Well, today I've decided to write about some things that have just been grinding my gears in the form of rhetorical questions.
- Is anyone else thoroughly disappointed in the direction that the CPL has taken? I mean Counter-Strike has been part of the CPL for as long as I can remember. While the CGS has shot up and taken some very good teams, an event without those teams would still be entertaining. I still see no reason why the CPL couldn't host CS:S and CS 1.6 tournaments. The games are as popular as ever, there's simply no way that they couldn't fill a tournament. The CPL seems to have turned into a completely commercial event, choosing games based upon sponsorship rather than based upon communities. I think it's a shame. The CPL used to be the big event that almost any player who has ever played CS competitively would watch, now it's a bore-fest filled with console games that I'll be happy to miss.
- Am I the only one who thinks that too many modern games focus on graphics first and gameplay second? Lately I've been playing some NES roms and they have really got me thinking about this topic. It seems to me that the majority of new games care more about their graphics than how the game actually plays. When I look at the source versions of Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat I see far inferior products to that of the original game. When I look at the past five Maddens, all I see is graphical improvements with almost no emphasis put on improving gameplay (that being said, I'm buying the new Madden today, and I am pumped for it, call me a sucker).
- Is anyone else as pumped as I am for Halo 3? The game is just over a month away from it's official release and I am excited. To touch on my last RQ a bit, I believe Halo is one of the few games where gameplay is truly emphasized. Halo 2 was a vast improvement over Halo and from my experience with the Halo 3 beta, I believe that it will be an improvement on Halo 2. If there's one game developer out there that "gets" modern gamers, it's Bungie(other than Halo 2 Vista, which was a sorry piece of work). Worry about gameplay first and graphics second, the proof is in the pudding(or in this case, the sales).
