The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Ouch.

I mean really, ouch.

Hello? People? Can we stop with the fucking rehashing for cash thing? Pretty please?

Ahem. Righty. Far be it from me to quash a potential cash cow. If people wanna make money and follow the same damned formula over and over again coz it works, well, I suppose that's the American way. Look at all the movies we're exposed to nowadays, they all follow the same basic theme of /horrible evil/ versus /cocky, maverick good/. And we continue to watch 'em, even though we know how they're going to end, coz they're entertaining as hell. People get shot, the hero gets laid, muscles and breasts flex in eye-catching ways. We don't feel like we've wasted our cash because we're visually stimulated for over an hour and when we leave the theatre, we feel like our adrenal glands have been working double overtime.

However, White Wolf doesn't have the same advantage. They're working with a text-based medium. Occasionally they can throw in an impressive piece of art-work to 'enhance' their general theme (and give the sex-deprived gaming dorks an idea of what a woman under 200 lbs looks like), but for the most part they have to rely on language to hook their audience.

Kindred of the East gave the audience a guide to, well, vampires in the East...or something. I mean, we find out that vampires can go out in the sun at various times if they're wearing the right sort of sunblock, they rely on some sort of energy force to power their...powers, and their disciplines just happen to be similiar to their Western counterparts. I zoned out, however, when I saw that White Wolf had done very little except plagerize a bunch of Japanese Cartoons and massacre a few formerly elegant Japanese mythos.

Not to sound preachy, but White Wolf should either stick to brooding, whining goth types as subjects or they should remain true to the ethnic cultures they choose to write about. Kindred of the East had so many glaring cultural stereotypes within it that I felt like I was listening to a history lecture on Asia from a guy who was drawing his entire pool of knowledge from Bruce Lee films.

Did I like anything about the book? Let's see. Idiotic stereotypes and regurgitated material from previous books aside, I felt that the art-work was worth looking at. I ripped out most of the pages with funky art and tacked them to my wall when I found out I couldn't get a refund. But even then, the pictures were far below the usual White Wolf standards. The art wasn't anywhere on par with that of Wraith the Oblivion 2nd ed. or VtM 2nd ed. Hell, even Freak Legions came across as being more aesthetic, and their artwork was purposefully hyperbolic and comic booky.

Don't waste your money. If someone tries to sell you this book, beat them down and kill their parents for ever having spawned such a waste of skin mutha-fucker.

Style: 1 (Unintelligible)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

Kindred of The East
Author: Herbert Dillard Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Line: World of Darkness Page count: 200 Capsule Review by Charlie Merchant on 10/13/99. Genre tags: Modern_day Vampire Asian/Far_East	Ouch. I mean really, ouch. Hello? People? Can we stop with the fucking rehashing for cash thing? Pretty please? Ahem. Righty. Far be it from me to quash a potential cash cow. If people wanna make money and follow the same damned formula over and over again coz it works, well, I suppose that's the American way. Look at all the movies we're exposed to nowadays, they all follow the same basic theme of /horrible evil/ versus /cocky, maverick good/. And we continue to watch 'em, even though we know how they're going to end, coz they're entertaining as hell. People get shot, the hero gets laid, muscles and breasts flex in eye-catching ways. We don't feel like we've wasted our cash because we're visually stimulated for over an hour and when we leave the theatre, we feel like our adrenal glands have been working double overtime. However, White Wolf doesn't have the same advantage. They're working with a text-based medium. Occasionally they can throw in an impressive piece of art-work to 'enhance' their general theme (and give the sex-deprived gaming dorks an idea of what a woman under 200 lbs looks like), but for the most part they have to rely on language to hook their audience. Kindred of the East gave the audience a guide to, well, vampires in the East...or something. I mean, we find out that vampires can go out in the sun at various times if they're wearing the right sort of sunblock, they rely on some sort of energy force to power their...powers, and their disciplines just happen to be similiar to their Western counterparts. I zoned out, however, when I saw that White Wolf had done very little except plagerize a bunch of Japanese Cartoons and massacre a few formerly elegant Japanese mythos. Not to sound preachy, but White Wolf should either stick to brooding, whining goth types as subjects or they should remain true to the ethnic cultures they choose to write about. Kindred of the East had so many glaring cultural stereotypes within it that I felt like I was listening to a history lecture on Asia from a guy who was drawing his entire pool of knowledge from Bruce Lee films. Did I like anything about the book? Let's see. Idiotic stereotypes and regurgitated material from previous books aside, I felt that the art-work was worth looking at. I ripped out most of the pages with funky art and tacked them to my wall when I found out I couldn't get a refund. But even then, the pictures were far below the usual White Wolf standards. The art wasn't anywhere on par with that of Wraith the Oblivion 2nd ed. or VtM 2nd ed. Hell, even Freak Legions came across as being more aesthetic, and their artwork was purposefully hyperbolic and comic booky. Don't waste your money. If someone tries to sell you this book, beat them down and kill their parents for ever having spawned such a waste of skin mutha-fucker. Style: 1 (Unintelligible) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

Kindred of The East