recent gap in posts. I’ve been dealing with some health issues. Without further ado, let us have a look at Tic Tacs Cherry Passion!

While my knowledge of foreign candy markets is a bit slim, I’m pretty sure Tic Tacs are sold in quite a few countries. For those who aren’t familiar, they’re tiny, capsule-shaped mints. You can usually buy a pretty generous little box of them for a buck or less in American stores.

For a long time, there were really only three consistently available Tic Tac flavors: peppermint, spearmint and orange. The company has recently done a lot to revitalize the brand by introducing some more exciting options. The most popular of the newcomers have probably been Citrus Twist (lemon and lime) and today’s star, Cherry Passion (cherry and passion fruit).

I have to say that I’m pretty fond of the pairing of flavors in this product. They’re tasty, and they really do pack a punch for being so tiny. You can even mix the two different Tic Tacs in the box and still produce a nice combo. I liked that I could just pop a couple out of the box for quick, guilt-free satisfaction of my sweet tooth.

What provoked the lower rating was a problem many candies have: they don’t taste like what they advertise. That’s odd, since real fruit juice is used as an ingredient, but I just don’t think they taste like cherry or passion fruit. The former is that artificial ‘red’ flavor we all know, while the latter is more reminiscent of lemon to me. As well, like other kinds of Tic Tacs, they have a vaguely medicinal aftertaste at the end.

Nutritionally speaking, Tic Tacs are about what you’d expect for a candy of their diminutive size. No fat, no sodium, no protein. Less than a half gram of carbs and sugar. The packaging prominently notes that each mint contains less than two calories. Pretty much empty space from a dietary standpoint. To the brand’s credit, I recognize most of the ingredients on the label, and there’s even real fruit juice used to flavor the product.

Ultimately, I have to say that I’ll probably buy these again. They’re a satisfying little treat for the price, which is hard to beat.

Where To Buy: I purchased mine at Walgreens, but you could probably pick these up at any grocery store.

I’d like to take a moment to offer my heartfelt condolences to the victims of yesterday’s NIU shootings. You, along with many other recent victims of this type of crime, most certainly did not deserve to bear witness to such horrific acts. This has to stop.

A common trend in these shootings has been that the gunmen were mentally disturbed well before they actually carried out their attacks. In the case of the NIU shooter, Steven Kazmierczak, it now appears that he’d been on anti-depressants and turned south when he stopped taking them. We in America need to have a much closer look at the state of our mental health care system, before more people like him slip through the cracks and claim innocent lives.

Clearly, with this rash of shootings, our society can’t afford to ignore the problem any longer. An essential first step would be to shed the stigma associated with mental health issues. I, myself suffer from anxiety disorder. I know how our culture treats people who are mentally impaired, on any level. That alone keeps a lot of folks from getting help. Change on this front must begin with a shift in public opinion.

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Sorry about doing two food reviews in a row, but I really feel that my latest discovery is deserving of the attention. Today, I’ll be taking a look at Triscuit Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil.

I can’t imagine that many people don’t know what a Triscuit is. If you’re one of those folks, the best way to describe it is as a whole grain wheat cracker. They take these thin little fibers of wheat, layer them together and then bake them into a crunchy, square cracker. Triscuit is probably one of Kraft’s most famous brands. They didn’t come in so many different flavors when I was a kid, though!

Upon opening my box of Triscuit Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil, I found that I didn’t get a very strong whiff of the seasoning. There was a peppery scent, but I really had to stick my nose in there to pick it up.

By this point, I was expecting a dull, flavorless cracker, but I’m pleased to say that I was very wrong on that count. Not only does the flavor come through, it packs a punch I wouldn’t normally associate with a Triscuit. The bite of the olive oil is almost overpowered by the pepper, which is there in enough quantity to heat up my tongue a bit. You can actually see the little specks of cracked pepper woven in with the wheat threads.

My box of Triscuits definitely delivered on crunch. I particularly liked this flavor when paired with a little cheese - cheddar, in my case. The cracked pepper and olive oil both held up well, even when the cracker was used to hold a topper. It’s not the absolute best snack I’ve ever had, but this is one I’d probably keep in the cabinets for regular noshing.

Nutritionally, I don’t think you can get a much better snack out of a box. A 6-piece serving of Triscuit Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil contains 4g of fat, 0.5g saturated fat, 120 calories, 0mg cholesterol, 140mg sodium, 20g carbs, and 3g dietary fiber. The box makes a point of noting that a serving of these Triscuits gives you 22g of whole grain, which is 45% of the minimum daily amount the US Department of Health thinks we should eat. Finally, the product contains no hydrogenated oils.

Where To Buy: I purchased my box of Triscuit Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil at Publix.