If such a unfortunate mistake ever befell me in Diablo III, though, I could just go on the auction house and buy some new gear. I could literally pay to be awesome at the game. You practically need to buy gear in the auction house if you want to progress through the four difficulties at a comfortable rate. Such an issue is illustrated beautifully in this blog post. Yet I still can’t stop playing. I know there’s a 0.001% chance I will actually use a weapon or piece of armor that drops, but it doesn’t stop me from killing thousands of monsters over and over again. I actually had two Legendary items drop pretty quickly for me, but I haven’t even used either of them yet, which is indicative of another issue. No matter, I still can’t stop playing. At least what I feel is excessive video game playing isn’t in line with the standards of some people on my Battle.net friends list, some of whom have played two to four times as many hours.

All this time spent on an eminently dumb game. It’s so fucking mindless and addictive and zombiefying. Not able to kill some particularly tough groups of champion enemies?– better get some new gear with your stashed gold or your Paypal account. Click, click, 1, click, 3, click, click. Sure, you learn to utilize your spells more effectively and try out different spell configuration as you unlock new ones, but there’s not so much a difficulty curve as a timesink curve. To beat Inferno is going to take the average person hundreds of hours. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’ve never been a dedicated gamer outside of arguably the Day of Defeat beta 10 years ago and Counter-Strike: Source for a few months after its release. Those were games that revolved around human competition and teamwork, not AI hordes of the same baddies repeatedly endlessly until you farm enough gold or get enough cool drops (hahahaha, unlikely) to beat the game on Inferno.

A big part of me hopes writing out these thoughts will convince me to put down the crack pipe. I already played through LIMBO the past couple of days instead of playing a few hours of Diablo III; I think that qualifies as a glimmer of hope. Such an original and thoughtful puzzle game was a nice break from the exhausting routine of killing skeletons and demons. Eating through my backlog of indie games on Steam sounds like a better idea than making my way through Hell difficulty with my Monk character. Super Meat Boy, Cave Story, Jamestown, Bastion, Psychonauts, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Lone Survivor; or, the same set of Diablo III levels I’ve played through three times between my Monk and Wizard characters. There’s little rationale behind choosing the second option, yet I’m convinced my Monk will hit Level 60 (the highest) by the end of the week. Fuck you, Blizzard.

It’s amazing that even with an underpowered, two-and-a-half-year-old laptop, my two gaming companions of the past few months have both been PC titles. I have returned to my ongoing love affair with Team Fortress 2 and started a new and dedicated relationship with Starcraft II. Not only do I play both games a few times a week (ok, I actually haven’t played TF2 in a while), but I will continue to do so for years to come thanks to the frequent updates the games will receive.

And it’s not as if I fall in love with games easily; for example, I stopped playing Red Dead Redemption shortly after its release, quickly becoming bored of riding horses around a barren Western landscape while trying to aim and shoot with a shitty control scheme. I don’t want to digress into a Rockstar-bashfest or an argument about console and PC gaming; I’m just using my experience with Red Dead Redemption to contrast my experience with TF2 and SC2. Maybe I just enjoy games that end in “2″ this year (Mass Effect 2 was the fucking shit).

Although I love both TF2 and SC2, they are polar opposites. Two multiplayer games couldn’t be any more different from each other (perhaps UNO and Street Fighter 4 or Counter-Strike and Carcassonne). One game is a cartoonish and ever-evolving first-person shooter featuring at least one huge element of luck; the other is a science-fiction (although not exactly gritty-looking) real-time strategy game requiring multitasking, flawless execution, and a thorough knowledge of a game that is similar to its predecessor.

TF2 is about as casual and straight-up FUN as a PC game can be while still appealing to hardcore players. You can jump right in and play as a soldier, spamming rockets across the map at the other team, and have a good time doing it; or play as a Pyro, trying to find a way to get behind the other team so you can roast them up-close; or play as a Sniper, hanging back behind the rest of your team while trying to snipe enemies in the head. You can jump in and play for fifteen minutes or spend an entire night killing characters that look like they were created by Pixar.

