I don't know where Felix's TT interest thread ran off to, but one of his miscellaneous facts was that in any case of a second-round draftee winning TT and then taking on the role of captain the next year, that team would fail to make the playoffs. I did set out to win this thing, but it seemed like breaking that curse was a good starting point. And now here we are.
I try not to take anything that goes on here too seriously anymore, but I'll be honest: I have a soft spot for TT. It's the reason I came here in the first place, and being drafted by a titan such as Zig and eventually winning the championship, in a tournament filled with writers better and more experienced than myself, was kind of a thrill. (In a nerdy way.) I approached this one with the same enthusiasm, happy, at the very least, that enough people signed up to make the tournament a reality in the first place. It was a huge disappointment when last year's was canceled.
Now, I had a policy with my teammates that real life took priority over TT, and there were numerous times throughout the competition when I had to say, "Look, I'd love to do this now, but I'm going out with some friends tonight, so I can't. Sorry." True and Schultz seemed to help each other out far more than I helped either of them, which was actually how it was with Espiga and me in '07 under the command of Captain Zig, so whatever. I'm a procrastinator anyway, and all five of the new reviews I wrote for this year's TT were done at the very last minute (unless you count The Conduit, which I promised Jason I would write, and which I hadn't planned on using for any of the matches).
So things should have progressed well, but after the fifth week I began running out of energy, or rather, I'd run out of games that I really wanted to review. I write best when it comes naturally to me. Forcing myself is almost never a good thing, and there were a few half-reviews that never saw the light of day given my ideas for them hadn't been organized before I began writing them. So I kind of stopped caring, and that's when I came to a problem: I was responsible for two very enthusiastic teammates who had been working hard and, in my book, deserved to win it all.
In the end, as lazy as I got, I'm glad I was able to pull through and lead my team to victory, if only for their sakes. (As I've noted to several people, the fact that I've already won TT once significantly dampens the appeal of winning.) If I compete next year, I need to plan things out a bit better, because my problem here was that I expended a great deal of my energy early on and was forced to dig into my backlog quite a bit in the second half. I really don't want to accept much more responsibility for my team's victory; having two draftees as committed and loyal as True and Schultz is what really makes a difference. Maybe I'm making too much of this, but I hope you guys all enjoyed interacting with your teammates as much as I did.
So, I want to issue one final thank you to everyone involved, for making this year's TT an exhausting and rewarding one. It's been a hell of a trip and I had a great time.
A few random notes that wouldn't go anywhere else:
I think Schultz's 4-5 record does a terrible disservice to how much he's improved over the course of the tournament. Compare his first review (which won 3-0) to his last review (which lost 0-3) and you'll see that records don't mean shit. I'm terrified of where this guy will be a year from now.
I was pretty easy going with my teammates throughout. The one time I intervened was when True tried to use his Infamous review, which presented the rather ludicrous conclusion that moral choices aren't the biggest gaming cliche of the last five years. This was only a week or two after Jerec commended Disco for not going that root... while reviewing KOTOR II, one of the games that made the whole moral choice thing popular to begin with. I hasten to add that True's review is still well written; the only review of his written during TT that I'm genuinely not fond of is Lunar 2. Otherwise, I feel he did an exceptional job.
I just recently realized that there wasn't a single team we didn't beat. We lost twice during the regular season, to OD's and Boo's teams... both of whom we coincidentally faced again in the playoffs. How convenient. YOU HAVE ALL FELT OUR WRATH!
I had originally intended to write all new content for this tournament like I did last year, and while I obviously fell short of that, the one exception I knew I would make was MadWorld, which I was saving for Zig. Beating him was the one thing I DEFINITELY wanted to do here, and it wound up being the first thing I accomplished. I still consider it my best review, though a few other new ones come close in my mind (namely Eternal Darkness and Homeworld).
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randxian - September 02, 2009 (07:27 PM) "Compare his first review (which won 3-0)" Didn't he beat some wet-behind-the-ears rookie that first week? Oh wait. That wet-behind-the-ears rookie was me. |
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