My thermometer hit one hundred today. One hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It was in direct sunlight, but still, it doesn?? happen very often, at least in Massachusetts. I?? drinking some iced-tea I made earlier today. People don?? seem to realize how easy it is to make. Boil some water, put some tea bags in the water, and add some sugar; let it cool, and then garnish with ice cubes. If you have access to a lemon, squeeze some lemon juice in there as well. If you have access to a cat, pet the cat, and make it purr.

I played Riviera for most of the day, today. I stopped when I realized that I was completely dehydrated.

One time, when I was seventeen, I went to a punk-rock show in Boston, on Halloween. The Unseen and Big D and the Kids Table were on the bill that night. I took a lot of great pictures at that show. A girl working the merch counter said she liked my bracelet; I asked her to let me back stage. She did. I took a picture of every member of the Unseen, each riding their own Harley Davidson motorcycle in the alley behind the club. I took this picture on a roll of film that would be accidentally destroyed.

I went to that show with a young man who said he liked some rock and roll music, but in reality he was (and I?? not making this up) a boy scout. The nagging, shrew-like mother of the punk-rocking boy scout drove me home. It was one the next morning by the time I got home; I walked into my kitchen and ate half a loaf of Boston Brown Bread, (you cook it in a can) and then went to sleep. At around three in the morning, I woke up. My leg was aflame with the worst pain I??e ever felt in my life. It felt like layers of muscle and sinew were being peeled apart from the inside, much like a fillet of fish is separated from the skin. The next day, my mother would tell me that the pain I felt in my leg was because of dehydration, which caused severe cramps.

It had been hot at that punk show.

When I got dehydrated today while playing Riviera, I got up and drank a couple glasses of water. At the punk show, I didn't have the luxury of a kitchen sink. I didn't have any money, so the prospect of a five dollar Coke was a little out of reach. More importantly, getting something to drink had been the last thing on my mind at that show; I was too enamored with the sights and sounds. The excitement and energy. This was battle music.

Riviera: The Promised Land has what is quite possibly the best battle music ever in a videogame.

I generally don?? like the battle music in RPGs. I always think of how cool it would be if there was no battle music in an RPG, especially a very surreal one, with haunting music. And yet people need battle music. It helps them notice that they are fighting, apparently. The music during battles can be especially annoying if the game has random encounters; not that I have anything against random encounters, however. Riviera does not have random encounters, nor is the regular music particularly amazing. It makes me wish I was fighting something. It makes me wish I was listening to that battle music, with its fast punk-rock snare drums, blasting horns, catchy organ hooks, etc. There are more than a few of these compositions, almost all of them amazing.

The main character in Riviera is named Ein, it?? a short name. In an RPG, people with short names are usually god-damned good people; the same may or may not apply to people wearing really big hats. Ein is an angel, a special angel with black wings. Ein lost his wings. He lost them because he sacrificed them in order to wield a special weapon called a Diviner that only special angels with special black wings can use. The fact that Ein has no wings plays a crucial part in the plot, after he wakes up in a small town with amnesia shortly into the game. Ein is a generally upbeat kind of guy. He has a flying-cat familiar named Rose who is basically just Ruby from Lunar 2 but black with bat wings and green eyes. Hardly a bad thing, that. Ein?? superior is so obviously evil it?? kind of funny. The first time we meet him, with his black robes and personal theme song, it?? just one of those "well, this guy is evil" moments.

The very beginning of the game is a little ridiculous as a whole. The entirety of the first dungeon is basically spent telling you how stupid you are, and how inexperienced at video games you are, and also how bad you are at pleasing women. It offended me a lot, and it hurt my feelings wicked bad.

A few weeks ago I was at a Dairy Queen (a tiny chain of fast-food/ice cream restaurants that I?? not sure even exists outside of a peninsula in Massachusetts) with my older brother. We had driven there from the apartment of a friend who had just gotten the newest Samurai Champloo dvd. We were at that Dairy Queen eating the shit out of some ice cream, when I noticed a familiar girl walk by. This girl has long red hair, freckles, and she?? quite tall. I hadn?? seen this girl in a little over two years; I guess we might have been friends once, we probably could??e been something more. My most vivid memory of her is of her ripping the stick shift out of her shittier-than-shit car (I?? not quite sure how she managed to do that!) while trying to shift gears in the middle of a busy intersection. We looked at each other with wide eyes as the car slid into traffic, and screamed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her walking towards the table where I was eating ice cream with my older brother. If you asked me now why I didn?? want to talk to her, I wouldn?? be able to tell you. Nevertheless, I obscured my face with my hand in a manner which must have looked ludicrous. She walked past my table, looked around for no reason, went back to the ordering counter, got something to eat, and then got in her car and drove away.

