(ATTENTION: LONG POST AHEAD. If you want to skip the boring part, just scroll down until you see Bold Text again.)


























      
       Hello, my Kaiser, welcome to your daily briefing of the coming and goings of the Empire. As you must know, the Holy Roman Empire is strong, and is the leading force in the entire globe. Everyone fears our military might, our vaults are endless, our population is vast, and we trade with everyone in the known world. We have just finished our glorious crusade against the nasty Fatamids, (Yellow on the map) beating them back into the nasty deserts of the Arabian peninsula. Our two greatest armies were present, the Emperor's 1st Legion and the 2nd, comprising of our greatest, and most hardened units. The political situation in the Middle East is tense, the Fatamids can strike again any second, but do not fear, our garrison is strong in the Holy Land, the Turks (Green) are still bitter from our last feud, and the Byzantines (Purple) are ever looking at fresh opportunities to expand. Pushing against the Fatamids will be easy, as our armies are already positioned in the vicinity, but there remaining regions are underdeveloped, and if we continue the conquest, we will only waste money. Push against the Turks and we push towards modern day Iraq, this seems logical, as Baghdad is a glorious city, however The Mongols are ever near, and the Turks are acting as a beautiful barrier between us ad them. Finally, the Byzantines seem a logical to attack, however our supply lines would be thin, and the Emperor's 1st and 2nd legions would have to be on their own for quite a while before receiving reinforcements. What to do Kaiser? We look up unto you, for only your greatness knows.

       Europe is at peace, no wars are going on in our vicinity. Our noble allies the Scottish (Blue) remain on their isle, which states the same for the Irish (Green). Aragon (Goldish-Brown) continues to develop at peace with us, as they celebrate our friendship on the Iberian Peninsula when we helped to defeat the vile Portuguese. The Teutonic Order (Black and White Borders) control the entirety of the Balkans having destroyed the Hungarians and now battling the Byzantines. Attacking them has also come to mind, the Balkans are a breadbasket of money, which could all be ours, except the Teutons have been our noble ally for many years and attacking them would make the remaining Christian factions look down on us. Finally, Russia (Blue-Red), our final ally, is making great strides against the Cuman Khanate (Brown-Blue) who are being purged by the Mongols from the South. Attacking Russia has not come to mind, but doing so, would allow us to control the entire Baltic, and take the jewel that is St. Petersburg, a bountiful trade hub on the Baltic.

     The last option our generals have thought of is going through the Ukraine, and pushing through the Cuman Khanate's lands, this would take time, as the Steppes are large and take long trekks to journey through. The Cuman Khanate's technology is outdated, their units being barbarians with little armor. Our Gothic Knights would trample them under their shiny metal boots. This venture, would too, near us to the Mongols, which of whom have only heard nasty rumors. They are said to eat babies, and steal cookies mercilessly. So what are we to do my Kaiser? Continue attacking the Fatamids wiping their existence from this planet, making them one more page in history, or attack the Turks, the nomads are not worthy to be in the bountiful Euphrates-Tigris valley, annihilating them is the only pious thing to do. Should we attack the Byzantines? Controlling Anatolia would give us a major share in the Black Sea trade, and the Byzantines are only a shadow of their former selves, losing Constantinople to the Teutons and controlling an outdated military. We could venture into Russia, attacking the Russians themselves, or attacking the Cumans moving us ever closer to our encounter with the Mongols. You have our gold, our military, and our hopes and dreams. We are in your hands Kaiser.


(If you actually read that, you have my thanks, =), but if you scrolled down here just to get the debriefing of what the hell all that text was about I'm about to explain)

 Basically, if you didn't get it while reading, or just didn't want to read, I'm asking who should I attack in my Grand Campaign as the Holy Roman Empire. You can use the Global Map in the picture way above to tell me, or actually read the post if you want more details. Sadly, I don't think many will read that huge post... but if you do, thanks, and tell me your thoughts. (Sorry if there are a lot of grammar mistakes, and stuff like that.)

Oh and the mod I'm playing in, if there any Medieval II Total War fanatics like I, is Stainless Steel 6.1, an awesome mod, adding factions, units, and regions.
Here is the site.

Cheers. =D

So for like the 10th time in my life I am moving.
Back to the ol' U. S. of A. All my feelings to this are mostly negative, but I'm not going to make this a blog about whining, even though I could go on and on. On the bright side, I will be able to get games day one now.
I'm moving to Fairfax, Virginia, somewhere I'm familiar with thanks to my ventures in Fallout.
The school I have been chosen to attend is Oakton Highschool, former school of the former president of Facebook.
So in an end to these semi-random thoughts, does anyone else know about this school/go there?
I'd be cool to have a fellow bomber attending this school with me.

In other news, I'm hooked on Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers and will not stop until I've unlocked all the cards, and even then, I will probably remain hooked until there is no one else to play with online. My favorite deck is the dragon deck, one because I love me some dragons, and two, if you get sufficient lands that deck is unstoppable, mostly if you land Dragon's Roost. I have heard that the Elven deck is super sweet, and that is probably the next deck I will be playing with, however I have beaten my fair share of opponents using the Elven deck.

