61 FPS Farewell Review: Rune Factory Frontier (Wii)
It’s a bit odd that my final post for 61 FPS is a game review rather than my farewell post, but I had already committed myself to doing this review and I’ll be dipped if I’m going to let it slide.
Rune Factory Frontier is the third installment in the Rune Factory series, which itself is a spin-off of the Harvest Moon series. Don’t let that skew your impression of what these games offer though. The Rune Factory titles each have decently robust action adventure elements to them along with the usual farming, crafting, and courting. However, where Rune Factory 1 and 2 feel like games with lots of unrelated stuff to do in them, Frontier ties all of those elements together into a very satisfying cohesive whole.
Rune Factory Frontier is a massive game packed to the gills with content. It’s a game that will keep you busy every moment you play while also setting up long term goals and big payoffs. It is a game that wears many hats: dungeon exploring action adventure, time and resource management, climbing social ladders, but ties every last bit together. This is an adventure game where the hero must truly be self sufficient. Think you can just waltz into the Adventurer’s Store and buy some magic potions, anti-dragon armor and a sword of troll slaying? Or go out and kill a few goblins and wolves for the money they drop to pay your way? Not so here.
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Tags: amber ahlborn, rune factory, the 61FPS review, wii
The 61FPS Review: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time
Echoes of Time, Square-Enix’s latest entry into their Crystal Chronicles franchise, continues the unique multiplayer route pioneered by the 2004 GameCube game; but this time around, the focus is on a wireless cross-platform experience between the Wii and the DS instead of multiple Game Boy Advances tethered to a console by link cables. 61FPS bloggers Amber Ahlborn and Bob Mackey took a stab at playing this action RPG online together for the purposes of this review, and found that the Wii’s online capabilities (or lack thereof) hampered what would have been an otherwise great experience.
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Tags: amber ahlborn, bob mackey, crystal chronicles, ds, Final Fantasy, final fantasy crystal chronicles: echoes of time, the 61FPS review, wii
John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself. 
Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.
Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.
Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines.
Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.
Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.
Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.
