Thems That Falls Behind
It's probably a stupid move, but I decided to go poke at some of the old games I never really got around to playing very much in my attempts to relax a bit and maybe not feel quite so crappy. Work is simply dragging me down, and I really am not motivated to do much else :/ Either way, I really should have picked a game that wouldn't make me feel quite so useless. (My procrastination takes predictable forms, I suppose.)
So I dragged out my old Starcraft discs--yes, StarCraft I, not StarCraft II. I don't have StarCraft II, and am determined to get through the single player on the first game before moving on to the next one, but for the life of me, I can't get past The Hammer Falls, which is apparently the last stage of the Terran story unit. Sigh. I'm pretty sure that statement is probably leaving most people with their faces in their hands, because yes, I'm actually that bad. It's too many things for me to take care of, and I've always been absolute crap when it comes to offensive measures, so fending off the attacks that keep coming just... wears me out. I can't coordinate that many units or even groups of units, and it's just overwhelming for me :( However, that's farther than I got before, so I guess maybe that is some form of improvement of overall ability to navigate the thing?
The thing that really gets me, though, is how much I really seem to like the voice acting of the Terran units--I think this contributed significantly to my original huge problem with getting anywhere in the game, which was letting units die. They're really characters of their own! There is something I absolutely love about the Terran tank, and his ability to speak in all caps amiably. I mean, he's kind of Billy Maes yelling, but, y'know, amicably. (And maybe a bit idiotically.) DE-LIGHT-ED TO SERVE. He slays me! XD The firebats are kind of cool, too. I occasionally hear my thoughts answer, "Slammin'" to random stuff now, although admittedly more often sarcastically than anything else given my situation :/ All the same, they seem to be enjoying themselves... except they die an awful lot. Maybe I feel connected to them by shared love of fire? Something about the drop ship pilot also resonates with me--she's not 'sassy' the way female game characters of that era always came across to me, she sounds like a lady doing a job she's found ways to enjoy and that she knows she's good at. The vultures have always seemed overly acrid to me, but I guess that goes with the biker stereotype. The science vessel totally sounds like he was on the development team for GlaDOS, excited for SCIENCE! And probably ready to geek out about things in adorable ways :D He seems like the type that would wear a colorful bowtie even if he kind of comes across somewhat cybernetic. And crisp button-down shirts with nice slacks, and tastefully plain dress shoes. Actually, I guess I imagine that (minus the colorful bowtie) he'd dress a bit like Vegan Crush. Hmn. That probably says something about me and I'm not sure what yet ._. Probably nothing good.
Now, I'm assuming nobody reading this is any farther behind than I am (or cares about spoilers) on the way the story goes. While I had some vague understanding of the StarCraft story anyhow through my usual means of absorption of such information, I'm boggled by the emptiness of the supposed betrayal of Kerrigan at the end of the previous module. I'm tentatively hoping that gets explained more later, because even though I understand that she becomes a major character of her own... it seems like they're just throwing her away for emotional effect :/ Like her human existence was there largely to give Jimmy something to be sad about before she gets assimilated into the Zerg collective or whatever. Mengsk really had no good reason to throw her away like that, and maybe I'm just upset they couldn't come up with a better reason for it? (I'm also annoyed that when she's realizing that nobody's coming, she's addressing everyone as "boys," excluding the possibility that I, the player/commander, could possibly be female. Why couldn't she have just said, "guys" instead? I'm probably over-sensitized to this.) The whole situation just doesn't really make any sense, and I know they're trying to make Mengsk into a bad guy, but he'd be so much more convincing if there was some kind of hard choice involved (saving some politicians or something who will later make him look good in his PR campaigns versus saving Kerrigan) and he felt some modicum of remorse over the whole thing, even if it's just losing a useful game piece. I'd really buy an emotional rift between Mengsk and Raynor, where Raynor bails because he was emotionally unable to let go of Kerrigan and blames Mengsk but Mengsk accepts that he was making a sacrifice for some greater good other than being too damn lazy to send a ship to air-lift his second-in-command out. I could be reading that all wrong, but it seems needlessly dastardly--I mean, you might as well have him twisting his mustache while he's telling his troops to evacuate without Kerrigan and her men (because she's not exactly alone). Some of this may be biased by the fact that this seems like some very epic turning point in the overarching story (and Kerrigan seems to be a beloved character, even if only because she gets turned into a very sexy monster), so I guess I've had hype for this for a very long time and... Yeah, not living up to it, story-wise. Seriously, how does a telepath get fooled so badly? How do you not sense that you are not of worth to someone when you can read their thoughts? How do you not know more of a person's character whom you've presumably worked with for a long time, having gained right-hand-woman rank with them? So many questions, dammit, and I can't survive a damn onslaught with enough troops to something ruin some giant cannon that is preventing my escape...
Obviously, don't just go spoiling it for me, but please... please tell me there's more to this story than, "yeah, I'm done with this. Ciao, babe, have fun with the zerglings!" I assume she does, in fact, have fun with the Zerg, given that she becomes some kind of Zerg queen or something. The web-less bat-wing look is also something I want explained, but I suspect artistic renditions of her later transformation get no explanations :/
On the hyperhydrosis front, I missed an application of Odaban and noticed my hands were noticeably sweatier that day, but still not all that sweaty, so I guess that's kind of good? I dunno. Still hopeful.
