"Raynor Here."

Last night as I stood shoulder to shoulder with my fellow Blizzard devotees at the midnight release of StarCraft II a couple of things occurred to me.

1) I was the only body in the room to be wearing a dress shirt and tie.

2) I wasn't the oldest person in line by a long shot.

3) From the bits of conversations I overheard, the workforce in my neck of the woods was going to be receiving a lot of calls from people suffering a 24 hour bug.

4) More than 25 people should not side with the Zerg.

Let me explain that last bit real quick. When I entered the store, running a little late because for some reason my body demands I sleep, I was asked by the store manager which faction I would choose. My sleep addled brain tried desperately to make sense of this question. The manager kindly explained I needed to choose a faction to stand in line with...so in less than a second I answered that I would side with the Terrans.

I was kindly directed to the long line of fellow Terrans and immediately began to eye the even longer line of Zerg fans with some bit of trepidation...not so much the Protoss followers as there were only two. The manager pulled out a hat that was filled with raffle-like tickets and declared that the Terran line would be the first to receive their copies of Starcraft II. Cool!

My wife was kind enough to pre-purchase the collector's edition of Starcraft II, some of the items I have scanned and posted above. Blizzard really makes me feel that I spent...I mean my wife spent her money well. Unlike say a collector's edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum? Yeah, I'm looking at you Rocksteady and Eidos, take a page from Blizzard when it comes to the swag inside the box.

Now bear in mind that I've totally imbibed of the Kool-Aid that is Blizzard. But when I opened the box I was greeted with the soundtrack to the game, a metal USB drive that resembles Jim Raynor's dogtag (Let me say that again. It is metal.), a hardcover art book for the game, the behind the scenes DVD, and a Simon Furman comic that introduces a new mercenary group to the Starcraft universe, the War Pigs. Oh...I also found the game itself.

So how is the game? Simply described? Awesome.

Combat Drop - Aliens (James Horner)