Rupture: Do you miss me, Miss Misery like you say you do?

A long time ago I played various MMOs such as Ultima Online, Everquest, FFXI, etc.  With hours upon hours of time spent interacting with people and building odd gaming relationships, some of which were people that were not only good at the game we were playing but also very nice and fun people to play with, I had a very hard time moving from one MMO to another.  

On one hand you spend a boatload of time investing in levels, equipment, etc.  You also spend a lot of time with building and keeping relationships.  To up and leave a game completely means you not only loose all the digital stuff you've acquired, you also loose those digitally made friendships.

Rupture is a new great way to keep and search for those relationships you might of once had.  Rupture is in all essence a social networking site much like myspace, facebook.  What is nice and different about it is the fact that it interlaces many different online gaming communities such as Xbox-live, WoW, EA online, etc spanning different exclusive companies that wanted to do the same thing but were limited by only reaching within their own grasps.  

Rupture pulls achievements and constantly tracks progression of your MMO characters, new achievements and the ability to challenge people to new created achievements open to everyone or closed between friends.  What's nice is the associated and usually very different gamertag/character names all get pooled into your one Rupture name.  All of your old gamertag/character names can be searched for and sorted depending on the game as long as you input them.  Only know a guy by a single character in WoW?  Search for that name and as long as he's put it up, it will be found and you can see that he also plays HALO 3 a ton under the xbox-live gamertag Killerorkilla.  

The best part is, it's all free.  Eventually I believe that Rupture will try to pull cash from advertisements but for now it's completely clear of the clicking garbage and already set for use in its beta phase.  

I'm not sure what new annoyances will come out of this new site except for being a larger target across multiple games but hopefully the annoyances are all minimized and kept from spawning new scams.

So if you're out there and you want to track down your old pals, sign up on Rupture today.      

Elliott Smith - Miss Misery

Plants Vs Zombies: Giant X's on your eyes, and with your half of the ransom you bought some sweet sweet sweet sunflowers

And again with the living dead, Plants Vs Zombies from PopCap Games isn't your usual change your pants scared-dy cat type of zombie killer thriller.  PvZ is another puzzle type game comically making light of flesh eating zombies much to the appreciation of Zombies Ate My Neighbors fans.

This fast, easy to learn game is another hard to shake addiction.  You know that darn PopCap company sitting on that dim light corner of the Internet is holding.  So if you have a tiny taste of brains, PopCap is ready for the sleight of hand exchange with a smile.

The point is quite simple.  Your job is to use garden friendly plants with various abilities to stop different types of zombies from getting into your house.  Battles are fought around your house with a 5 lane highway/lawn/grid.  Using the sun as a system of currency, you spend points placing various plants while collecting a constant stream of sunny income and waiting for cooldowns of your plants to be able to place them again.  If a zombie reaches a plant he will begin to devour it with the ultimate goal of making it across your lawn and into his newly acquired dining room.

The game plays out like other strategy type games where utilizing resources early on determines ease of success later.  It also becomes a very fast paced game as there are many things to keep your mouse clicking(sun chips, money, and plants).  This is probably where the "jonesing" for more comes into play as wave upon wave of zombies pour in and a constant tending of your garden needs to be maintained to stay alive.

Additional mini-games and game modes such as zombie bowling and survival become available as you chip away at the adventure mode.   There are also extra challenges as the adventure mode is finished such as replaying with random plant sets and purchasing speciality items with all your money earned.  

If you like the constant struggle of the living versus the living dead, fun puzzle/strategy games, or if you are just looking to find another game that anyone and everyone can play, Plants Vs Zombies is a sound choice.  So get planting.

Rating: 6.0 {on a scale of -10 to 10, 5 being a must play}

Low - Sunflower

E3:09 Highlights

Here are some of the not so French tickles that I caught while spending a little too much time staring at Olivia Munn and the rest of the G4 gang.  

EA - Besides the typical sports games of yore here's a look at what I hope is not just Star Wars Galaxies 2.  Yes, a new MMO set in the Scifi universe that all Scifi fans know:  Star Wars the Old Republic.  Since it is made by the creators of KOTOR, the big push for this game is the storyline and questlines touting consequences for every choice made.  Also a reminder that Mass Effect 2 is on the way and what looks like all the unenjoyable portions have been removed.

Ubisoft - By first starting off on the right foot having Joel McHale initially introduce the Ubi conference, CEO Yves Guillemot spent just a handful of time on information for all of the Tom Clancy hits, Assassin's Creed 2, Red Steel 2, etc.  Instead almost all of the talk was over their new direction which is taking a vested interest in all aspects of entertainment beyond gaming.  Their first large branch-off is a 3-D game/movie combo called Avatar.  The 4 year running production is directed by James Cameron and was a project he originally had created over a decade ago but the technology was not up to his vision. Thankfully this was not a forced project made during the Deep Blue Sea era of CGI.  And for the first time in a while I will probably buy another Splinter Cell game.

Sony - Big PSP push for them with all sorts of ports and similar versions of big hits.  New Metal Gear Solid game for PS3 (exclusive one for Xbox360 too), some more Final Fantasy videos but overall the only half thrill I got was watching some God of War 3 gameplay.  It looked smooth, brutal, and visually amazing.  

Nintendo - One big surprise was a new 4 person co-op 2D Mario Bros. game for the Wii.  It plays out much like the gamecube/DS game Zelda 4 Swords.   Interesting but this again is another example of a Wii game needing more than just yourself to please you and others.  The one surprise was a short video of the next upcoming Metroid game due out in 2010.  This shows a bit more of the old 3rd person viewpoint that fans enjoy.

Microsoft - Modern Warfare 2 as well as Mass Effect 2 were a few of the 360 delights.  Both were large improvements over their originals and hopefully will both be released before I make out a Christmas wish list.  The one big showoff Microsoft accomplished which was above and beyond any other of the console press conferences was Project Natal.  Natal is an additional little device that resembles a web cam and microphone combined.  It doesn't seem like it would be that interesting until it is understood that it is a gaming device requiring no controller but your body.  Some amazing features of Natal are voice AND facial recognition, video conferencing, dashboard browsing controlled by your body motions, etc.  Here is an example of what looks like a game of sorts called Milo which is a little interactive AI program.