So I dragged out my old Starcraft discs--yes, StarCraft I, not StarCraft II. I don't have StarCraft II, and am determined to get through the single player on the first game before moving on to the next one, but for the life of me, I can't get past The Hammer Falls, which is apparently the last stage of the Terran story unit. Sigh. I'm pretty sure that statement is probably leaving most people with their faces in their hands, because yes, I'm actually that bad. It's too many things for me to take care of, and I've always been absolute crap when it comes to offensive measures, so fending off the attacks that keep coming just... wears me out. I can't coordinate that many units or even groups of units, and it's just overwhelming for me :( However, that's farther than I got before, so I guess maybe that is some form of improvement of overall ability to navigate the thing?
The thing that really gets me, though, is how much I really seem to like the voice acting of the Terran units--I think this contributed significantly to my original huge problem with getting anywhere in the game, which was letting units die. They're really characters of their own! There is something I absolutely love about the Terran tank, and his ability to speak in all caps amiably. I mean, he's kind of Billy Maes yelling, but, y'know, amicably. (And maybe a bit idiotically.) DE-LIGHT-ED TO SERVE. He slays me! XD The firebats are kind of cool, too. I occasionally hear my thoughts answer, "Slammin'" to random stuff now, although admittedly more often sarcastically than anything else given my situation :/ All the same, they seem to be enjoying themselves... except they die an awful lot. Maybe I feel connected to them by shared love of fire? Something about the drop ship pilot also resonates with me--she's not 'sassy' the way female game characters of that era always came across to me, she sounds like a lady doing a job she's found ways to enjoy and that she knows she's good at. The vultures have always seemed overly acrid to me, but I guess that goes with the biker stereotype. The science vessel totally sounds like he was on the development team for GlaDOS, excited for SCIENCE! And probably ready to geek out about things in adorable ways :D He seems like the type that would wear a colorful bowtie even if he kind of comes across somewhat cybernetic. And crisp button-down shirts with nice slacks, and tastefully plain dress shoes. Actually, I guess I imagine that (minus the colorful bowtie) he'd dress a bit like Vegan Crush. Hmn. That probably says something about me and I'm not sure what yet ._. Probably nothing good.
Now, I'm assuming nobody reading this is any farther behind than I am (or cares about spoilers) on the way the story goes. While I had some vague understanding of the StarCraft story anyhow through my usual means of absorption of such information, I'm boggled by the emptiness of the supposed betrayal of Kerrigan at the end of the previous module. I'm tentatively hoping that gets explained more later, because even though I understand that she becomes a major character of her own... it seems like they're just throwing her away for emotional effect :/ Like her human existence was there largely to give Jimmy something to be sad about before she gets assimilated into the Zerg collective or whatever. Mengsk really had no good reason to throw her away like that, and maybe I'm just upset they couldn't come up with a better reason for it? (I'm also annoyed that when she's realizing that nobody's coming, she's addressing everyone as "boys," excluding the possibility that I, the player/commander, could possibly be female. Why couldn't she have just said, "guys" instead? I'm probably over-sensitized to this.) The whole situation just doesn't really make any sense, and I know they're trying to make Mengsk into a bad guy, but he'd be so much more convincing if there was some kind of hard choice involved (saving some politicians or something who will later make him look good in his PR campaigns versus saving Kerrigan) and he felt some modicum of remorse over the whole thing, even if it's just losing a useful game piece. I'd really buy an emotional rift between Mengsk and Raynor, where Raynor bails because he was emotionally unable to let go of Kerrigan and blames Mengsk but Mengsk accepts that he was making a sacrifice for some greater good other than being too damn lazy to send a ship to air-lift his second-in-command out. I could be reading that all wrong, but it seems needlessly dastardly--I mean, you might as well have him twisting his mustache while he's telling his troops to evacuate without Kerrigan and her men (because she's not exactly alone). Some of this may be biased by the fact that this seems like some very epic turning point in the overarching story (and Kerrigan seems to be a beloved character, even if only because she gets turned into a very sexy monster), so I guess I've had hype for this for a very long time and... Yeah, not living up to it, story-wise. Seriously, how does a telepath get fooled so badly? How do you not sense that you are not of worth to someone when you can read their thoughts? How do you not know more of a person's character whom you've presumably worked with for a long time, having gained right-hand-woman rank with them? So many questions, dammit, and I can't survive a damn onslaught with enough troops to something ruin some giant cannon that is preventing my escape...
Obviously, don't just go spoiling it for me, but please... please tell me there's more to this story than, "yeah, I'm done with this. Ciao, babe, have fun with the zerglings!" I assume she does, in fact, have fun with the Zerg, given that she becomes some kind of Zerg queen or something. The web-less bat-wing look is also something I want explained, but I suspect artistic renditions of her later transformation get no explanations :/
On the hyperhydrosis front, I missed an application of Odaban and noticed my hands were noticeably sweatier that day, but still not all that sweaty, so I guess that's kind of good? I dunno. Still hopeful.