Power Overwhelming?

During my high school and early college days I was a gamer. By the time I hit my gaming stride at 14 years old I'd already maimed my hands on the NES Rectangle of Pain, ruined my eyes by staring, too close and unblinking, at myriad TV screens and gotten intimidatingly good at Street Fighter 2. After a middle school spent transitioning into computer geekdom - assembling boxes from parts and getting my first taste of online multiplayer through Doom II and Duke Nukem 3D - I entered high school as a Computer Gamer. I'd taken One More Turn a million times in Civilization 2, racked up a Flawless Victory in Red Alert and co-founded one of the more skilled and successful Jedi Knight clans on the MSN Gaming Zone.

And then, in the summer of 1998 at a computer show at a nondescript Hilton Hotel, I found StarCraft.



By this point I was well versed in Real Time Strategy games (a veteran of all of the Command and Conquor titles, Warcraft 2, and lackluster titles Kill 'Em All and Total Annihilation) but in Starcraft I met perfection. Blizzard added a third tribe to the normal RTS dichotomy and yet still somehow managed to attain a better balance than any game before (or since.) It was nearly perfect. That summer (and subsequent summers) it was not strange to find me waking at 9am, making eggs and toast, starting up StarCraft at 10am, breaking around 1 to make cheese fries, eating cheese fries while playing more at 1:30, and not stopping again until dinner at 7.

I literally played that game like it was my job.

And this single-minded, horrifying dedication paid off. I became very good. My friends and I waged epic battles at LAN cafes and across Battle.net.

It's been a long time since I seriously played StarCraft. In college I transitioned to first to CounterStrike - in addition to becoming startlingly good at Super Smash Bros. - then almost exclusively to console RPGs and then mostly out of gaming altogether. A few years ago I logged in again and was amazed at how the building speed had progressed but surmised that certain build orders had become rote and speed trumped strategy. The game had grown past me, and I wasn't too bothered to catch up.

Enter: 2010. After a decade of rumors and teases Blizzard finally released StarCraft 2 and legions pored out to purchase it, including several of my friends. Early reviews state that it's every bit as addictive and epic (maybe even moreso) than its predecessor. For years I checked on the progress of this game, poring over the new units, watching gameplay demos and painstakingly searching through Google pages for a firm release date. And yet, weeks after the game debuted, I still don't have it. The Game won't run on my Macbook that is mostly reserved for Netflix, Facebook, Microsoft Office and Adobe CS4. A wall of computer upgrades $800 high stands between me and The Game and, to be honest, I'm not sure the cost is even worth contemplating.

In the next year or so I'd probably end up needing a new computer anyway, but computer gaming has fallen mostly out of my life and I can't say I miss it all that much. Even if I had the machine to run The Game would I really want to dedicate the time to play it when there are already at least five things I'd rather be writing? I'm generally distracted enough. Can I afford to add the distraction to top them all?

I imagine when I do end up upgrading my computer I will also end up buying this game. But here's hoping that I can at least, in the time between then and now, regain some sense of focus so I'll be able to see Starcraft 2 as one of many releases and not an overriding obsession. I've been waiting for it too long to not get it. After ten years the purchase is inevitable. The anticipation has been bubbling over since before the game came out.

I'm jacked up and ready to go.