It's hard to describe the flurry of emotions that went through my head yesterday. I felt quite lazy and lethargic throughout almost the entirety of the day, but I felt a great amount of excitement as well. First, it was my dog's birthday. This actually means nothing but I had to mention it because that's what I do. And I had a really good running joke at work that had to do with it. Second, I appear to have discovered a key piece of information in my family tree research; the immigration record from my earliest-known ancestors who came over from Germany in 1856. Not only do I have this info in my hands, but it gives me an enormous foundation on which to base further amounts of research. And finally, the long awaited release date for Starcraft II was here and it was time to sink my teeth into a long night of intense gameplay. Or so I thought.
Actually, I probably wasn't as excited about SC2 as I probably wanted to be. Most of my friends hadn't expressed much excitement over it, and I myself have invested an enormous amount of time playing League of Legends. So I wasn't exactly sure where SC2 fit in. I began downloading the game digitally the night before (it's 7GB, so it took until around 4pm to finish) and by the the time I got home from work the install window was waiting for me to click 'next'. It certainly wasn't the first time I downloaded a large game digitally, however this was by far the most major release that I would've otherwise made a trip to Best Buy during my lunch hour to secure a copy. So it felt a little strange not having to worry about that...and maybe a small part of my soul died too, who knows? I let the installation run while relaxing on the couch (to reiterate, I was dead tired) and in a few minutes it ran a small patch then ready to play. Oh yeah, and I actually had to set up my account and "buy" the game at that point too. Again, very weird.
So I was already somewhat adept at the original Starcraft back in the day and therefore I had a fairly decent handle on how everything worked. I dove into a 1v1 match versus the computer, just to get a feel for the controls before facing off against a human opponent. I played on Medium difficulty (something like 3rd toughest out of 8 or so) and lost a close but decisive battle to the computer AI in less than 9 minutes. Wanting vengeance, I gave it another go and this time I came out the victor in less than 12 minutes. I could already tell I like the fact that the games went quicker than previously, and the gameplay was strikingly similar to the original.
A short time later I decided to dive in and go 1-on-1 with a real person. Except the game wouldn't let me. After perusing the message boards it appeared that the server was overloaded and the matchmaking portion was acting up, which meant one thing to me: time to play LoL. So I did that for a couple hours then tried my luck again over on the SC2 battlefield. This time the matchmaking worked, but I got smoked by my opponent. Not even close. At least it only took 9 minutes to receive a swift asskicking instead of the "you played 2 hours to die like this" beatings I used to take in Age of Empires. Needless to say, I was somewhat distraught and felt it best to resign back to LoL for the remainder of the night.
What's my take on the game so far? It's way too early for me to tell. My initial impression is that it is much too similar to the original Starcraft which takes away part of the excitement. In fact, I would almost consider the release as anti-climactic considering the fact that it has been more than 12 years since the original release. That said, the sound and graphics are much better, and most of the gameplay improvements will be welcomed. There are many gamers who seem to dismiss the game due to it's price, lack of LAN play and privacy issues. Each of these are valid concerns but are secondary to the gameplay itself, which seems to be excellent. I'm not ready to say that I'll be playing this game more than LoL, in fact chances are LoL will still remain tops on my list. But that can always change, and I will continue to play both as I see fit.
Since I've already established that I "can't do everything", I'd like to take a little bit of time to go over some of the other games which have sparked my interest at one time or another, and how they may fit in the near future:
Rock Band - I'm cautiously optimistic that RB3 will be a huge hit and will get me playing religiously again. There were several reasons why I stopped playing: lack of exciting DLC, hardware problems (electronic drums), LoL ate my time, etc. I'm not sure what else to say except that it's got another shot to light a spark when the newest version is released in late-October.
Magic - I absolutely love the game and it's been a great tool for helping me "think" smarter. I still have the cube and will continue to update it as need be. On the same note, I see myself playing "casual" for the foreseeable future. There are a number of barriers to competitive Magic (at least to the level I wish to play at). Time investment, cost, need to travel and wake up early on Saturday mornings, plus the big mess of having stacks of cards all around the house. Magic Online would be an option but I see it as largely anti-social, and it really isn't easy to tell people "I'm playing a tournament online at home all day, so don't bother me even though I'll be here". But whatever, I never thought it was a viable option either way. The biggest part I miss about Magic are the friendships and camaraderie that came with it. Most of the guys that play are intelligent, interesting and productive people outside of the game, which is something I didn't realize before.
Other board games - Summer came and so did time for this. Once the events die down, I plan on doing this more.
Trivia - Ditto.
Scrabble - it's strange because I don't mention Scrabble much, but it's something I keep neatly packaged in a little corner of my brain. And it comes out at the strangest times. The biggest thing is that I really don't know anyone else who plays at any level besides completely casual.
Basketball - right now my sport of choice is softball. And it's hot outside. Which means I'm waiting for things to cool down a little bit. Even then, I have serious conditioning issues.
Ultimate Frisbee - same as basketball but even further on the backburner
World of Warcraft - Done. Over. The only way I'd ever get back into a game like this is if it ever gained a virtual reality element where it became very physical in nature.
Diablo 3 - This is the next big thing but I can probably expect to wait quite a while longer. Those 2011 ETA's don't fool me.
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