My brother looked up at me

"What?" I asked.

"That girl looked pissed, dude."

"Yeah, well, she probably just didn?? recognize me; my hair is shorter, and I?? wearing new pants."

Of course, she had recognized me, and perhaps she was angry that I had made it so incredibly apparent that I didn?? want to talk to her. Two years ago, she would??e ran over to me and yelled my name. She?? grown up a little, I think, but I don?? know if I have.

There are no random encounters in Riviera. This is most likely because we have no control over the characters. Sure, there are screens, and we move from screen-to-screen, and pressing a button points out certain things on a screen that we can investigate at the cost of points we earn in battle. We don?? run around towns, going through the mundane task of looking for whatever building we need to find so we can buy new equipment. There?? a list of locations in each town in Riviera that we go to. When we enter a building where other characters are present, a little icon will appear above their head, indicating that we can talk to them. Highlight the icon and press a button, and our character will walk over to them and begin conversation. At no point do we take control and move freely.

The sights and the sounds.

Like Killer 7, Riviera gives us such limited control for a reason. A reason that some people might not understand. It gives us such limited control because it has things that it wants us to see and hear, and it wants us to see and hear these things on its own terms. Videogame journalists might call this ??oo linear?? No. The game cuts out the mundane things found in RPGs and focuses on the things that we??l remember; it makes each individual screen an event. Is it not true that in life we tend to remember only the events that we deem important?

I remember seeing The Unseen ride off on motorcycles at that punk-rock show, but I don?? remember what happened at school that day. I remember seeing that girl at Dairy Queen, but I don?? remember the car ride there. I remember the introductory CG sequence in Final Fantasy VIII, but I don?? remember every random encounter.

The lack of random encounters in Riviera makes each battle seem like something important. A little scene accompanies the beginning of every scrap we get into; it makes me think of someone like Vin Diesel staring us down from a movie screen and saying "This time, it?? personal". It does feel personal though; even though the skirmish may not be important in the grand scheme of things, we still feel some level of attachment, we still feel like it?? ours, and we??l fight the good fight because of that.

That Riviera gives us the option of only carrying four items (including weapons!) into battle only cements that battle?? place in our memory, as does the fact that almost every item has a limited number of uses. It makes for plenty of "Oh shit remember that time I fought that vampire and my rapier only had one use left, but I pulled off that crazy level 3 super move after my super gauge filled all the way up? That shit was crazy!!" type conversations with people who may or may not have been present during said battle. Or perhaps...perhaps the limited usage of items means something different. Perhaps it represents the fragility of human memory and our inability to let go of the past, and yet by letting go we become free.

I...yes. I get dizzy easily.

Riviera has beautiful graphics.

The best graphics on the Game Boy Advance? Probably. All of the colors and locations are very big, and bold; they jump out at you in a way that is, quite suitably, larger than life. The game?? reliance on Norse/Christian imagery helps give it a bigger, more epic feel for sure, but not in a way that say, Valkyrie Profile, a game that delves into the infinite depths of depression, does.

Ultimately, it is the little things that make Riviera feel big. The game is divided up into many sub-levels within the main area we??e in. Every time we reach a different level we??e given a short description of that level. I...I have a hard time expressing the delight I felt when, upon reaching the area known as Wilheim Bluff, I was presented with a line of text that read:

Migrating birds enjoy the warm breeze here.

It was then that realized it. This game has a soul, man. I can feel it brothers and sisters. It?? a game where everyone you meet is nice, and trusting, and the last surviving member of a race who?? been subjected to genocide not five minutes ago, walks into a town and goes "This is a nice place!". This game has a soul, brothers and sisters, and it is lovely and beautiful and it has delicious vibes that dance and laugh even under the tyranny of a righteous sun and canned heat.

-Evan Kaigle