I have been hit with the struggling economy. For the first time ina long timeI don't have a job. What this means is that I will be absent from GS for a while due to financial factors which make it necessary to eliminate the cable expense...thus no more internet. There are extenuating circumstances that eliminate the obvious solution of finding a new job. That is all I want to say about those circumstances here, sorry. I will be here for a week or so, until my cable is turned off.

I am going to miss all of my friends, which is the best part of GS. I do plan to return as soon as possible, but I expect that to be at least 6 months from now. I may be able to visit a few times during that 6 months from a friends house, but the visitswill be rare if at all. I have been on GS nearly every day of the last 500 plus days so this is not easy for me. I will try to catch up with everyone when I am able to return. Good luck and best wishes to everyone! I hope to see you when I return.

I just finished the DS game Suikoden Tierkreis. If you are not familiar with the Suikoden series, the basic idea is to try to obtain all 108 characters while playing this RPG. Tierkreis is no different in that respect, the goal is to obtain the 108 characters in this quest driven game with turn-based battles.

This blog is not intended to be a review of the game, but more to introduce you to the series or to let you know about this particular game. I am an old-school gamer, and I will define old-school as I am using the term. I am an explorer in an RPG and I check out every nook and cranny to see if there is something there. I try to talk to everybody and I talk to them more than once. The big thing I am referring to as old-school is that I am accustom to playing a game without a guide or faq and I try doing things in a different way to see if something different happens.

As I stated, this is a quest driven game for the most part. There are a lot of the 107 other characters that join automatically as part of the story. There are also a lot of characters that join as part of a quest. Still there are those characters that require certain things to happen at a certain time before you can gain their support. Since I am thorough and always checking out different things, I actually stumbled into about 6 or 8 of the characters that way. Two of them were very near to the end of the game and I only got them because I was trying to get everyone of the characters at about the same level. That is another aspect of being an old-school gamer, I feel like I have to level the characters.

I'm writing more than I planned to so let me just give you a quick overview.It is a good game, but there are a number of things that even I did not like. The camera had a bad habit of being in the wrong place for me to see what I wanted to see at that time. The random encounters were frequent, but the dungeons were short for the most part. Many of the characters had no real purpose in the game and could easily have been recruited and forgotten. The last 15 or 20 characters are recruited very, very near to the end of the game. I actually gave up on one of the characters and started the "final battle" sequence when the irritating little character finally joined.

Those things aside, I did enjoy the game and would say that it is a good game. This game should probably not be the first Suikoden game that you play because there are some really good games in the Suikoden series. It is worth playing once, but it is also a fairly linear game that doesn't give you a lot of reasons to play it again...unless you get through the game without some of the characters.

One of the great features on Gamespot is the unions. Yeah, yeah, I know you've received countless invitations to unions you have no interest in, but unions are a great way to meet people and discuss games, music, or any number of topics with people that enjoy the same type of things. This is a shout out for one of those unions, the Final Fantasy Universe union.

In preparation for this blog I made sure that everyone in my friends list received an invitation to this union, unless you are already involved with the union or you have the maximum ties to other unions. While I would love to have you join the union, I hope you will only join if you intend to participate. We can still be friends even if you decline the invitation and even if you don't *gasp* like final fantasy games.

This is an active and growing union with a lot of great people. That is where the calling names part comes in for this blog. If you are not a member of the FFUniverse then you are safe, I won't be calling your name. If you are a member, but haven't participated very often then you are probably safe as well.

The FFUniverse union has the typical games that are popular in other unions such as 'the person below,' 'the person above,' and other general discussion topics. There are a number of topics that discuss other games that aren't part of the final fantasy universe. The difference is that you are likely to meet people that you might not meet in your other unions. That is where I feel like the FFUniverse really shines, we have some great people. That brings me to the calling names part of the blog, and in an effort to avoid writing a book I may abbreviate some of these comments.

These are some of the great people you might meet in the FFUniverse union (not in any special order). Nate was one of the first people I met in the union and has been a big help to me. gormo joined when the union was very young and has been awesome. Linda was one of the first people to join after I became the leader and is another awesome person (may remind you of Tifa if you get to know her). Johnsy previously known as Squall_2 was another early member that influenced the union quite a bit and I'm glad he is back. Sophia works for Gamespot and often has information about new games and can be found in a number of videos (she may not be around real often, but she blogs and writes about games alot). Nuno joined soon after I became the leader and is another very helpful member that is fun to know. AnelZukic you may already know, but just wait until he pops off one of his lists or writes a blog. Kateh you have to meet if you don't know her already...trust me. sevansoares may be unbeatable in the knowledge challenge, but you can try. Pure Lopez from the big apple, ok you may know him as OICWUTUDIDTHAR is one of the newer members that you might meet if he isn't away from New York. Ataraxia made the current union banner and doesn't like to be mentioned... oops. That should be enough to give you an idea of who is in the union.

I hope you will at least check out the union, linked above, and join if you want to participate and get to know these and other great people.