With my brand new PC having yet more issues in the shape of a dead hard drive, it fell to my good old Mac and laptop to help entertain me and my bro today. We slapped on our first game of Settlers 3 in a very long time. The game was a 4v4 involving 6 AI teams. As usual, our allies did very little, leaving us to fight the four enemy teams pretty much on our own.

The game started with us on the defensive while we were trying to get our economies up and running, with the blues attacking JIK's oranges, and my blacks being targetted by the pinks, greens and yellows. Luckily the pinks had to go through JIK's territory to get to me, and he was able to cut off most of their soldiers as they tried to pass through. I had mostly been waiting to upgrade my soldiers before recruiting any new ones, and when the greens and yellows swarmed into my settlement I lost several towers as my defenses struggled to cope, but luckily only lost a few woodcutters. Thankfully at this time, one of our allies, the cyans, chose this time to charge out and attack the enemy blue team. The cyan army crossed the path that the yellows and greens were taking to get to me, and stopped their reinforcements, giving my guys a breather and chance to regain all the ground I'd lost. The cyans battered the blues and pinned them back, giving JIK the opportunity to concentrate on the pinks and annihilate them.

By now I'd rebuilt my forces, and my soldiers joined JIK's, creating an army of blacks and oranges several hundred strong. We marched into yellow and green lands and wiped them out easily. The cyans had stopped to sunbathe or something after their single attack, and we had to finish their job of taking out the blues. Though at least they had done something. Our red allies sat up in the top corner of the map, and did not take part in a single battle in nearly 5 hours. Thanks guys.

For many months I've been meaning to waffle on about my travels through the different Final Fantasy games I've played over the years, much like I did with WoW a while ago. And finally, I've got my ass together and sorted it out. For no reason whatsoever. Don't ask how I remember all this shit.

I originally got Final Fantasy VII for Christmas 1997 from my folks. They had originally bought me Soulblade, but a few days before Christmas they discovered I'd already got that one, and FF7 was their last minute replacement on the advice of someone who worked in the store. Good on that bloke, whoever it was.
Now at the time I knew absolutely nothing about Final Fantasy. I'd never even heard the name. All previous games had been on Nintendo, and back then, much like now, I felt (somewhat irrational I'll admit) hatred towards those consoles. I always felt their marketing strategy and their games were skewed too young for me.
The first time I tried to play it I got to the first scorpion boss and got slaughtered. I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. A few days later when the whole Christmas stuff had stopped stuffing, I gave it another go and soon got quite into it.

In February my work mate had a week off and finished the game. When he came back he proceeded to give me loads of spoilers. Twat. Learning these spoilers did not help me at all, as my attention was already waning as I tried to get through the bloody annoying Northern continent, which I hated that first time through. I pretty much went off the game until another workmate picked it up a while later. The guy who'd finished it reckoned this other guy would finish it before me, so I got stuck back in. I finally made it passed that icy wasteland and wouldn't you know, I started liking it again. Maybe it was because Aerith was no longer in it (she annoyed me back then, even though I find her quite adorable now). Even after that, it took me quite a while to finish it. But it was ace to play, and I absolutely loved the story. Still do.

I remember it was about 2am when I first finished it. I intended to get near the end and save it, but I went a bit too far and stumbled into the very long end fight, leaving me no choice but to push through it or I'd lose a lot of work I'd already done. Was a bit tired.

In July 99 I started playing it again after buying the big strategy book. I got through it loads faster and easier and really enjoyed the game and story even more, and did loads of work on the mini games in the Gold Saucer picking up extra shite.

In Feb 2000 I ventured into my 2nd Final Fantasy game when I bought #8 for the PC. I guess like any game there were some things that were better than the one before and some things that were worse. I liked being able to junction different GFs (summons) on different characters to create different combos, but I hated having to draw magics and the boost system was a bore. Story wise it was ok, but I generally dislike anything that deals with any kind of time travel. And this game was full of it, in its own way.

I remember I got to the fight with Adel on disc 4, but couldn't beat her due to not having enough magic drawn and being a little underlevelled. So in August I started again with more determination, and finished it pretty easily in October. Really got a good feeling at the end.

In Jan 2001 I picked up FF7 again, this time for the PC. It was so much better going through it this time, with better graphics and much faster load times. Though I remember there was a weird upside-down graphics bug that needed fixing first. Odd. I was intending to really build up the characters to try a pop at one or both of the big two WEAPONs, but like a tit I missed the vital ribbon from the Temple Of The Ancients, so I never really tried the WEAPON fights and just finished it again.

