StarCraft

So when StarCraft II came out two summers ago, every college classmate of mine was going apeshit. The long-awaited sequel to 1998's PC strategy game was a huge hit with what seemed like everyone I knew. I abstained form jumping in on the action, however, because I had abstained from said PC strategy game in the first place. Let me backtrack a bit and start from the beginning, which I suppose is Warcraft II. I loved Warcraft II, which shouldn't be confused with the (in)famous MMORPG World of Warcraft. It was a real-time strategy game in which the goal was, generally, to conquer the other players on a given map, typically by building and sustaining large armies of troops. To train troops, you needed to build barracks and armories. To build these, you needed enough gold and lumber. To get gold and lumber, you needed to send workers out to mines and forests. The whole game was a delicate balancing act, but it was also a race against time. You didn't just need to prioritize; you needed to master the idea of parallel processing. Any time your workers spent not building, mining, or upgrading structures was time lost. Any time your barracks spent not training troops was time lost. To win a game of Warcraft II - probably the first game I ever played over the Internet, way back when doing so meant connecting to other friends' modems with a dial-up - you had to be completely on top of your shit, never once pausing mid-game to contemplate what actions to take next. I mean, that's not entirely true - a superior strategy could still beat someone even with fewer troops and resources, but still. The game was more about time efficiency than careful planning, and although I loved it back in fourth grade or so, the appeal wasn't built to last. So when StarCraft came out in 1998, and it looked to me like a futuristic but potentially confusing Warcraft knockoff, I had no real interest. That same lack of interest lasted all the way up until the aforementioned release of StarCraft II when, as I said, everyone I knew was going nuts for this long-awaited sequel. So two years ago, I figured it was finally time for me to buy the original StarCraft game, and two nights ago, with Marissa out of town for the week and her PC laptop at my disposal, I decided it was time to finally play it. And it quickly became apparent that I'd missed... absolutely nothing. As I had always suspected, this was indeed just Warcraft II set in space. Instead of things like "gold" and "lumber mills," there were "minerals" and "gas refineries," and where once the upgrade chains seemed logical and meaningful, this time around they felt so much more obscure and "science fictional." Also, let's be honest - time has not exactly been kind to the way a game form 1998 looks and feels nowadays. I dunno. StarCraft wasn't a bad game, but it was exactly what I expected it to be, and the appeal of these real-time strategy games that involve memorizing hot keys and mouse clicks and development patterns and optimal building spacing, it just doesn't exist for me anymore. The version I bought was the "Battle Chest," and as such I also have the expansion pack, Brood War, on my backlog. I'll probably try to play that one this week, too, but not because playing the original StarCraft has left my hungry for more of this stuff. Oh well. I've got fifty-one more games awaiting their moment in the sun, so I shouldn't get too hung up over not loving this one.