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CC Interviewsby Chiyu
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A new beginThe newsletter has been revived. From now on it will be every three months (Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4). This should be np. The most important change is that from now on there will be little articles about each division (written by the GameLeader), reflecting back on the last three months. As you can see, the reviews and the interviews are still there. Have fun reading it all! (PS: check out www.mikkoku.craccoclan.com =D)Written by Chiyu, 5 October 2006. Art contestThe new CC Art Contest 2006 is being held at the moment. Everyone can send in his or her (self made) CC Logo and at the end of the year we will vote for the champion! Note that you don't neccesarily have to be a CC member in order to make a CC logo and join the contest ;). In my opinion, there have already been some pretty nice submissions. Go here for the topic at the forums.
On a side note, there's also another 'interesting' voting contest going on at the forums which you should check out. Go to "Voting Tournament" and vote on your favourite Shaney quotes! Written by Chiyu, 5 October 2006. Game Reviewsby AnakinFifa 2007Release dates: 25 September 2006 29 September 2006 3 October 2006
As always, fifa releases its annual populair soccer game fifa. The past years, fifa has been dominated by Pro Evolution Soccer, based on gameplay, however Fifa is and stays a classic. Recently EA signed fifa's contract with licences and such to 2014 and signed for the unreal 3 engine. It's quite possible we will finaly see a new fifa engine in fifa 2008, based on the unreal 3 engine!!! We had fifa 98, 99 where it all started, these are the classic fifa and for some still the best these days, yet when the new fifa's came or when PES came, people where starting that it was not realistic, soccer games these days is no longer, pass, pass, pass, run forward, shoot, goal. Tactics, build up play and finishing are now all included. Fifa 99 was cool, 2000 was a mere upgrade, 2001 sucked, 2002 was ok, 2003 ruled, 2004 sucked( though it had a amazingly cool football fussion mode with total club manager ), 2005 was ok, 2006 sucked and what about fifa 2007 ? Every year we are looking forward to EA's fifa demo. Previous year there was a lot of commotion during the demo, they said it would be released within a few days and it eventually took them 2 weeks longer, but the long awaited demo finaly arrived and it sucked. My first 3 games ended up within a 0-0, a result which USUALY seem to get when I play a soccer game for the first time within the first match. This year was a new chance to change that fact, and I certainly did, within 8 seconds i had already scored in the new fifa 07 demo, the match ended up in 3-1. 
The engine As far as I can mention we have seen 2 real different engines within fifa 99-2002, and 2003-2007. I always stated the blurry kits, or graphics, its much less this time, although I think the kits could still have used a double texture size instead. The crowd, looks still much less the same, they would have done a better job to take their crowd from their fifa world cup 06 game, but the crowd is now just boring with all in the same collour, while i think the crowd is a very importent graphical point within any soccer game. The grass, looks much better even though there are still some glitches to be seen on it, it gives a real soccer feeling, when you play at night, the players seem to have somewhat of a dark glow arround them, this is not really good. Also within cinematics, the fps will drop to 2/3 at ANY computer, EA hasnt done anything about this yet so far, and yet they released the game like this, fortunately there are some fixes found out by some people, nvidia users need to turn a setting off ( see www.soccergamez.nl for more details ) And that worked for me, but it is rather a unprofessional move from EA. The menus The menus, as always highly advanced within any EA game, atleast thats how they look like, their menus actually appear to be quite annoying every time. Things like "are you sure you want to save your file" and then "there is already a previous file, overwrite it" and then "the file has been saved" this means 3 clicks for just saving 1 file everytime, this is VERY annoying. The music Music, just a very few rare numbers cought my attention yet, but as always it includes a wide range of rather unknown tracks but still quite suitable music. The graphics To come back to graphics, player faces, some look like BLOCKS and the face creation is stupid aswell, instead off just assinging a pre-pared face you have to do evreything yourself, and then it always looks stupid. 
