Warcraft III & New Game-Buying Policy

by Pinback

From now on, I will only be buying games with "III" at the end of their titles. To wit, the last two games I bought were:

"Grand Theft Auto III" - arguably the greatest video game of all time, except maybe for the save-game feature, which I neither like or hate as much as I once did, and then...

...well, here I was last night, getting dru- I mean, winding down after the long day, and I realize I hadn't been keeping up with gaming current events as much as I used to, particularly in the strategy genre. So I started downloading some demos. One demo I downloaded was "America's Army", the FPS from the actual army. This seemed really neat. At least, the first training scenario seemed neat. The rest of it, I was unable to get to, since in order to save your progress, the program has to be able to connect to an internet server, said server which was not operational at the time that I played the training scenario (twice). GTA3's save-game feature might not be everyone's favorite, but it does include the ability to actually save the game, which I was not able to accomplish with America's Army. And since you can't get past the first training scenario unless it saves, it's going to be hard to progress much further.

Anyway, the other thing I downloaded was a preview demo for "Medieval: Total War", a realtime wargame which features hundreds of troops bashing the shit out of each other over vast, rolling landscapes. This was cool. This felt like a game that I would definitely buy, then bring home, then play all night one night, then never play again, then be pissed at myself for 1) not playing it, and 2) continuing to buy games that I only play for one night.

So, drunk with bloodlust (and beer), I was left itching for a non-demo strategy/war product to enjoy. I went back online to check the news, and read a story that WARCRAFT III had just been released!! People were very excited about this!! People were so excited that two nights ago, all Fry's locations opened at midnight for a Windows98-esque running of the bulls!! What a momentous moment in gaming history!! Except I didn't much care, since I had never played either of the other two, and my RTS career has been limited to buying a few of them, taking them home, playing them for one night, pronouncing them "really really cool", and then never playing them again.

Of course, then I read the review (gamespot.com) which basically says: "Sorry if the spelling in this review is a bit off -- many of my keys are stuck together by the boysauce I spewed all over it during the first five minutes I played this game."

Well, given that kind of review, and the seductive lure of mob behavior, I went right out this morning to Fry's to buy one!! (at the laughable price of $59.99 - watch me laugh: "hahehaehe"). I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to find a copy, after all the hubbub...

No problems there.

Fry's had basically blown out half of their entire software section to make room for THOUSANDS of the "mini-box" copies of this sucker. I am not making this up:

When you walk in, there's immediately a large rack of hundreds of WC3s staring you in the face. If you manage to work your way around that rack, you come to a HUGE "WC3 fort", with a fake flame burning on top, and zillions more in the box underneath.

If you manage to withstand that assault of "buy me or you will be the only one without me and people will laugh at you (more than usual)", then you finally come to the regular old software shelves, where one entire 15-20foot section of shelves are jam packed with SQUILLIONS more miniboxes, "collectors edition" boxes ($74.95), and "Official Strategy Guides".

Then, once you've succumbed to the mindspell which all of these boxes has put on you, and you head to the cashier, you pass another enormous section of shelves with WC3 Action Figures that you can buy. (And beef jerky.)

I swear, I've never seen anything like this.

Anyway, I just HAD to have one.

I've been playing for a few hours now, and I can definitely say (although I really have no idea how to play an RTS properly) "This is really, really cool!"

I'm going to play it all night!

I wonder what'll happen next!

SiteOp Note: Click here for the exciting conclusion!!! OMG!!!