Australian Gamer Game Event :: The World Cyber Games 2007

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The World Cyber Games 2007

Starks delivers a full report on the World Cyber Games 2007 at Sydney’s Luna Park on August 25 & 26.

Gears of War & Dead or Alive | Counterstrike 1.6 & Warcraft 3 | The Event Itself & Final Word

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The Event Itself

The stands that WCG had on display were many and varied. The Altech / NRG stand probably interested the casual attendee the most, as it had some impressive cockpits set up playing various racing games. I think I spotted Anthony Minichello have a whirl during his appearance to the event.

Pidge, the MS employee. “Starks, stop drooling. It’s only Erin McNaught.” Only Pidge? ONLY!?

The main stage was dominated by a giant Boxing Ring, which was the main attraction of both days. One of the more interesting events of the day was the face off between Microsoft employee ‘Pidge’ and WCG Champion for Halo 2 2005 Dean ‘ii CaBeL ii’ Loaney. Playing the first cross PC / Console games Shadowrun, Pidge and CaBeL faced off on a 1v1 on the level Small Lobby. Showing superior skills to his PC counterpart, Dean walked away victorious from their encounter with a 6-1 demolition of poor old Pidge.

Ii CaBeL ii - Soloman, if he starts winning, go round and belt him…

The event itself had garnered a lot of commercial interest, particularly from the media. In typical Starks fashion, I ended up approaching one of the ‘suits’ who I believed to be a sponsor for the event itself. Whilst he was standing in the middle the 360 tournament, I walked over and introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Starks. I was noticing you were in the middle of our competition and wondered if you had a minute.”

“Err, of course Starks. What can I do for you?”

“Well mate, I was wondering if you and some of your mates wanted to have a go of the 360’s, you know a bit of a media mock up for the sponsors and for some fun for you.”

“Oh well, thanks for the offer Starks, but I’m just happy to be covering the event. I hope that’s ok.”

“Covering the event?” I ask, now slightly puzzled. “Aren’t you a sponsor?”

He laughs. “No son, I’m Channel 9 reporter Harry Potter.” I make a ‘WTF?’ face. “Thanks for the offer though Starks. I’ll just get back to covering the event now.” He smiles and moves to the side. I turn and walk away slightly sheepishly. I retell the story to Jooney, and spend the next few minutes watching as he pissed himself laughing. I could only help but laugh with him.

Apparently, only I could do something like that, according to Jooney.

Probably one of the more interesting stories to come out of the day was that of Fabian Baumann. Now, I must admit, I didn’t pay him a whole lot of attention until the semi finals when it was announced that three pro’s and a guy who’d never played the game before were playing off for the trip. That kind of pricks your attention. Command and Conquer 3 was the ‘sign up and play for free’ comp that was designed to interest people like Baumann. In his case, he had more than a little bit of interest staked in the competition after he sneakily gleaned out of the player expected to win all the strategies he needed to win, and then in one of the greatest cases of irony, turned those same strategies back on him in order to win.

Now, I guess I should feel a tad sorry for Nicholas Tsaoucis, who was the player that ended up having his own strategies used against him, but I find it utterly hilarious that some guy off the street walked in just hoping to trial the game, then ended up winning a freaking trip to Seattle to play the best C&C3 gamers in the world.

For more information on this truly hilarious story, please see: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/he-came-played-and-conquered/2007/08/28/1188067085510.html

Anyways, moving on and there was much to see at WCG and not enough Starkemus Prime to go around. In between trying to get pictures with every single promo girl that was in the joint (And indeed, some ladies who I got photo’s of weren’t even promo girls), I did happen to get a good look at Medal of Honour – Airborne; The next installment into the Medal of Honour series.

The Medal of Honour Booth

This game looks quite good. As a big fan of the Call of Duty series, particularly Activisions 3rd installment, I saw immediate similarities between CoD and MoH:A. However there were some quite nice differences. The fist being the single player. At the start of every mission, you are made to jump out of a plane, and are given the opportunity to land anywhere you like within the map.

This makes replayability quite a lot more appealing than standard linear FPS’s, because you’re basically given the chance to do the mission not only however you want, but from wherever. Don’t like that house? Land in another street. Sick of all the trees? Land in a town. Late to return that video to the store? Err…

Left - Why is he taking pictures of us again?
Right - Shut up and smile! He must be from Ralph or somthing.