The gameplay Now we go over to gameplay, the most important thing to all soccer games, and the pure thing fifa got owned by the past years to PES. Part from an easy menu navigation, PES also had a realistic rule system, which would have the cinematic of having a player celebrating and then being dissapointed when a goal was scored within offside play, and when an player was injured the AI would actually kick the ball out off field, and when you do it, they would play the ball back to you, that's really cool and we never had seen this in fifa. In fifa we saw that you could hit the referee with the ball sometimes, or that the referee would make a wrong mistake, also that the ball was over the line and yet you was not assigned a goal, something what never happened to me in PES. Part from that we also still miss crowd cinematics to much during a game in both games. Fifa's 07 gameplay, the passing seems to be the same as always though the through passes seem to work a little better than before, and a lot more effective, wing play has definitly increased, but only when you play within 4-2-2 and not with 4-3-3, headers, feel really good right now, one off the best increasements, slidings feel also a bit better now, shooting ? feels terrible, you will have the feeling the ball doesnt go into the direction you intended it to at all, most off the times, and sometimes, when you shoot wide, it will be like 15metre wide, the gameplay has gotten better but its still far from perfect, but PES gameplay isnt any perfect yet either. The biggest increasement, imo, is the far more better noticable team skills, this was also invented within football fussion 2004, One off the best gameplay facts ever, from Sensible world of Soccer is that when you play with a 5 star team like, Manchester United, Barcelona or Real Madrid, against a 1 star team like, FC omniworld, Haarlem or any other low division club, that you are most likely to win with 6-0, while if you would play with a 1 star team against a 5 star team, you would have no chance of winning no matter how good you are, and you would most likely lose with 0-3 anyway. Though there should always be a slight chanche off 1/10 that a "suprise" result happens. I've played Swos 9 years by now and have mastered the game so much that i'm actually able to beat 5 star teams with a 1 star teams, I still don't always win, but it happens like 1/3 instead off 1/10 to me now, anyway I'm discussing fifa and not swos here. 
So yeah the difference in team skills is finally noticable, something PES still has to work on, but even fifa has gotten it far from perfect, as you know, low division clubs, tend to play defensive against strong clubs, and then you will play 0-0 or 1-0 against such clubs, while when you play against a strong club, you win with 5-0 because they play so offensive and leave so much space within their defense. The manager mode is way more fun, it did not really add more options, but it invented a real good "growing" system, just like in PES, evrey player now gets some experience after evrey game, unless its been a top match, a young player would get like +6 experience, and a old player like +2, whenever they reach 100, their abbillities will rise, At the end off a season, your younger players will clearly have their stats raised, while old players will be a little reduced. This also added a realism to the transfer fees, speaking off which, in the beginning you only get 2 chanches to sign a player, so far i had have 3 transfers periods and yet i was unable to sign any player so far, this was really annoying, i have a very small squad now, and the "fitness/tired" system, which is mainly good ofcource, is really cutting me off now. I also noticed that in your first season you can't play the European cup, at any club, this sucks. Then sounds, they have gotten some new faces, first off all, when you have a good lead at home, like 3-0 or such, and go play the ball arround, like pass back to the goalkeeper the whole time, then your crowd will go like "ole" everytime your pass reaches one of your teamates, however when you play a away match and do the same thing, you'l have the whole crowd screaming boo's at you, this also happens when you score. Thats ok, but i rather have complete silence, when you score in a away match, and the boo's should come like 10 seconds after, also you should hear a very little celebrating from a very far sound, because there are also always some "away fans" from your club. And finaly last but not least, when you are ahead with 0-4 in an away match, and the oppeonent scores, the crowd used to go all out anyway with their sounds. Now it doesnt any more, it's like "yay" instead of "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!!" now. Much better. Part from the field glitch, there still is this bug when you reach a next round within any cup on a away match, the crowd still goess all out. Conclusion Anyway Fifa 2007 is an improvement over fifa 2006 and certainly worth a go. Gameplay: 7 Graphics: 7 Sounds: 8.5 Music: 7 Replayability: 8.5 Overall: 8 Movie Reviewsby AnakinSlitherRelease: 31 March 2006
I had first seen a pic with a lot of blood worms within a newspaper and it cought my attention, then eventually 2 people (Boneman and Dx) told me that they had seen the movie and they recommended it to me. So I got the movie and watched it. It was said that it was a pretty gore movie, but yet it had some comedic style within it and that you shouldn't take it all seriously. The movie itselfs seems to be a "top-name-movie" which i mean that it falls in the caterogies off good or well-known movies, but within its caterogy it is one of the lower rankings. After actually seeing the movie, I figured this movie did have potentional, to be a good movie, but it hasn't been used by its creators. So the movie can be dissapointing for some. 