Starcraft II, on the other hand, is about as ruthless and unforgiving as a game can be while still appealing to players who are unable to click their mice 100 times a minute. Although, the multiplayer is only appealing after you’ve played a bunch of the single-player. There’s no way you can just jump in and have any idea of what to do. And then even once you have an idea of what you’re doing, you’re still going to be on the very bottom of the ladder without knowing some basic knowledge. And then once you have a grasp of the basics and can follow a build order and know counters, you have to learn how to scout and keep track of your own base at the same time, how to attack and train reinforcements at the same time — then maybe you’ll be decent. Then maybe you’ll learn how to micro-manage your army for maximum effectiveness, using spell-casters to devastate the opposing forces in a way pure brute force can’t. And this all happens at a pace much faster than most other RTSs. Units and buildings are very fragile, magnifying every small mistake. Oh, you told those units to move instead of attack-move and lost a bunch of them? Guess you fucking lose now. It’s brutal. Yet when you win a close game or fight off early cheese (do you really want me to explain that?), there aren’t many games more satisfying.

What ties these two games together is their respective developers, Valve and Blizzard. Both are the kings of PC gaming because they stick to what they know and polish their games until they’re nearly perfect. There’s the “Valve-Time” meme, but Blizzard is just as bad with getting its games out in any reasonable amount of time — but no one cares once they are finally out. Whenever they come out with a game, it just becomes the de-facto standard for the genre. Starcraft is a spectator sport in Korea. Diablo II and World of Warcraft have ruined thousands of lives. Valve too has ruined thousands of lives, starting with the famous mod for the original Half-Life called Counter-Strike, a game that became a worldwide phenomenon and introduced many gamers to the concept of “clans.” But more importantly, Valve created Steam, a digital distribution and multiplayer platform that is probably the greatest development of the 21st century thus far. There’s no disputing the integral place of both companies in PC gaming history and its future.

The bottom line here is that both games offer more than enough content to satisfy most gamers. TF2 is the wacky, content-laden, constantly-updated distraction; SC2 is the high-maintenance, but ultimately rewarding obsession–well, as rewarding as beating someone at a VIDEO GAME can get.

I told myself that I’d go through both the original Starcraft and its expansion, Brood War, before their sequel was released. I started once the first phase of the SCII beta was over, but I didn’t even manage to get completely through the three campaigns in the original Starcraft before the second phase started and sucked me right back in. I wanted to do it because 1) I wanted a refresher on the story, and 2) I (embarrassingly) never beat Brood War. Well, it seems like the latter still won’t happen.

Fortunately, there are people like ZealousD on NeoGAF who go through the trouble of playing an entire game — albeit with cheat codes — just to record and compile videos of the story segments. Yeah sure, Starcraft might not have the “Oscar-calibre” story of GTA4, but damn if it didn’t seem fucking cool to a 12-year-old. And I still say it’d make a decent movie; it’d be better than most of the videogames adapted for film, at the very least. Granted, the Zerg vs. Terran dynamic could be said to be an adaptation of Aliens, but it greatly expands on the universe and possibilities. It’d make an awesome made-for-TV Sci-Fi Channel movie or miniseries, I think. Oh wait, SyFy.

Bottom line: I care about the story. I’m a sucker for science-fiction shit, and nostalgia holds me pretty tight with some things, and Starcraft is one of those things. I know I’ll enjoy going through the campaigns in the three installments of SCII. In the meantime, I’ll be catching up on the original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob4hQsTkWLg

Since the embedder doesn’t seem to link correctly to the entire playlist, here’s a link. That’ll automatically string together 28 videos that comprise the entire story — all cutscenes, in-game conversations, and pre-mission briefings. It’s impressive work.

Is it just me, or are the late-90s, low-resolution “pre-rendered CGI” cinematics still cooler than the “in-game engine” cinematics that seem so prevalent nowadays?

Actually, this phenomenon is perfectly illustrated in this trailer for Starcraft II:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_E83GfWM-A

Admittedly, the CGI for the Kerrigan part is fucking incredible, so using it in conjunction with what looks to be an in-game graphics engine is totally jarring and shitty. But don’t you think the cinematics in the original Starcraft are just more aesthetically pleasing then that in-game crap, even with their somewhat exaggerated and strange depictions of human faces? Perhaps I am just greedy and want everything to look like that Kerrigan CGI. Wow.

build missile turrets
due to extra minerals
goddamn it brood lords

concentrate on rush
marines, ‘rauders, medivacs
then forget to tech

awesome mothership
so huge, cool abilities
blown up by vikings

block the entrance ramp
wall of depots and barracks
leave one space open

confusing units
new ones; like hellions, thors
no clue how to use

2 v 2 random
heavily favored at start
teammate disconnects

korea awaits
for july twenty-seventh
new national sport

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the former was the more rewarding of the two. Even if my score on the front nine today is worthy of an Obama-esque Special Olympics joke, I managed to recover with a somewhat less embarrassing back nine, due to some tips from a 50-something, pot-smoking, teenage prostitute-fucking guy (no, not Lawrence Taylor). He presented his listening to System of a Down, Bush, and Green Day as evidence of his coolness. That was adorably sad.

