San Francisco Photos and Travelogue
Fri Jul 16 - The Tournament Itself!
I set the alarm for 7am to give me practice time but I didn't sleep well. I woke up and practiced, and reminded myself that originally we'd been worried about being trounced by three teams of super-zoomy teens. Now at least we had a chance of holding our own in the "middle" of the group which was fine by me, but still, I didn't want to be seen blowing myself up repeatedly!!
I got down 2 paths on the upper road and 1 at the lower road and figured that would at least give me some options.
On to the office and the G4 TV interviews. This was nerve-wracking enough. The four "kids" played each other on the two TVs now in the main conference room with the sound turned down while we all got interviewed. I was nervous and the interviewer talked quickly which made me talk even more quickly. They made Austin cover up the brand name on his baseball hat with duct tape.
They brought in sandwiches and salad, Bob went down to Subway to get a wrap. And now it was game time.
In a twisted idea, they decided to set us against the Dynamic Duo right away. On one hand this would let us play them without them studying us. But on the other hand, with us having the most experience with the game of the 3 remaining teams, we were sort of the best chance (or so we thought) of anyone beating them (as if ANYONE could). So we sort of saw this as deciding the contest right at the beginning.
In any case, we completely forgot that the sound was turned down so we played the entire set of games without any sound at all. At one point I even commented that their wall mines were dead silent and it was strange, but I was so nervous that it never "clicked".
But back to the game. The 2 kids were sent into another room. We had a crowd of maybe 20 people in the main conference room with us, TV cameras, a recorder, etc. Talk about nerves. The game began, they were spies first. I was setting up in my vent-room while Bob went off to cover the other two. BAM they got him and the first room. I didn't want to leave my room in case it was a double team, but BAM they got the second room and before I knew it ZAPPPP they had me too. Total time - just over a minute. The room was silent.
We finished the revenge pairing by playing as spies ourselves but they held us off. Another pair of games and we were toast.
They set the other two teams (the "N00bs" vs the "Pointy Sticks") and the poor older folks were very confused as spies, never really leaving the sewers. They didn't know how sound worked and so on. The rest of us were helping them out with the basics. One funny time, Mary-Ann was a spy and walking into a room. You could see on the side of her screen the barrel of the machine gun in the merc's hands as she walked right by him, but she blythely walked past him and into the room, where she was promptly shot from behind. The N00bs were destroyed in short order. The Smooth Kriminals (the hot shots) then took down the N00bs and the Sticks with no trouble at all and in essence the tournament was over.
It was amazing to watch Austin and Brian play. They were like a pair of velociraptors. They moved by instinct and the moment any sound went off they instantly triangulated the source. "That's room 202. I'm on it". They knew what every tiny blip meant and the best counter-attack.
In one situation, Brian (the older one) stood in the lower window overlooking the courtyard. He heard a sound and realized that a spy was in a vent completely across the courtyard. He simply aimed, fired, and a grenade launched across the entire courtyard right IN the vent. Bounce ... bounce ... BOOM ... the spy was dead.
But still, there were two games to play.
The Tournament Continues
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