Diablo II
Diablo II is the sequel to the marginally successful dungeon crawl Diablo (a game that I actually did finish in a respectable amount of time). Since I had just finished the first one, I literally ran to my local video game store and bought Diablo II days after its release in 2000. I spent the next few weeks slogging through the game and actually managed to complete the content that was packaged in my box.
Then I found out that the rest of the game was going to be sold seperately as an ‘expansion’. Since I didn’t think I should have to pay extra for the ending of a game that I already bought, I decided against buying it… until August… of 2004. I decided that I had let Blizzard suffer enough and dropped my $20 for the final act of my game. I was pretty pumped and spent a couple of days completing quests. I actually managed to get the first 4 (out of six) done.
And I just finished up the last two yesterday (yesterday being August 30, 2005). It took me just over five years, but I finally managed to complete the game with my first character. I’m kicking around the idea of starting up a second character, but I don’t know if I have the stamina to play that long again.
Current status: Complete! Okay, so I technically completed this game, but it took me 5 years to do so. That gives me hope for the rest of the Unfinished Masses.
Warcraft III
I actually bought this game and the expansion to play the multiplayer with some friends that lived out of town. I later discovered that there was a single-player mode. An interesting and compelling single player mode that actually eases you into the game and teaches you how to play.
Neat.
Unfortunately, in completely unrelated incidents, every time I started to play the single player campaign my hard drive met with some catastrophic set of circumstances that rendered all data contained on it completely inaccessible, forcing me to start over. After that happened twice, I just lost the will to try it again. I think it might have rolled under the couch, and that thing’s heavy.
Current Status: Casting Totem of Hard Drive Corruption on my computer
F-Zero GX
I’ll admit it. I was seriously jazzed about F-Zero GX before its release. I spent entirely too much time with F-Zero X for the N64 and just knew deep down in my soul that this game would provide me with the same drug-like experience that would make hours seem like minutes while I unlocked all the wonders that the disc hid within.
I bought the game shortly after it became a Player’s Choice title for $19.99 and did get quite a bit of enjoyment out of it, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe it was the sickening level of difficulty or the enormous mountain of things to unlock or the connectivity to F-Zero AX that I couldn’t actually take advantage of since AX has yet to materialize (to my knowlege) within 250 miles of my house. Perhaps it was a combination of all three things, but I only managed to unlock a paltry five or so racers and a small collection of custom parts that, when assembled into a working F-Zero racer, control like a refrigerator full of concrete being pulled across an icy river by a lawnmower motor.
Current Status: On hold
Pok