Travis bought this about three weeks ago while I was in Alabama for my three-day library school orientation. It was sitting on his desk when I came home. My first reaction was, "You blew 60 bucks on a computer game? At the beginning of the school year??"
Fast forward to yesterday. I spent two hours (maybe a little longer) playing three levels of a campaign. That's right. And it was fun.
Years ago, my brother-in-law introduced me to Warcraft II, and I loved it. I loved building farms, mining gold, chopping down forests, and amassing huge armies. I loved my birds-eye view of the world and my omnipotent command. It wasn't exactly that I grew out of Warcraft--rather, our computer software at home grew out of it. We became Mac people, and WC just kind of faded away. Nobody really noticed. Not even me.
Something about the presence of Starcraft, the shiny newest version of the old Warcraft (there was an older Starcraft even) must have awakened in me my former love. Hence yesterday. But in reliving my childhood I made a couple of mistakes: 1) I played too long. 2) I played too close to bedtime.
Right before bed last night, I was involved in a mission where I had to get seven convoys of colonists off the planet before the Zerg picked them all off. I was having to balance the training of troops and the position of bunkers and the mining of minerals, etc. Meanwhile, the Zerg just kept coming and coming and one of the convoys was destroyed and most of the colonists got picked off, and Travis was watching over my shoulder telling me to do this and that, and....I won the mission. But barely. It was tense.
Then we went to bed, and I felt asleep right away. But the mission carried on. My mind kept playing and replaying certain scenarios, figuring out what I had done wrong and what I could do better. I built more bunkers and positioned them more strategically. I mined minerals more efficiently. I trained a better ratio of marines to medics. Still, the Zerg kept barreling in from outer space, burying their huge bulbous bodies into the planet's surface and releasing their disgusting, slimy spawn! (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's a good thing.) I kept losing! But I kept fighting, and worse, I kept replaying that damn scenario over and over in my mind!
Finally at 2:30 a.m. I clawed my way out of sleep, having figured out that I was dreaming, and demanded that my brain STOP thinking about Starcraft. It was ridiculous! And it took a good little while to get that broken record of a dream to stop playing in my mind.
Lesson learned: don't play Starcraft right before bedtime. Or ever. (Not likely. ;)
8 comments:
oh, evil, evil starcraft. henry has this (well the older version) and we could get him to do ANYTHING with the hope that he could play.
yes, why did we all grow out of war craft - and now there is a newer version with space aliens.....hmmmm....
ah yes, the christmas of warcraft! we too had weeks of late night computer gaming as young marrieds. those were good good memories.
Well, I never got into the Warcraft/Starcraft gaming craze, but I do understand the whole "dreaming about the last thing you did before going to sleep" thing. One word: MELATONIN! :)
I understand your grief, Erin. Those zerg just keep on coming! The fact that you play Starcraft makes me feel affirmed in my life, to some degree.
I made my husband read your post, and he got so excited that a girl I knew played starcraft that I immediately was given a tutorial in the game. It is Alan's guilty pleasure after a long day in the hospital.
But you don't like going to the Space Center?!?!
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