The movie itself is quite short and contains a lot of gore. Its not really directly, worth seeing or anything though. The story is that a allien worm, or something, lands on the earth, takes over a human body, fuses with another and then creates a army of worms within that body, those worms will also take over human bodies and they kinda become like zombies. *Spoilers!* (highlight to read) Whether the guy who is taken over by the worm and becomes the "boss worm" is still conscious i do not know, although he seems to be. He fuses with that woman, or something, and she becomes very fat and then explodes, releasing thousand of worms. They also take over some of the police man and when they where talking in their zombie state to the woman, while she had a gun, I was like, "she isnt going to shoot anyway" and to be honest, i wasnt even watching my screen anymore till I sudenly heard a gunshot, she had actually made a headshot with a shotgun. She's also very pretty btw. Then I also like it how she kills another zombie, atleast thats what I call them, with a somewhat stick, and kicks him after, pretty lame though. Then when they enter the house and that guy who has been taken over, yet is still conscious, asks to be killed. I love it how the policeman doesn't doubt for a second and shoots him right away. 
So yeah, it does have a little comedy sense to the movie, but when you hear people talking about it, or when you read about it, it sounds a lot nicer than the movie actually is. Conclusion Special Effects: 7 Acting: 8 Story: 7.5 Professionalism: 6 Music: 6.5 Total: 6.5 Second opinionby SanderstijlProducers see an opportunity to make some quick money resulting in low quality movies. In my opinion, Slither surely is one of those movies. A bad and predictable storyline filled with stereotypes. Slither is put in the genre of Horror-comedies. According to ‘horror-comedy critics’ this movie is pretty good so I guess you have to like it. It’s directed by James Gunn which is the same guy who directed ‘Dawn of the Dead’, which is pretty known. Storyline *Spoilers!* (highlight to read) The story begins with an introduction of the key player; Grant. He’s a fairly fortunate guy who has everything he desires. At one night due to a quarrel with his wife, he goes to a local pub. There he meets the sister of a former Ex-girlfriend. She wanted to show him something in the woods so Grand nearly having to support the drunken girl stroll to the woods. There Grant discovers a weird alien insect. While approaching it the creature suddenly pops up and bites it’s way through to his stomach. From that time on, Grant isn’t himself anymore. For the largest part his mind is taken over by the insect. It causes him to favour raw meat suddenly, especially human meat. Although partly his mind is still in his own control which is why he doesn’t directly start off killing humans but directs himself to nearby cattle and pets. After a little while another type of insects crawl out of his body finding humans to take over (through their mouth which is actually disgusting). He’s also slowly losing his mind causing him to start eating humans. He’s doing so very discretely first getting away with the murders. Later on, he’s just trying to kill whatever he sees. 
