If someday I am standing at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter looks down at the sum total of my life and asks, “You played Civilization 2 once for an entire weekend? Like, 32 out of 48 hours? Seriously?” I will answer him, head held high, “Yes, yes I did.  And it was totally awesome.”

It is true that in my younger days, I put in many a marathon session of gaming.  Entire nights or weekends could blow by as I sat immersed in whatever game was occupying my attention at the time.  An entire Christmas vacation could be lost to Final Fantasy VI, or nights that should have been spent writing history papers were spent tracking down Sectoids in X-Com. Even up to my years in college, I still might put off more pressing concerns to stay up until the wee hours of the morning waiting to see what was coming next in Silent Hill or the like.

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As any casual observer might note, I’ve put up a new design for the site over the past couple of days; it’s still a work in progress, but I hope everyone finds it easy to read and navigate, and hopefully a little more gentle on the eyes.

Got to put in more time with Empire: Total War during the course of the week, and have been playing my way through the first campain, which covers the settlement of America; some of the battles can certainly get quite epic, but I do see a lot of issues with the general pathfinding of units, as they often seem to pick the least desireable route possible to get to their destination.   Also got to sink a few more hours into Lost Odyssey, and I can say in all honesty I’m finding it really, really boring so far, for reasons I intend to cover more in-depth in an upcoming article.  Master of Magic also continues to occupy a lot of my spare time, and all I really have to say there is that when my Shuri the Huntress and her legion of Doom Drakes shows up, your pitiful city walls aren’t going to help you.  Also bumped out a few more Scout achievements in Team Fortress 2, and I look forward to the continued raging debate over whether or not The Sandman is broken, lame, or both.

-Joel Haddock

Alas, Persona 4 is making me increasingly a liar, as every week I say that this is the week I’m finally going to finish it, and every week it proves me wrong.  I’m 55 or so hours in and have finally gotten to (more or less) the end, so if I don’t finish it by the end of this coming week, I’ll officially have to turn in my PS2.  In other news, I picked up both MadWorld and Resident Evil 5, both of which have been great, parent’s guild-baiting, violent fun.  Madworld may in fact be the most violent game I’ve ever played, enhanced only by the fact that the color red is the only color shown on top of the bleak, “Sin City Come to Life” comic book style visuals.  Resident Evil, on the other hand is much more subdued in its violence, and while the core elements are there, it just doesn’t feel like Resident Evil anymore…..look for first impressions of both games from me over the weekend.

-Jeff Feeser

I’ve only spent a few short hours with it so far, but Empire:  Total War has taught me that, no matter how convinced you are it’s a good idea, don’t isolate a line of your musketmen at the top of an overlooking hill when you don’t know what lurks on the other side.  My train-commuting game for this week remains Fire Emblem, and though I still stick by my general desire to keep all units in my army alive, this game seems to throw so many of them at you, and all with no personality or story, that I’m tempted just to say to hell with it and let a few of them eat it.  The further information leaking out from Atlus this week about Dark Spire seems to call out to me, singing a siren song that I will spending a lot of time with… My dramatic retooling of tactics in Fantasy General seems to have paid off for the moment, and I’m actually further in the game than I have ever managed to get before; the imposing fortress at the end of the jungle island lay before, but I am confident my cavalry forces will seize the day.  And finally, in the few spare minutes in between everything else, I started up a game of Master of Magic because, well, that game still kicks ass.

-Joel Haddock

The demo for Empire: Total War popped up on Steam earlier this week, so I gave it a spin; I’m a big fan of Age of Rifles warfare, though relatively few games are set in that period anymore.  The demo was short, but convinced me to definitely pick this one up; the sea battles, though, seem like they could end up being a little too slow to enjoy in the long term, but that can probably be more than made up by watching rows of musketmen get scattered by some well-aimed cannon barrages.   Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon arrived from Amazon on Monday, and that has become my current train-game of choice; only on chapter 6 at the moment, but I can say with utmost assurity that it is definitely a Fire Emblem game – I’ve already restarted several battles in order to find ways to save every unit, thus beggining the cycle anew…  My TF2 mapping continues on pace, and I think I’ll be ready to do some playtesting in the next week or so, thus telling me whether I’ve actually made something enjoyable to play.  Speaking of TF2, the Scout update came out on Tuesday, and it has quickly served to remind me why scout is my least played class; I figure I’ll have all the achievements right about the time Team Fortress 3 is ready to come out…

-Joel Haddock