Prognostication: Owari

In 6 days Brawl will be released.

This has been a long time in coming. Anticipation for this game has been ZOMG on a scale of WUT to PWN, and those of us patient enough to avoid importing the monster will soon hold the beast betwixt our palms. I personally plan on being up until past midnight in order to grab my copy.

I'm getting more excited as the day approaches, and it's hard to place my finger on why this stands out in my mind more than Halo 3, the Burning Crusade, or even the Wii did. True to form, I've done a thorough self-analysis.

Halo 3 failed to excite me in this manner for a number of reasons, they made the wrong game. The first trailer for the game belied all subsequent media, which proved its focus was more on the multiplayer than the story. While I was always a fan of taking hot lead and plasma to my buddies, the story was always a big thing for me as well. Without that Halo 3 didn't promise me much of interest beyond a shiny new coat of paint and some miscellaneous power-ups I didn't see as impressive compared with the innovations of the series' predecessors.

The Burning Crusade was unsuccessful more because of me than anything else. 90% of what I paid for would not be granted to me until nearly four months after I bought the game. Knowing that I'd only have access to so little of the game because I had stubbornly refused to level a single character to 60 dampened my enthusiasm despite how wonderfully Blizzard delivered. To date, all but one of my favorite areas is from the expansion. The next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, will likely command far greater attention for me given the complete reversal of my position.

The Wii was robbed of all the excitement by the fact that I did my waiting before it was released. I stood in line for a preorder weeks beforehand, and so it was a brief matter to walk in, grab my box, and leave. I was excited at the time, but that excitement diminished rapidly as I waited for "the game" that would command my fullest attention. Most of my progress on the Wii has only occurred when either my internet connection has died or when I've had company.

So Brawl now commands my attention, and rightly so. It is "the game" I was hoping for, it will allow me to beat up my brother in absentia, and from the get go I'l be set to unlock it's mysteries with the same joy and excitement I did with its ancestors.

Yeah, I could be talking about how excited I am to be voting tomorrow, but I've been talking politics to death everywhere I go, and the time has come to simply hunker down, vote, and see how things turn out.

After that, we brawl.