My history with StarCraft goes back to the original, but my friends played it a much different way from the people that play “online” or “well.” We simply enjoyed playing badly and sending our various guys out to kill each other with very little strategy. As you might guess, StarCraft was a game that I enjoyed but was not very high on my list. I mean I knew there were players out there, in Korea, that were amazing at this game, but I never really thought much about it. RTS games were pretty low on my list at the time.Fast forward to StarCraft II. I was excited to play this game as it brought back a lot of the memories I had playing the original back in the day. I started playing the single player, and that was fun… and then I started playing with Mecha. He obliterated me every time. No matter what I did, I was destroyed. I felt like I was a one legged person playing basketball with Michael Jordan.
Weezerjedi then joined the fray. Again, I was no where even close to winning. This brought me to really look into just how this game was played. The more research I did the more I realized how deep this game was. It isn’t about clicking the mouse fast, although that helps, it is about strategy. And REAL strategy at that. This game was like playing chess.
Did this immediately make me an amazing player that cannot be defeated? No, absolutely not, I still haven’t beaten Mecha or Weezerjedi. But, it did make me enjoy the game so much more. It has quickly risen near the top of my favorite games of the moment. There are so many intricacies, and the smallest change in your play can make all the difference. This game is an intellectual exercise.
I know many of you, after reading the first paragraph, were thinking OMGWTF n00bz. I definitely am at StarCraft, but I am absolutely enthralled, even while getting destroyed. It was an RTS epiphany for me, and one that will change my gaming life forever.
