Gaming Tournament - The Jitty and The Next Level Cafe
The gaming tournament took place in November 2005 in association with the excellent "Next Level Cafe" (Loughborough). Gamers were invited from "The Jitty" and "The Next Level Cafe", and those who put their names forward were of an extremely good standard.
The players were Udivka (a seasoned clan player who declared what he was going to do to any campers he found), J (another seasoned clan player who admitted his short comings on Age of Empires), Lu-Luver (A solid all round player), Ironman (who didn't care to much about winning but just liked to have the opportunity to catch people out in ever increasingly fiendish ways), Jenova (First rate sniper), Killer Zone (an excellent player who had an astonishing knack of popping up when you least expected it), Daniel (who was always in the running), Splinter (annoyingly quick reactions), Anthony (who liked to tell everybody at every opportunity that he was going to get them), Kevin (my camping nemesis who raised camping to an art form), Joseph (a console player who wasn't convinced in being part of a PC game tournament), Bratpack (who learnt at a shocking quick rate but alas it wasn't enough), Kata (an incredibly accurate player who you wouldn't catch sight of until it was too late) and myself (oops).
The games that were chosen for the tournament were Age of Conquerors, Call of Duty and Unreal Tournament 2003. All players proved their worth on both "First Person" (FPS) and Real Time Strategy (RTS). It was interesting to note however that a lot of the players struggled with the RTS aspect of the tournament.
Gaming Tournament Final
The end results after the Sunday gaming sessions were as follows;
Udivka = 7 points, played 4
J = 7 points, played 4
Lu-Luver = 6 points, played 4
Ironman= 4 points, played 4
Jenova = 4 points, played 4
Hunter = 4 points, played 4
Killer Zone = 4 points, played 4
Daniel = 2 Points, played 2
Splinter = 2 points, played 4
Anthony = 2 points, played 4
Kevin = 2 points, played 4
Joseph = 0 points, played 2
Bratpack = 0 points, played 4
Kata = 0 points, played 4
This meant that a head to head match was required between J and Udivka to decide the overall winner. So on a dark windy winter night (15th December) the two gamers met at County Hall, along with their respective cheerleading squads (KrazyKate, <LatD>Jenovah and <LatD>Ir0nman). The game used to decide the winner was Unreal Tournament 2003 with some custom maps, and each player had the opportunity to bring their gaming hardware. Both settled for playing with the same setup.
6 maps were used, “Antulus” as a warm up, and “Aqua”, “Hypsophobia” (fear of high places) and “Demonic” being the three custom maps used for the main event. Jenovah’s requests for “Plunge” and Low Gravity were declined by the players. Both players agreed on 25 points as the deciding factor for winning a game as opposed to a time limit, but this needed to be changed after 45 minutes were spent on the practice map of Antulus alone, and a final figure of 10 points was settled on. Udivka also discovered that the surface he was using as a mousemat was entirely unsuitable as every five seconds the screen would blur into a spinning motion.
The first map opened up and it became clear that this was going to take a little longer then 5 minutes, especially as they both took care of business by sharing the first point as they opened up at exactly the same time. Afterwards Udivka fell victim to some expert rocket firing from J and blamed it on “Hax” being used, while J happily settled into a nice routine of running backwards round parts of the level unaware that his cheerleading squad was happily doodling away on his arm. After some frantic button clicking and keyboard mashing the first match went to J….1 – 0.
The second match came at a ridiculous pace with Udivka proving exactly why he was a respected clan player and why he had come joint top of the tournament with J. Every so often helpful comments were uttered by Ironman and Jenovah such as “How’d you like those apples!!??” and “Stop running around and camp there”. The second match was close but was deservedly won by Udivka. 1 - 1
The third map saw players declaring “oooh shiny” and “transporter thingies” and it turned out that the smaller the map the better Udivka played. For a while it seemed as though J lost concentration and Udivka seized the opportunity and stormed ahead. 2 – 1 to Udivka.
The fourth match proved that J was a class player. Most people would buckle but instead he found the measure of Udivka with his favourite toy, the rocket launcher along with the joys of “Splash Damage”, and time and time again Udivka opted to use the flak cannon. He failed to realise that they both had the same reload times, but the rocket launcher delivered a far bigger punch. 2 - 2
The fifth game dawned on us with the situation being perfectly balanced at 2 games apiece. Would Udivka learn that charging down on J with a flak cannon wouldn’t work and change his tactics? Apparently not. Matters weren’t helped by Udivka throwing himself off various parts of the map, gifting J easy points. And so, with J getting comfortable with his tactics the game ended with J winning and taking the tournament.
I wonder if another game had been played, whether or not it would have ended with both players winning 3 games each. I wouldn’t have been surprised because there really wasn’t much between
