...although a palm crystal really would have been overkill.
So this Tuesday, the SciFi Channel premiered their new reality game show Chase. The show touts itself as a real life video game, and in truth it's probably about as close as you can get to one. While I watched it primarily out of morbid curiosity, I ended finding the show oddly compelling.
The premise is simple enough. The entire thing is basically a grown up game of Tag on crack. Ten contestants called Runners are set loose on the selected "game board" in an attempt to win money. They win money by finding money flags along the routes and by evading the Hunters, people designed to track down and capture the Runners, which they do by "tagging" them (like I said, Tag on crack).
It's these Hunters that make the show entertaining. Each one has a specialty, be it speed running, agility, endurance, or stealth. There's even one that's only job is to act as a spotter, calling in the location of Runners to the other Hunters but unable to capture them himself. Each Hunter roams around the board in shades and a suit. Yes, they look like rejects from The Matrix, but there's a reason people dug that film.
Furthermore, the Hunters literally prowl the game board like drones or zombies until they find a Runner, at which point they take off in a full blown sprint towads them. The myriad of "I'm okay, I'm okay... Oh, **** he sees me!" moments are more than worth the price of admission.
Also entertaining is the small arsenal of items that the Runners can pick up along the course of the game. My personal favorite is the Deflector, which automatically forces a Hunter to reverse direction. This is made more entertaining by the Hunters, who on cue stop their chase, turn, and walk away as if they'd never seen the person they were just stalking.
But lest we forget the Runners, who are supposed to be the true stars of the show. They're good for only one thing: the epic ways in which they fail. Yes, this is one of those shows where the true joy is not in witnessing the success, but in mocking the failure. Players will trust each other even though there's no reason to. Players will have the genius notion to hide somewhere even if it doesn't really benefit them. Players will fail to read their maps properly, lose their maps, waste their scarce supply of tools, and any number of other miscues that make you point and laugh. All while being stalked by men (and women) in black.
I'm not saying set your TiVo or anything, but if you happen to have a free hour and it happens to be on Chase is bound to be a pointless distraction for your life.
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