Meanwhile, my Starcraft II playing experience tonight was all downhill after a first match in which one of my two opponents quickly disconnected, and by the end I had remembered why I hadn’t played the beta in over a month. My partner and I lost to a pair of apparent 5-year-olds who took 15 minutes to figure out how to build a unit other than a Zergling. I also tried to mass Stalkers in another game and was subsequently shit on like the Liberal Democrats in the UK election tonight.

By why connect these two games in one blog post, other than the fact they shared the privilege of wasting my time today? Because they are both perfect examples of love-hate relationships. Although, the balance with regards to golf tips much more towards love than with SC2. I’m sure if Kim Jong Il ever tried playing the game against a South Korean, he’d end up getting so pissed that he’d nuke his southern neighbor into oblivion. I know if *I* had a nuke, I would probably launch it to let off some steam after losing to a Zergling rush.

But I get pissed while playing golf too. After my first four holes this afternoon, I wanted to be smash my entire bag of clubs while being instantaneously teleported off the goddamn golf course. I didn’t care that I had paid for 18 holes, if I could have been off the course and in my room with a snap of my fingers, I would have done it. I probably lost more balls in massive fields of beach grass in the first three holes than I had the half dozen or so times I’d already played golf this year. It was fucking bullshit.

The problem was overthinking just about every part of my game. Trying to do what I was practicing at the driving range a couple of days ago with my massive driver. Making sure not to be aiming right because some video I watched said that most people end up aiming right when they think they are aiming straight. Focusing on not suing my arms and wrists to putt, but my shoulders and body.

I guess that’s the opposite problem of the one I have with Starcraft II. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I end not expanding quick enough and not scouting and not suing all my resources and not upgrading my units and Jesus Christ I need to be clicking and hitting keys 100 times a minute. Oh wait, that’s still too slow.

While I’ve watched a bunch of videos recently with regards to golf and they’ve screwed me up by getting in my head so much, ending up with me shooting a dozen strokes higher than the first time I played 18 holes this year, I refuse to watch Starcraft videos or replays because, really, there’s a limit to how much I’m willing to waste my time. Sure, I’ll watch a four-minute video remix of Arnold saying “Put the cookie down” in Jingle All The Way, but at least that is ridiculously entertaining in and of itself. Watching some other dude’s build order in Starcraft II isn’t particularly exciting or amusing. And it’s only enlightening with regards to a computer game that I will not be playing in 5 years, unlike the other game in this post, which I will playing (hopefully) for another 50. And yes, golf is a game. It’s not a fucking sport, no matter what Wikipedia might say.

But the high points in both games make them worthwhile. Sure, I may have to point for seemingly the 100th time to a 3v3 game in the original Starcraft where I committed genocide with Siege Tanks, but it really was immensely satisfying. Now, with golf? The high points with that are still spaced out a bit too much, and usually tempered by a missed putt, but they are still there. I had a four-foot putt for birdie today after a perfect pitch. I felt so awesome. Until I missed that putt. Just hitting great drives on back-to-back holes is a victory that I’ll take nowadays.

Ultimately, it’s all about progress. With my round of golf today, I may have had a bad 18 holes overall, but I picked up some things — like shorter backswings on pitches and chips and putts — that will only help me in the long run. With my four matches of Starcraft II, I learned nothing. And I didn’t get five hours of sun either. Man, fuck you, Blizzard. Your game just pisses me off, yet I’m going to end up buying it and playing it anyway.

KOREAN NATIONAL HOLIDAY – JULY 27

I could post the press release to make it all official, but who reads those things anyway. We all know what Starcraft II will be — especially those of us in the beta. I hadn’t played it in over a month, but playing with a friend who just got a key was fun. Because I man-handled him. Winning makes things more fun. As opposed to, say, watching Johan Santana give up 10 runs to the Phillies.

But really, I thought this would be coming out in the fall sometime. July? Why’d you have to cut into summer, Blizzard? There goes a whole month of August sun. In addition to getting owned by Koreans in multiplayer, there will be 29 missions and challenge-mode mini-games, too.

So I guess I need to play through the campaigns in the original and expansion while watching replays of SC2 multiplayer prodigies, right?