Bleary-Eyed Stupor, the unfortunate side effect of proper gaming focus.

I’m often instructing Pajamo to achieve proper gaming focus. It’s the key to appreciating great RPGs. They may start out slow or seem too complicated at first, but if you can weather the initial two hours, you’ll have burrowed under its skin and found the juicy pulp – the plot. But that doesn’t mean that once you’ve gotten in the grove you’re home free. Dangers lay ahead, lack of time to play the game and hectic scheduling that forces a break in consecutive days of play. It’s just like reading a book. You can’t read the first 10% and then take three days off, you won’t remember what was happening – or at least I can’t. Focus, proper focus is the key to getting the most enjoyable experience out of any story being told to you. That’s the reason that movies don’t often have intermissions and live theater sucks, because a break will cause a disruption in the pacing and the viewer to lose focus.

And so that’s where I’ve been for the past couple weeks, deeply focused on “Tales of Symphonia”. I was so focused on it that I couldn’t even spare the time to post here that I was playing it. And on Tuesday I completed the main quest, witnessing the end of the story. And while I was very happy with the experience it’s left me in a rather strange state. I’ve been less energetic and productive these last few days, settling for watching bit of the Cubs game, or whatever’s on VH1 (side note – “Best Week Ever” is brilliant, it’s like “I Love the Present” ^.^ ) or the last half of “Rocky 3” (happened a couple of times now, which is ok but the first half is better). I’ve been apprehensive to starting a new game for some reason and fear that replaying “Tales” right away would be a less effective use of my gaming time. Some slight thinking on the matter during commercial breaks has lead me to the conclusion you see in the title of the post. I feel my theory is most likely correct and as infallible as any other products of my astounding reasoning brain – that’s not the issue here. The issue is this: this isn’t the first time I’ve finished a good to great RPG, this isn’t the first time I’ve finished a good to great RPG this year. So why is it that my great-thinkin’ smooth-talkin’ brain hasn’t realized this before? I can think of two possible explanations: 1. This is a first-time occurrence, a byproduct of my current age & living circumstances, or 2. I have thought of this before but since it’s so mundane and involves the boredom of me, I have since chosen not to remember it.

p.s. Danny “Who? No seriously, who?” Williams knocked out Mike “Will brandish fisticuffs for food” Tyson in the fourth round of their ludicrously high-priced bout. Look for Tyson to turn to crazy fighting in Japan to try and get some out of debt money.