Friendly Fire 1

I wanted Final Fantasy IV Advance ever since I heard it was in stores, but I decided to take it easy with buying games this month in order to save up a little bit extra for the future Xbox 360. However, due to the fact that we've been exceptionally cheap on electricity this year we get a 150 Euro 'discount' on our next payment for the rent. So I had a little extra cash to spend and that's why Pauline and I went to the gamestore. I swear that just before Christmas they had about 5 or 6 copies of FFIV sitting on the shelf, but today they were all gone. It was the only shop that had them too, seeing how they were US imports. Quite desillusioned I decided to go with Advance Wars DS, another game I had been eyeing for quite some time.

I'm a few missions in right now and so far it's been fun, but maybe a little boring. I'm used to these kinds of strategy games, but there doesn't seem to be more to the units than that what's there in the beginning. In other strategy-like games like SRPG's your units gain new abilities so there's new stuff to look forward to. But it's too early to draw such conclusions, I'll see.

The missions are diverse and fun, so far. It'll surely keep me busy for a while and it doesn't hold back on challenge too. One little mistake and you're toast. It's not that you'll definately lose, but losing one key unit makes it hard to win. I like that. As a fan of things that have strategy involved I don't want to walk the beaten path but I want to be tested a little. So far I'm getting what I want.

It's too bad that I'm not yet spotting the addictiveness people have been talking about. I had expected a game that would make me rout the missions one by one in a few sittings due to its addictiveness factor, but I didn't have a hard time putting my DS aside to do something else for a few hours. Well, as long as it is enjoyable I'll be fine. Also as long as this game doesn't throw insanely hard missions at me that are impossible to beat unless you try 30 times I have confidence that I'll be finishing this one.

Friendly Fire 2

There's some other good news on the financial front, possibly. Now that I'm sharing an apartment with Pauline I'm officially her 'fiscal partner', which means that we count as one household. As a student I have no income, at least not one that requires me to pay tax (yes, I pay 0% tax). It seems that all citizens of this country who do not have an income over which tax needs to be payed get 150 Euros a month. I'll be digging into this a little deeper as this would be a very welcome addition to my monthly budget.