Fifty-Seventh

Hello there everyone, my name is Craig, and I'm a 'Total War'-oholic.

I picked up the habit several years ago - I started with the original Shogun: Total War, although if I'm honest, I think I started a long time before that, with James Clavell's Shogun. I think I saw repeats of that on television before I was even 10 years old, and I Japan has fascinated me since then. I've always been a fan of war games in almost any form, RTS particularly, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at map-based, turn-based, hex-based strategy games.

On the occasions that my father was feeling paternal, we played Risk. As is the way of such things, I had my ass handed to me regularly until one day I managed to beat him, resoundingly. I have maintained an impressive record in Risk ever since. At the time, it was my perfect game - I could plan an execute grand strategies, massive sweeping pincer movements encompassing entire continents, multiple campaigns and armies - it had all the things I revelled in, but also the things I was bloody good at. Smaller scale, more tactical engagements tended to frustrate me more. If I'm honest again, I think I lacked the ability to react quite fast enough to the kind of situations they give rise to - I could hold my own more often than not, but I knew it wasn't really my scene. With Risk, I didn't have to worry about that; I was more comfortable viewing the large scale, seeing the 'big picture'.

So - when I first read about Shogun: Total War in the pages of PC Gamer UK, I was bitten by the bug immediately. As I read the previews again and again, I was gripped by near-religious fervour. A game where you played as a Daimyo in Feudal Era Japan, raising and controlling armies, played out in a turn-based structure across a map of Japan, capturing provinces, raising and maintaining cities? A game where espionage was a vital part of the gameplay, carried out by Ninja and Shinobi, who became more powerful as they carried out more missions for you? A game where each faction was subtly different - perhaps favouring Cavalry, or Ninja, or Archers?

I never stood a chance. I didn't even try to resist it. I rolled my sleeve up as far as I could and started mainlining immediately.  I lost days at a time, I was calling sick for work, weekends passed by in haze, when I closed my eyes I saw units of Yari Samurai charging over the fills of Satsuma province, Ninja creeping over the walls of Osaka Castle to assassinate an enemy general, fanatical Ikko-Ikki monks breaking the lines of Samurai guarding a bridge outside of Edo, the 'Death of a Daimyo' music was the soundtrack to my nightmares at night, my head ached almost constantly because I wasn't taking the time away from the computer to eat properly. I loved every second of it.

The initial addiction phase didn't last. While you never really 'finish' a Total War game, you do reach a point where you have spent enough time with it that your addiction is temporarily sated, and lies pacified within you. I reached that point Shogun after a few weeks, and I was soon able to function like something approaching a normal human being again.

It wouldn't last. Two years later Medieval: Total War was released and my addiction bloomed once more. Two years after that came Rome: Total War, and another two years later, Medieval 2: Total War came out.

I try not to think about how much time I've wasted spent playing the Total War series. As I said above, I'm an addict and I always will be, but I think I've come to some kind of unspoken agreement with it. It'll be with me forever now - I understand that. The addiction and I have formed a strange kind of alloy, merged bone-deep, never to be separated.
It's just something I'll have to live with.