Sooo... I think I may have just bought StarCraft II.
 
I'm not really sure what happened. But I'll start by saying that yesterday I walked into town and when I went into GAME I saw Wings of Liberty by the entrance and said to myself "Oh yeah, StarCraft comes out today". And I very briefly contemplated buying it simply because it's been ten years in the making, waiting and anticipation. And any game that can get Brad that excited must be pretty good - if you haven't seen the unboxing, check it out.
 
Or perhaps you shouldn't. Because watching that alerted me to the StarCraft quest. Which led me to watching five videos this morning, culminating in the multiplayer walkthrough. Then the other three multiplayer commentaries. Which I loved, and thought "I might follow this game on occasion, but I doubt I'll pick it up". But even then I had my doubts in those words. And one Giant Bomb live stream later, I went and hit up Amazon for my very own copy of StarCraft II.
 
It just seems like so much fun, and so well made. And I know that, because it's Blizzard, there will be constant updates and balancing patches for the next few years. I picked up Diablo II this year and upon installing it found they'd updated it in the last couple of weeks. That game came out a long damn time ago, y'know.
 
Also drawing me in is the fast pace, which is a little different from most RTS games I play, and actually quite the reverse of my turtle style in most games of this ilk. But then my favourite RTS is Z, and that's incredibly quick (in a similar fashion - if you take even a second or two deliberating, you're probably going to be dead real soon). Also, with the switcharound of people I'm living with next year, I will be in a house with three guys who are all big RTS players and a girl who has expressed interest in joining us for some C&C Generals: Zero Hour (our standard game of choice after I picked up the First Decade for a fiver early this year). Now at the moment they aren't StarCraft players, but I suspect they will be at least somewhat interested.
 
Other enticing things about the game include the challenges to help you work your way up to multiplayer, the 50 initial games online with no penalty to stats, and the supposedly excellent matchmaking system in place to ensure I'm usually matched up against the other players who still have trouble remembering hotkeys and performing high-speed micro mid-battle after those initial games have been spent.
 
I've talked enough for now. But suffice to say no game previously has gone from "not really interested" to "buying week one" for me in the space of about four or five hours as far back as I can remember. Perhaps I'll say more in the future.
 
Ken out.