Jay’s Internet Log

Upon deciding to write this, I’ve been wracking my brain to try to remember the last PC game I played, and I believe that the game was Rise of Nations, back in 2003.  Seven years have passed, and my gaming has taken place mostly on consoles and portable units, and that’s probably not going to change very much.

I recently built a rather powerful PC for video editing purposes, and I was in Best Buy this past weekend, which just happened to be tax-free in Massachusetts, AND, I had a coupon.  Needless to say, Starcraft 2 came home with me and a few hours later it was installed on my computer.  It wanted to download some sort of client which said it would take 5+ hours to download, so I let it go all night, and Sunday morning I woke up, ready to get going with the game, but instead I ended up playing Monday Night Combat for an hour.

When I actually started to play Starcraft 2, I sat down, booted up the game, and then remembered how much more advanced PC games were than most console games.  I had options to do everything, and could spawn documents and forums online from within the game.  I was impressed.  I went through the menus first and saw that all my settings were in the “Ultra” category, so I think my hardware is good to go.  I watched a few tutorials and started up the campaign, not knowing what I was doing, but the game doesn’t throw a whole lot at you at first, so it brought me up to speed in a way.

One thing I really like is how everything is explained.  If you were going to upgrade a unit, and have a few choices, the game explains it in text as well as plays a little movie showing how the unit will handle afterwards.  It’s very cool.  I’ve only upgraded my medic units, but they do a really good job at keeping others healthy now!  I am now about four missions into the game and can sense that it’s beginning to get a bit more difficult, so I have been searching online for text guides for beginners but haven’t really come across any, but maybe I just need to play through the game more.  Using the mouse is nice and easy, but the only hotkeys I’ve really learned are for clicking on an SCV, then hitting B-S to make it build a supply depot so I can have more units on the screen.

I’m a complete beginner with the game, but I’m really enjoying it and looking forward to getting better at it.  With these types of games however, sometimes I’ll get frustrated and that will be the end of it.  I hope that doesn’t happen with this one, because it’s truly awesome.  I don’t know if I plan to go online with it and actually battle other people, but the option is there, so there’s always a chance that it’ll happen eventually.  This computer wasn’t built as a gaming machine, but it seems to handle at least this game well, and this game is truly fantastic.