His wife discovers his weird transformation (his face looks like it’s been attacked by 100 wasps and bitten by some dogs, but he keeps telling his wife it’s some allergy) and after a while she calls in the police due to his weird behaviour (for instance, not talking to her anymore). Together with the police, who have no clue whatsoever where all the insects that are taking over humans throughout the city come from, they try to solve the puzzle, which quite obviously lies with Grant. Conclusion Storyline: 3 Ambiance: 5 Music: 6 Total: 5- 
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Picture of the month
"Crikey!", submitted by Chiyu (RIP Steve!) Have you got any nice/funny pictures to send in? Feel free to send it to me (Chiyu)! JJ2 Quarter ThreeDuring this quarter of the year the JJ2 Division has continued to be very successful. Not only did we win most of our trainings versus other clans, and beat 8D... Vegito also won JDC for the second time! Furthermore Chiyu and Superjazz won a 2on2 tournament called the Jazz2 Masters' Challenge, after a forfeit win over me (Grytolle) and Vegito.Lots of nice members have joined our division, too! Those are: Dokuda, Jaffa, Kyura, Rocko, Ruben and Medieval. Unfortunately our legendary mascot has been quite unactive lately, but he called me recently informing the world that he will be back within a month! He also added that the y is left to die, so the name is Shane. Out in the jj2 world several program are being developed, for example Forest and PC4, two server control tools, anti crash protection for TSF, some stuff by blur and a dedicated server, by Neobeo. Other noteable things during the period are the death of RR, AW and Jamster - rest in peace. Written by Grytolle, 5 October 2006. MS Quarter ThreeMaple Story is the newest game added to the Cracco Clan gamelist. It's a 2D MMORPG. We have quite some members at this moment. The leader is Kyura and the Co-Leader is Snooze. We are planning on setting up a 'guild' on Maple Story, named Craccoclan. To do this, we will need more money though (all members should donate when they can). We are quite active as a division. We got another cool fact around the Maple Story division is the new part, another game! I, Kyura, created a World of Warcraft Private Server for the clan. Check the forum for more info. Also check the Maple Story part on the forum for more information.Written by Kyura, 11 October 2006. AoE Quarter ThreeAge of Empires IIIAlthough most players are resonably skilled at booming/eco,lots of people have inadequate Rushing skills. This'll be the main objective of upcoming trainings. Training times will be announced on wednesdays! Furthermore, The Warchiefs expansion will be available in The Netherlands at the 20th this month! everyone that's planning on getting this expansion, is encouraged to participate in some tougher matches to improve his/her skills since (according to Wikipedia) all ratings will be reset once installed! Civilizations IV We definitely need more people! Feel free to ask about this turn based strategy game! Also: Chiyu has made his own custom 'mod' for civ4 having used Mikkoku as Inspiration! Written by Rocko, 10 October 2006. RS Quarter ThreeNothing much happened between the past 3 months. The clan became less active every day again. There was a real core in CC though. Gogeta, Hero and Perezzz15 usually played a lot. Most of the other members became unactive. We didn't really hear anything of them anymore. There were no real PK (Player Killing) trips going on anymore either. The forum wasn't activily used anymore. Anyways, since everyone in the clan became unactive, nobody complained about trips anymore either. CC was starting to become an unactive clan in RS.Untill a few days ago. Wild g00se (Yasco) became game leader. Hopefully he can change CC in RS, and make it an active clan again. Written by Vegito, 5 October 2006. SSB Quarter ThreeNothing really special happened. Medieval is getting better and better. But we all need to do some more trainings. So from now on we will try to organise trainings on fixed times so everyone knows there is a training. Please go to this topic and specify which time suits you best for playing.Even the SSB board on the forums is kinda dead to me. I'll try to make up some tournaments these months. Still the best active user is Medieval. Vegito does't really want to play. And Spybunny is more playing MS. We need to get some MORE active members. Written by Dx, 6 October 2006. Essay on the mixing of culturesby SanderstijlWhat's mixing? When are cultures mixing? The Dutch society is controlled by a government. A government that operates on Christian morals and values. Personally I'm not 'a believer', I'm not Christian or anything, but I'm part of the Christian moral and values. Every Dutch person actually is, whether you want it or not. These Christian morals and values result in a certain cohesiveness of the Dutch people as a whole. When non-Christians 'invade' our country (with that I mean allot of non-Christian people going to live in our country) this cohesiveness disappears: there are people with Christian morals and values AND there are people with non-Christian morals and values. This means the morals and values are mixed up. When you mix them up, you can speak of a mixed culture since culture is based on morals and