Saturday, September 22, 2012

The Binding of Isaac Gets Repetitive

Eeeeh, I didn't see this coming. With the same monsters and bosses fought many times, those enemies, a great portion of the personality of their game, become uninteresting, and thus their game uninteresting. It is a case of the "familiarity breeds contempt."...Minus the "contempt" part...More like "boredom," then.

(Some humans say that people even get kinda bored of having sex with the same, admittedly super hot person, after having had them enough times. Well - maybe not "bored"; although the proverbial person would most certainly prefer someone new eventually; preferably someone experienced and in their young-twenties and STD-less.)

What were we discussing? Oh yeah. The Binding.

So, will I finish it?

Maaay-be.

A decade from now.

What I really want to write here, though, is why I decided not to become a games journalist. I've already written a two-page long essay on the subject to a friend, so to you -- dear, maybe-reading-this, reader -- I say: I decided not to be a journalist because I don't give a damn about journalisming.

I know that many other writer types opine that not giving a damn shouldn't deter one from seeking whatever it was those writers were talking about; I didn't really listen. All I know is that I don't care about providing people the news and analyses and facts and other whatever-who-cares.

And there's also the "now it's nearly impossible to obtain employment in games journalism" thing.

This post is boring.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

A POST!

I have something games-related! So, I shall write about it on this blog that no one reads!

Yesterday I watched most of a StarCraft II tournament. The kind with a live audience of 1000+ people, with shoutcasters (live sports commentators) and giant screens for the audience to watch the game.

I watched the tournament to see if watching the most exciting sport was fun.

Yes - StarCraft II is the most exciting sport. Proof - In your typical non-computer game sport, the "ball will be in play." In StarCraft II, "the mothership, the Zerg, and nukes are in play."

But back to the real question: was watching a tournament (online) fun?

No, not really.

The shout casters, including the usually fun Day9, spoke as if in chains, never swearing or telling creative jokes. [Was it one of the sponser's (Red Bull's) rules? No colorful commentary?] And too many of the games weren't close ones. StarCraft II, like any other sport, doesn't actually provide many unique shows. But now and then it shows intense, close matches. Close matches involving alien races killing each other in space.

But the unfortunate thing about a tournament is that there's no promise the next X number of matches will be close. And when the matches aren't close, the drama doesn't hold up, and the show ends up mostly boring, a boringness exacerbated by that lack of colorful dialogue from the leashed shoutcasters.

So, unless you're emotionally attached to a team or a player, don't watch StarCraft II tournaments. It doesn't give you enough for your time.

(Funday Monday on the Day9 Daily is fun, though)