The game mechanics look quite good, and the brief time I spent playing it the game had a good feel for it. I stupidly forgot to ask if it was going to be multiplatform, as I just picked up the 360 controller and went for it.

One of the centre pieces of the stalls was the Microsoft area, which had a magnificent Master Chief helmet, made out of the same stuff a jumping castle is except hollowed out and full of 360 consoles. On show was Forza 2 and there were plenty of people giving that a whirl.

Throw some plastic ball in there and you got yourself an awesome ball pit

A giant Master Chief helmut with 360’s in it? Why, H3 must be playable! Wait, no, it’s FORZA 2! Oh, the irony!

The NRG / Altech stand was most impressive compared to the rest of them. Brightly lit, with racing cockpits everywhere and some fantastic looking promo girls, it had Need for Speed Carbon playing as well as Forza 2 at the front. Behind it were some Altech PC’s, and I believe it was here that they played Command and Conquer 3 for some of the time before moving onto the stage itself.

Don’t tell Brett, but I think they were playing Sega Rally Revo…

The NRG / Altech PC’s looked fantastic also. Provided for the PC players, both companies went to what looked to be immense trouble to get almost 50 something PC’s to be made available for all the computer participants. Add to that the fact that each one was extremely fast and quite powerful, had this awesome black case with glowing blue NRG on the side of them as well as allowed all the participants a level playing field and I must commend the efforts they went to for what must have been considerable cost to their business. Well done to NRG and Altech for supporting the event in such a great capacity!

Asus also had a stand there, showing off some of the new tech they had themselves. I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time there unfortunately. The Asus guy was a good bloke and the short talk I had with him on their laptops (As I own one) was good and he seemed to know what he was talking about, but sadly I didn’t get much more than a rushed conversation and have little information to report on.

The Gigabyte stand, right at the front of the Big Top when you entered, was one of the bigger PC stands; Showing off new hardware but more importantly housing the Command and Conquer 3 tournament. Open to the public, this was one of the more attendee friendly tournaments as anyone could come in and sign up.

The MC for the day, a guy called Aaron, was a top bloke. A DJ who goes under the name MC Losty he helped to announce many of the tournaments, held raffles for the tickets given out by the blue promo girls, and mixed music during the day. Probably one of the more innovative idea’s I’ve seen at a games festival, he had possession of a wireless microphone and spent much of his time perusing the event and updating people of various tournaments as well as giving out gift prizes.

Thommo carving it up on Forza 2

One of the better events Aaron announced was a Charity racing tournament featuring Lance Thompson, Erin McNaught, Soloman Haumono, Anthony Minchello, some Holden racing dude and one of the games designers. With the goal to see who got the fastest time on a lap of Forza Motorsport 2, each of the celeb’s kindly signed one of the 360’s and were taken away to be used in some sort of charitable way.

Erin McNaugh and video games. The stuff of dreams. I won’t mention what type…

Later on he used his 1337 DJ skills to mix music as the afternoon of Sunday powered on.

The ladies.

At each of these events my personal goal is to get a picture with, or at least of, as many of the promo girls as possible.

With Game1 last year seeing me take a photo with over 62 different girls over both events, I was keen to replicate my success and get every single promo girl at WCG. I’m fairly sure I got a 90% pass mark in this, and Jooney was often left stranded during the Gears comp as I wandered off to have my picture taken with some hot lady at various intervals of the day.

Anyways, enough of my talking, the pictures state 1000 words so I’ll let them do so. Enjoy!

Erin McHot. Nuff said.

Brunette - Are you sure this is Yug from Australian Gamer?
Blonde – I think so. It’s not Matt, he’s got glasses.

Here’s an interesting quiz – Female or Ferrari?

Brunette - He says he’s an Oracle or something.

Yug, I got a great merchandising idea. It involves blue suits like these, the AG girls, and our logo…

Thommo - Who’s this pipsqueak?
Solomon - Not sure, but he’s been hassling the girls all night. GET HIM!

Final Word

A lot of props go out to a lot of people:

Smatt Man, Aba, haxz0r, Omega Adz and Psykerpath for their help during the weekend in setting up and packing away the gear. You guys were life savers and both Jooney and myself can’t thank you enough for your help!

SPE6TRE for their awesome support of Jooney and I.

Simon from WCG events organising – Always helped us out when needed.

Pidge and Kumar for their support of our tournament.