Gaming is definitely not for everyone, but even those suffering from the severest of video game phobia couldn’t help but catch a little of the excitement at Samsung on Saturday. Shoppers at Columbus Circle this weekend got a chance to see the Holiday Heroes III competition in action. The tournament, put on by World Cyber Games, featured gamers competing to take home some prizes and more importantly, bragging rights. Four-person teams battled it out in Halo: Reach on Xbox 360 in a best-of-three style competition.
If you’ve never seen a gaming competition, it looks something like this: Rows of computers are lined up facing each other; teammates sit next to one another, but communicate via headsets; and there may even be a sports-style commentator narrating for the audience what’s happening in the virtual arena.
Reach is a First-Person Shooter (FPS for gamers) where fragging your opponents is the way to gain points, and in the oddball match everyone seeks possession of a flaming skull. I can’t recall seeing anything quite like it on Sega Genesis back when I used to play.
First place prize for the winning team of the Reach competition was $4,000 and 4 Astro A30s, which are gaming headsets. I’m thinking $1,000 a person could buy a lot of video games. The second place team won four Netbook computers and the third place team received four Samsung monitors.
There was also a walk-up competition of Tron Evolution where the top fragger won a Netbook computer on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately the Tron Guy didn’t make an appearance while I was there.