I decided not to get FF9 as it was not going to be released on PC, and I had enjoyed 7 & 8 so much more on PC than on the PS1. However, in May 2002 I borrowed it from the Scoob. It took a lot of getting into and I struggled through disc 1. This game started toying with what seems to be the current trend of completely limiting what you can do in the game compared to 7 & 8. In this one, they stopped you from customising the party magics and summons the way you could before, as only certain spells and summons could be used by certain characters, and I didn't really like that. Still, it's nowhere near as restrictive as the current games.

I didn't touch it again til early 03 when I started to get into it a bit more. As I was nearing the end of this game in March I got into a chat with Mr. Krig about number 8, as he could remember all the weird names I'd called my GFs. I couldn't help but reload my #8 late game save and finish it again.

In April I finished number 9, not long after finally starting to get really into it. The ending was pretty cool and long, but I would have liked to have seen more of it fully rendered rather than with in game graphics. I did not however grasp the point of Necron's arrival out of the blue at the end. Sure, why not just throw in a big bad guy who up to that point had had absolutely no mention in the entire rest of the game? Sounds like a completely obvious plan. Not. I also didn't like how getting onto the last disc stopped you from going into all the towns around the world for some reason. Strange decisions.

At some point in late 2004 I once more started playing number 8, again with the intent of taking on the big bad WEAPON. I'd got all my junctions worked out in advance and was gonna level up to full, draw all the magics in the world, and nail that big bastard. I think I'd just got onto disc 2 when I had to reformat my computer for some reason. I don't know why, but I've never re-installed the game. I still have the saves, but just have not touched them since. I'm weird.

Over the next couple of years I borrowed number 10 from the Scoob twice, but both times I only played it for about 20 mins. I just did not like it at all for some reason.

I did not touch the franchise again until Jan 2011 when I bought number 13 dirt cheap. I played this for a while, until the point where I escaped Cocoon and made it down to the other planet. It was at this time I decided to throw the damn thing out of the window. The game up to that point had been extremely linear, and I'd been hoping the new planet would bring more freedom, exploration, and a world map or something, but I got none of that. I just didn't like it at all. Other problems were the paradigm system, which pissed me off no end, having to constantly switch just to throw a couple of heals in, and the fact you had to build up the chain bar thing, in order to stagger an enemy and do any real damage. Switching paradigms would often upset your rhythm as you tried to build that gauge, making battles last loads longer than necessary. Also, you couldn't select or even control your whole party. Fracking ridiculous. It's just too far removed from the first couple of games I played and really liked.
I watched the rest of the story on the Youtubes, and pretty much gave up on the series.

Just recently I got Scoob and the JIKmon to give Lord Of The Rings Online a little bit of an effort. I wasn't a massive fan of this game when I tried it on my own a while back, and I was hoping that wandering around in a group would make it a bit more interesting, and allow us to rediscover a little bit of the enjoyment we used to get from back in our WoW days when we first started out as the Skumsplattaz.

I joined them in starting a new character rather than continuing with Kreethen. This time I chose an Elf called Tezzerz, while JIK went with a Dwarf called Giberaldi (after Garibaldi was taken), and Scoob went with his normal Ragnarkharn after his two fave 40K characters.
We only went through the introductory questline, and are all uncertain whether we will continue. I guess the game is ok just for hanging around and killing an hour or two here and there, but there's no denying that we all now find the typical MMORPG game to be a very boring and bland experience. When we first played WoW, it was all very new, and everyone was playing it, even people that didn't really play games that much. These things helped WoW seem like a better game than it really was. I highly doubt we will ever have that enthusiasm for an MMORPG ever again.
Though I guess in one way it would be nice to continue, as for once I'm not playing as the healer character...

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Then I pretty much decided we needed to play more multiplayer games. My three computers were immediately jabbed with game discs, and Rome: Total War, Unreal Tournament 2004, Settlers 3, and Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade were soon ready for action.
Up first was UT2004:

With the dodgy Planetside 2 being a disappointment and my fascination with LoL pretty much coming to an end, I've decided to push on with the reason for adding computer games to this blog in the first place: finishing games I've not finished yet.
Dawn of War: Soulstorm was up first. Luckily, I played the vast majority of the campaign years ago, and still had the save file. I was the Sisters of Battle, and only had the Space Marines left to defeat.

It started out as a bit of a challenge, as I hadn't played the game in months, and was jumping into an attack on an enemy stronghold. But eventually the task ended up being a fairly simple one, and the Marines were crushed. Definitely the least amount of work I will have to do to finish a game on this blog.