The Crux of the Problem (Part 3)

The Two Big Culprits

2. StarCraft 2

Before you ask, I'm actually promoting the ice.

I’ve never been big on the competitive, online side of videogaming. Mostly because I’ve never really had access, truth be told. Sure I’ve done my obligatory stretch on Xbox Live getting screamed at by angry Americans because I couldn’t help but notice how brutally effective the grenade launcher is, but an evening spent sinking a few Millers and firing off my “noobtube” isn’t quite in the same realm of dedication as a 10^th Prestige COD player or a level 90 Night Elf Druid. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the company of fellow gamers, it’s more that Army of Two or Resident Evil 5 have the sort of multiplayer experiences that can best be enjoyed and finished in a single evening or two, assuming that the Millers to gaming ratio doesn’t slur too heavily in favour of the Millers.

If I had to psychoanalyse this chink in my gaming armour a little further, I guess I’d admit that I don’t really enjoy losing, and that aversion sure isn’t helped by some high-pitched little bastard calling me a “big fat sweaty nerd” while he whoops my ass like I’m a runaway slave. My exception to this rule happens to be none other than StarCraft 2. Not because I don’t get called names, that still happens frequently, (assclown and fucktard being my personal favourites) but rather because I don’t lose all the goddamn time. Let’s cut straight to the point, StarCraft 2 is the only game for which I have ever trained or practiced. Why do I have this dedication towards SC2 and such a dislike towards other online games? Maybe it’s the fact that I started playing on and off right from the release date so I never found myself too far behind the metagame. Maybe it’s the fast-paced, intuitive gameplay that rewards good unit control and proper resource management. Perhaps it’s the Casters, those charismatic and informative members of the SC2 community who regularly post replays and strategy guides. Or possibly it’s the professional E-Sports scene which has validated and glorified the competitive gaming lifestyle. In truth, it’s a combination of all these elements and I’m a clichéd prick for not just saying that in the first place.

Great forcefields, not that I'd know anything about that..

I have a friend who gets his knickers in a twist every time I vent a bit of rage and frustration at my computer screen. I tend to avoid being a bad-mannered asshole when I play online(unless I’m playing LoL where being bad mannered seems to be a requirement for registering an account), so for the most part my outbursts are usually just me kicking myself at an act of outrageous stupidity. This apparent friend of mine feeds me bullshit one-liner after bullshit one-liner like some sort of gaming spiritual advisor who has taken it upon himself to save my videogaming soul. “Calm down”, “just have fun”, “It’s not like you’re getting paid”- He rolls these things off like a fucking conveyor belt. Well you know what Ghandi? I say phooey to all that nonsense. I don’t play a competitive online game to just saunter around with a bottle of lube and a well-stretched rectum, I play it to win. I enjoy the cleansing satisfaction of scratching out a narrow victory after a forty minute macro game just as much as the thrill of smashing someone in an intense seven minute micro-fest. Sure there are custom games, team leagues and the gratification that comes from being promoted and improving your skills but at the end of the day I play StarCraft 2 because I’m in the business of kicking ass, and business is good.

A proud moment for me. Not so much for my parents or my University tutors.

1. Heroes of Might and Magic 4

Look at that P.I.M.P in the purple cape. Seriously. Mid battle,
dragons, genies and fucking titans, and I can't
take my eyes off that baller purple cape.   

What a bloody strange game to score the number 1 slot right? It should by all rights have been claimed by World of Warcraft or League of Legends or University of Canterbury or some other abominable game which demands a colossal commitment of time. But nope, its good old Heroes, 3DO’s underappreciated masterpiece, so how do I do this game the justice it deserves? I’m torn between three factors, gameplay, novelty value and nostalgia. I’ll brush over the first section quickly, 2D visuals, detailed maps, great musical score, wide range of different skills and creatures to pick from, unbalanced as hell and AI that is as thick as bricks. So a bit of a mix there, a rough diamond, an unpolished gem and a fair bit of blood because squeezing that unbiased assessment out of me was like torturing Joanna Dark for classified Intel(refer to section 1). 

