While not every match was super-exciting-evo-worthy-spectacular (what session is? even in tournaments), I found myself extremely invested at times with certain matches. The problem with sc4 was that, even with grand finals, it ultimately boiled down to 'My turn--BB, oh, your turn now!--BB' until somebody took a greater risk or makes a mistake. That meant a little bit of tension at best, and ALOT of downtime at worst. :/ Watching streamed SC4 tournaments, I would play video games until I heard an 'OOOH', which I would then actually switch my attention over to whatever may be interesting.
But I tried doing the same thing with the SC5 beta stream -- I was playing Valkyria Chronicles on my PS3, but I couldn't even pay attention, because I found myself drawn to the stream. The faster pace, improved sound effects, expanded character movesets, cool character designs (even though I seen them before :P) and cool stages kept my curiosity piqued.
But to me, it was some of the matches, particularly involving characters Astaroth, Maxi, and Pyrrah, and sometimes Mitsu and Patroklos, that kept me glued to the steam so long. That's weird to me, because for the first 4, I've pretty much seen all of their moves before. But with the improvements of things like Brave Edges and combos with CE, as well as the Astaroth mind-games going on, I found myself very invested in many of the matches, as well as satisfied with the stream as a whole. I wasted a whole day myself to the stream and didn't mind in the least. Also, not to mention, before the stream, I was worried about SC5, and after the stream helped make me more confident with SC5 then ever before