values. (You could even consider to think of the creation of an entirely new culture). Now on to my next point; why is this mixing in bad? (or why is a new culture bad) Maybe by reading the above, you already drew the conclusion why this mixing is bad. It's bad because it destroys the cohesiveness. It leads to general confusion among the original society. Confusion might sound weird to you, so I'll explain what I mean by this. With confusion I mean the question WHY they are different and thus why they themselves are what they are. So it leads to confusion among themselves because they are losing touch with their own morals and thus culture. They might resent the different culture, or they might start resenting their own culture. It's of course also possible they don't resent their own culture and they love the different culture as well. Whatever of these three options happens, it cannot possibly get better since: - a loss of cohesiveness is never good. - a new cohesiveness is not better (you might dispute this point, I'll mention this later). So confusion can lead to change, in my opinion (yes I'm stating my opinion in this part) possible changes are bad. The changes in itself aren’t bad, but the cause is: an invasion of a different culture. Some who read this might disagree with me on this part, whatever you think, don't take this confusion part up in your final decision on the question "is mixing bad?" since it's just a thesis with a conclusion existing out of my own opinion. Let's carry on where I was before the confusion part: why is it bad when the cohesiveness erodes? There are two (relevant) possible opinions about the erosion of the cohesiveness: 1. A better cohesiveness might be the result so it's not bad. 2. It is bad the cohesiveness erodes because whatever takes it's place, is worse (my opinion). Now I'll give an argumentation to support the second opinion which cannot possibly be overshadowed by any possible advantages the first opinion brings. An erosion of the cohesiveness that brings a new situation, is not good. This new situation can't be called a new cohesiveness since there's nothing cohesive about it. It's just 2 cultures living together in one area (okay they integrated a bit, but the outlines are still different). This splicing of cultures is vague to the entire society (the old AND the new people) since the intentions of the multicultural government will be hard to understand for both parties. It leads to general confusion. Further, as history tells us, when the group of people who invade a country get's larger than the authentic group, it often happens that through time authentic traditions are replaced by theirs, resulting in a slow disappearance of a culture. (SO DONT ALLOW VEILS!!! it's a start) My complete opinion Foreigners should adapt to our morals, values, traditions, norms, law since it's our culture. All foreigners should not get full citizenship just like in the roman times. This halfway citizenship should mean they can only get the right to vote when they've proven themselves worthy for society by doing something useful for it (for example inventing some concrete that lasts for ages so that we'll never be flooded by water :P or someone who invested allot of money in Dutch banks/companies/obligations/etc or just someone who simply has a job LOL). Furthermore it should mean they cannot get a position in the parliament since it's wrong to have someone with different norms and values than the original inhabitants, make decisions for that group [Yea of course one foreign member in the parliament alone cannot do anything, but when he's accompanied by more foreigners it's a different story. Just consider what could happen to a country with a president]. The last point of my opinion is that a foreigner can't get to be a Dutch citizen when he's economically not viable (no education/no shop/no money). Foreigners who flee out of valid political reasons (dictatorship or whatever) are allowed no matter their economical situation. Anakin's replyThe only thing what i need to say about it is, no matter where you come from:You come to live in our country ? Well why ? why dont just stay in your own country? Because of war? Not our fault, but then again, probarly not your fault either. So, ok you can come but then you'll have to learn our language, and be sure to have permament work. Otherwise no room for you. I dont care what people believe in, wether its christian or moslim, as long as you dont bother other people with it. What also annoys me is the headscarfs, i dont care wether it is your believe or not, NOT in OUR country, so dont weir them, OR dont come to our country. Especially not in school, why should we living in our very own country, not be allowed to weir caps etc and such within schools, while foreigners are. Last, foreigners, like moslims, but i basically mean anyone who is not from our country, should never ever get ANY RIGHTS (such as voting or money income if you are unable to work) within the country. The people from NL should organize their politics and rules and people from other countries should organize it from their own, only, foreigners should never ever have to be able to have any power here, they can only come, work, and STFU and be happy to have a peacefull house and area. This is our country and not others, and we live here in