So, that is all.

I was thinking the other day, on why I was so satisfied with Call of Duty 4's achievements. The game seemed to have the proper balance of story achievements, mixed with "beat on veteran" achievements, and a few optional achievements. Most importantly, it lacked online achievements. I am a firm believer that achievements should stay offline. Partly, because if you lack xbox live, then you can not 100% the game. Secondly, you already feel rewarded online, due to the prestige system.

I am pretty sure, the ranks you accomplish in most online multiplayer games are enough. I mean, if you go around bragging about your Mile High Club achievemen t , you also probably would brag about how your 10th prestige. This is why Call of Duty wins. In a way, that small symbol at the edge of your gamertag, every time you play online is an achievement on its on. I mean sure, you may get a sense of achievement when you beat a mission, but that sense is only bolstered by the message, "achievement unlocked." While, online I have always felt that every time I go prestige, it's an achievement on its own, and I would gladly brag about being 10th prestige (if I was) to any other Call of Duty 4 player. This is how I believe achievements should be done in a FPS with an online and offline mode. Gears of War had alot more online achievements than Gears of War 2, of course Gears of War 2, at launch, had a very lame online ranking system...

Another game, which is only singpleplayer, which I beleive did something pretty original with achievements is Mass Effect. Yes, it had those lame "carry around Liara for the majority of the game" achievements but what I liked about it, is the fact you actually received something from achieveing X amount of kills with X skill. This allowed you the chance to replay the games with an extra power, that is not associated with that class type. For example, there was an achievement for using Biotic Singularity 75 times, after this I played through with a soldier class that also could use Biotic Singularity which made my insane run through quite the bit easier.

So, in conclusion, I think these games have done achievements right, or atleast, brought something new to the achievement table.

On a last note: I beat Banjo-Tooie and now have 100% achievements in that game, and later went back finished all the puzzles in Banjo-Kazooie and now have 100% in that game.

       So I just finished the Lost and the Damned. Yes, simple as that, but I must say it was AWESOME. Which is quite a surprise because I could not stand to finish GTA IV because of the repetitive missions, and your annoying friends, it seemed that every time you were about to do something fun, Roman would call up and would state that you and him don't spend enough time together, and that you guys should go see some American titties. Of course I'd say no because I'm about to jump off a freakin' helicoper only  to get Packie to call me up and ask me the same thing. It soon became a vicious cycle, of course, just recently I realized there was a "turn notifications off" button which I was not aware of. So anyways, I picked up GTA again this weekend and finally finished it. Of course, this left me with nothing to do for the rest of the weekend, so because I know that Rockstar does have an apt for story telling, and I wanted to play something with excellent narrative I downloaded The Lost and the Damned.

       Once it finally finished downloading, I booted it up and I get welcomed to a similar loading screen as in GTA IV fast forward 7 hours (which is the time that it took me to beat the DLC) and I was pretty amazed at how much I enjoyed myself. Yes, the missions were still a tad repetetive but there is a greater variety to the missions or the standard "get away from the cops" mission had been taken up a notch, like in that mission where you ride with your homie Malc and try to get away from the cops via shooting down dozens of police cars, or dropping the occasional pipe bomb on even more police cars. Also, my other gripes with GTA IV was the punishing checkpoint system and the whole "go play bowling with your friends or else they will hate you" thing. This time, I dont quite recall as much punishment, however I may be wrong, and every time I would die, instead of making me drive all the way back it would place me right back into the combat. The annoying friend system also seemed to be fixed, not once did I get called by a friend asking me to go play pool with them, I didnt even get called by my annoying drug addicted ex which made the experience alot smoother. My last two praises for the DLC are the soundtrack and the story. The main theme just emphasized the point that the Lost are hardcore bad asses and every time you beat a mission you'd hear the excellent guitar riff which, in a sense, rewarded me. The story stands on its own, the tale of Johnny Klebitz (excuse the spelling) is beautiful in a twisted sort of way. You run through gang wars, doing a senator's dirty work, even a civil war erupts between your ranks, and all of this is explained beautifully. The other great part was how this story was interweaved with the GTA IV story, and the missions where you'd know what Niko would be doing just made me giddy with joy. The final mission was the cherry on top, it just touched me how Johnny burned the __________ (I don't want to give anything away).

       So, in conclusion, me being one of those people who truly didn't think GTA IV was supremely orgasmic, after playing The Lost and the Damned and seeing how Rockstar is, atleast, trying to fix their mistakes (checkpoint system, repetetive missions, annoying friends) and keeping their talent for telling awesome stories makes this one of the best DLC's I have ever purchased. And all in all, I do beleive Johnny is a badder bad baddier badass than Niko.

Funniest game of all time!
So many laughs and probably some of the best voice acting ever.
Who could forget the King of Poo's opera solo.
I still remember it today, and I occasionally whack out my N64 just to play that game.