Heroes also employed turn-based gameplay and combat, the same grubby mechanic which meant that Rome: Total War and Civilization 4 only narrowly missed out on the opportunity to monopolise my top 5 time sinks with turn based strategy games. Let’s be brutally honest here, for the overwhelming majority of people strategy games revolve around the most crude of tactics – Turtling. Turtling refers to the wartime practice of sitting inside a heavily fortified base, slowly and methodically massing up a doomsday army, usually tanks or some similarly extravagant form of mech, before rolling across the map in a wave of inefficient genocide. This pathological form of gaming cowardice is one of the main reasons why RTS campaigns take days to complete and why most gamers shit the bed when they reach one of those missions where they’re given an objective to complete under the constraints of a time-limit, limited resources or a finite supply of troops. Try exacerbating this time sink by chucking in a turn-based mechanic with its careful consideration of movement points, build orders and resource accumulation and what’ve you got? Definitely not the sort of game where you decide to have “one more turn” while the taxi is sitting outside with its horn honking and its metre running, that’s for fucking sure. 

The desert and the jungle, in all its eleven year old glory.

My second factor was novelty value. I feel like I’m trying to cover my ass with this one because the feature it’s referring to isn’t exactly common practice these days. I’ll just come right out and say it – Hot Seat Multiplayer. That’s right, Hot Seat. Basically split screen mode for computers, except without any actual splitting of the screen because Heroes is a turn based game remember. Hot Seat was the arrogant assumption by 3DO that there would be gamers crazy enough to crowd around a single computer, struggling for space at the desk as they waited patiently for a measly two minute turn and the inevitable ten minute delay that followed. It’s like chess for up to six people, except your pieces are limited to moving only a few squares each turn and the board is over eighty spaces in length and width, so for the first few dozen turns all anyone can do is brag and bluster. With that being said, why anyone would play a turn based strategy game over LAN or the internet is beyond me. Sure Hot Seat didn’t change the fact that you still had plenty of downtown to twiddle your thumbs in-between your turns, but at least it meant you had friends sitting around to help you with the twiddling…. cough. 

Spazz Maticus in the Winds Of War cinematic.
Look at the state of that bonkers bastard.

My third factor was nostalgia, and this one comes with a heavy lashing of honesty. Heroes was one of the first PC games that I had a chance to play regularly. I fell in love with the sheer amount of chaos and clutter on each map, the vividly bright visuals and the wailing Opera singers that blasted through my crackling PC speaker every time I clicked into the town menu. The Hot Seat mode was hilariously fun but I’ll be the first to admit that more was certainly not merrier as more people meant longer downtimes and the rapid onset of boredom. The different teams are disgustingly imbalanced and the cinematic's are so bad they still give me a chuckle to this very day. All of this considered, Heroes has remained consistently installed on my computer for years. It has a timeless appeal that will be forever buffered by my corny sentiments and shameless bias. 

Let me take you on a journey back nine years into the middle of my highschool experience, the peak of all my nerdy social awkwardness and well before I realized how ruggedly handsome I am with a full beard. Through the miracle of teenage courtship, that amazing process that somehow converts shady glances and stuttering compliments into youthful infatuation, I managed to get my first girlfriend – a beautiful blonde American student named Emily. Fast forward a few weeks down the track and I’m spending the afternoon at a friend’s house playing computer games. I get a phone call from Emily informing me in the most sultry and suggestive of manners that her parents aren’t home and I should come over for a visit. I’m happy to tell you that I had my priorities locked down tight. What started out as a pretty great day, culminated in one of the best afternoons of my young life when I finally managed to smash my friend on Zanfas’ Challenge, a notoriously huge Heroes map. I know what you’re thinking; how the hell would I have managed to do that from Emily’s house?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I could swear that's the same purple cloaked playa in the bottom left.