F.E.A.R. Revisited

I went back and played through F.E.A.R. again with a few tricks in mind. These can probably apply to any recent First-Person-Shooter for PC (or console with a quicksave feature). My first goal was to clear the game on the highest difficulty. My next goal was to never die (ain't that everyone's?). I decided to use the "save early, save often" strategy that my dad has been relaying to me ever since I started playing DOOM at age 4. However, I took it to the next level: if I took any kind of significant damage, I'd reload from my last save. This turned a game that should be completed in 5 hours or so into a week long project. I must say, the sense of accomplishment was much higher than usual...but I must have replayed certain scenes (especially with the ghosts and fire) several times before I cleared them unscathed. Next, I wanted to collect all the health and reflex boosters that I could find. This is simply a matter of wall-hugging to find any secret areas or vents. Next are a few tricks that only apply to F.E.A.R.:

1. Never run over a gun for its ammo. Take your gun and throw it away first (b key for PC), then pick up the new gun. Then you run over and pick up the gun you just threw away. This will give you a full gun plus 2 clips for most weapons plus all the ammo you previously had. For example, when you run over a Penetrator, you'll get 25 shots. If you use my method, you'll get 75. Big difference.
2. Always stay under cover unless you are using your slo-mo. On the hardest difficulty, they don't miss.
3. Saving right before you throw a grenade is quite useful. Also, shooting a grenade midair will detonate it (this is for enemy grenades when they leave their hands)
4. My optimal weapon set was 1. Penetrator 2. Repeating Cannon 3. Particle Weapon. As long as you use the weapon-toss ammo trick (working on a name for that), you'll never run out of ammo. Pistols or Assault Rifle are good substitutes for Penetrator (I just like seeing bodies pinned against walls).
5. There are maybe 3 instances in the game where melee is actually useful in combat (it's fun on the lowest difficulty, but we're in the big-leagues now). If they get that close to you, you'll need to reload from your save.

Don't worry about any of these if you are playing Extraction point...they throw ammo, armor, and health at you like you are a trigger-happy hemophiliac. Hope some of these tips helped.

Travian

While on the band trip, I was introduced to a simple web browser game called Travian. While it's not the most action packed or graphically amazing game, it is fun and strategic...somewhat. You create your little village among thousands of other villages (all bigger than yours when you start). All those other villages are controlled by other players who are probably going to "farm" you, or use their army to steal your resources. Your only hope of defense is the week or so that you get as a novice protection period. After that, you're fair game to anyone who just sees you as an extension to their own resources.

The game has three parts in theory:
Beginning, where you create your village and start your game
Midgame, where you grow your city and start to branch off into other villages
Endgame, where you try and work with alliance members to try and defeat all other alliances and win the server with your "good word, how much free time do you have???" skills

Pros: It doesn't take that much time out of your day to play and it's not very hard. There are the most reasonable internet gamers on Travian that you will ever meet in your life. You can usually just ask someone to stop attacking you and they will. This completely caught me off guard (mercy on the internet...who would have thought?).

Cons: You will want to check your village (even if it takes 8 hours to build something) every second of your life. It doesn't matter that you didn't have enough resources to buy what you're saving for and won't for another 10 hours, you'll still look every 5 minutes.

My advice to all those who want to start playing, find yourself a nice alliance towards the end of your novice protection. You'll instantly have friends, protection, and mentors. Also, just look at the game a maximum of 4 times a day (morning, afternoon and before you go to bed are prime times). I promise that it truly isn't worth expecting an attack every 10 minutes. There are worse things than loosing 5 hours of inactively gained resources.

I'm on US server 4 for now, I might start with US server 2 when it restarts though.
Link to the United States servers

Rating: B