our way, and if they want to come to our country, then live in our way, or stay away. Jaffa's replyWhy should we so desperately want to cling on to our own inherent morals? What can we gain from outsiders? It allows us to see ourselves from a different perspective. This isn’t necessarily something we should want to prevent, considering that we are in no position to conclude something is either good or bad. There are only different perspectives.What we REALLY need in this country is respect. Respect for anyone for what or who they are, that would be ideal. Chiyu's replyMy opinion is somewhere between Sanderstijl's and Jaffa's. I agree with SS that the preservation of our identity is important. There is nothing wrong with nationalism in moderation. We have a history and a culture to be proud of. On the other hand, I also think our culture can benefit and learn from other cultures.As I said before, the foundations of our culture and our way of life need to be preserved. If too many with the same, different culture enter our country at the same time, their ideas will push ours aside. For example; our freedom of speech. As long as we keep the flow of immigrants from the same country pretty low, that would not happen. These people are bound to integrate in our culture and make valuable additions (such as food, clothing or literature) while keeping our system (in my case, the Dutch system) intact. That brings us to another issue. Who are welcome, and who aren't? In my opinion we should always grant political refuge for people who really need it. Sending Iranian gays back to Iran (our minister did that, and they were both killed shortly after returning) is not done. Economical immigrants is another case. A major problem that my country (the Netherlands) is dealing with at the moment is that unskilled and semiskilled come here in large numbers and work for really large wages; wages which our Dutch workers can't compete with. People like these are not welcome, although I understand that the companies themselves are also to blame (fucking capitalists). When people come here, work for the same wages as us and don't take our jobs away, there should be no problem. In fact, some economical immigrants can even benefit our economy. Foreign people who invest money in our economy (like rich oil barons from Arabia who build offices here) create jobs and bring money. I'd say; keep them coming! Basically, as long as there's a balance between rich and poor immigrants, according to the same balance between rich and poor people that we already have in our country, everything would be fine. But... Even so, people who come here have to adjust. They don't have to change themselves completely (so what if they don't wear shoes in their houses?), but they have to integrate. I belief that a nationality isn't based on race/ethnicity. Once they have fully integrated, they should have the same rights as the rest of us. People (not including temporary political refugees!) who don't want to learn Dutch? Get out. Personally I don't mind about headscarfs for instance - I'd let them do whatever they want as long as it's not offensive or 'damaging' to our society (same rules apply for everyone else). Anyway, some kind of exam would not be bad. An exam that they would get about half a year to a year after being here, in which they have to prove that they know enough about the Dutch language and culture. Also, they should work (with fair wages), or at least, do their best to find work. If they can't find work (lots of companies are reluctant in hiring aliens), the government should put them to work (I'm positive that there's enough stuff to do for them). If you come here as an economical refugee and refuse to work for a fair wage and contribute to our fine country, please, go home. Or try somewhere else. Scare's replyDownload the full article HERE.My opinion in short: The Netherlands are not being threatened by one certain different culture that could take over the Dutch one. The culture of a country is not likely to change on its own. A multicultural government is not likely to be formed. Foreigners should not be allowed to get into power or hold office 'just like that'. People need to compare theirselves to other people in order to gain more knowlegde about their own identity as about the identity of others. Cultural changes are not bound to result in something bad. Creditsfor Newsletter #10, October 2006 Chiyubeing the end editor, writing a reply to Sanderstijl's article, doing the interviews Anakinwriting the Fifa 2007 review and Slither review, writing the article about the Euro 2008 qualifying matches, writing a reply to Sanderstijl's article, allowing being interviewed Sanderstijlwriting the second opion for the Slither review, writing an article about mixing of cultures Jaffawriting a reply to Sanderstijl's article  Scarewriting a reply to Sanderstijl's article  Grytollewriting the update about the JJ2 division Kyurawriting the update about the MS division Rockowriting the update about the AoE division, allowing being interviewed Vegitowriting the update about the RS division Dxwriting the update about the SSB division ChippieBWmaking the "Legendary stuff" picture |
Legendary stuffby ChippieBW
"The legend and his meat" 10th edition, 12 October 2006 |
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