What’s Your Strongest Video Game?
I love reading stories about Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel who is clearly the world’s number one and most successful gamer. Fatal1ty has won 12 major championships, but more impressively, across 5 different games.
One of Fatal1ty’s top games is Quake 4, and John Chow wrote an interesting post about a competition in Taiwan to find the best Quake 4 player who would play Fatal1ty in a big money final. If you play any games online, you will know that Asian gamers are very, very tough so you’d expect Fatal1ty to at least have to break a sweat. Well, the final score for the ten minute match was 74 to minus 3!
What game would you consider yourself World-Class at? Only online games are allowed, as beating your next door neighbour’s or your little brother’s ass doesn’t mean that you are any good!
Sometimes I just don’t know how these online gaming guys do what they do sometimes. The speed that they react to and the level of control sometimes just seems so amazing in games, the only explanation seems to be that they must be hacking. Sadly, this is what happened a lot with the only online game that I’ve played to a good standard, Age of Empire II (Age of Kings). In Black Forest games I can hold my own against most players. Maybe, not 1v1, but definitely in team games where I excelled.  I don’t think I will ever play a game as intensely as AOK, where some games could last for 4 hours.
I started playing online in 2000, just after the legendary players like Arch_Koven stopped playing, but there were still some great players knocking around like Illume_Nuisance, Mad_Chieftain, Knight_Pilot, Knight_Chicken etcÂÂ
I thought I was good playing against the PC, but playing against human opponents took the game to a completely new level! I remember the first time I got Trushed (Tower Rush). I was wondering what the hell was my enemy doing building lots of stupid towers in random places…… but, before I knew it I couldn’t even get out of my TC without getting shot!
Luckily I got chummy with the players I mentioned above, and they spent a lot of time training me. Nuisance and Knight_Ewok in particular got me up to a near 2K rating. I think my proudest moment was when I flushed Nuisance in a 4v4 arabia game, and although eventually he kicked my ass, he said afterwards that for a while he really thought that I had him.
If you are an old AOK player here are my main old nicknames (far too many smurf names to list!):
- Knight38_Binson
- Vulture_Foster
- Digital_Toomuch
- Pur3_Flava
- SIN_XenJi
I stopped playing at the end of 2005 as it was taking up far too much time. I wish I hadn’t quit totally though as the AOK community is still going strong, but I’ve forgotten so many of the theory, hotkeys, build orders, tricks, counters etc that I can’t even play the odd game with the guys.
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Comment by Rob on 17 June 2007:
I’m pretty kick ass at Total Annihilation, a real time strategy game. In fact, I’m responsible for my roommate loosing his job and going back to driving cab because of TA. I moved in with him and he was NOT a computer user, never mind a game player. He always wanted to challenge me to chess. I told him that I’m not interested in Chess, but if he learned TA, I’d play him. Well he learned and he committed his life to it. He’d go days without eating and when he’d begin to pass out and say he wasn’t feeling well, I”d ask him when the last time was that he ate. He couldn’t remember. He was a real estate agent. He would receive his commission cheques 2 or 3 months after the sales, so when he began to play, he was supported for about 3 months. But he wasn’t making any more sales. He just stopped and stayed in front of the computer trying to get better so he could beat me. Eventually he ran out of commission cheques and had to go back to driving cab. Geesh. The good part is that he became a world class TA player. He’d beat anyone in the world playing online. His IQ was measured at near 200 and he would develop some pretty incredible strategies.
Now I’m into Need For Speed Most Wanted.
Comment by chris on 17 June 2007:
I’ve been working in the ‘esports’ arena for several years. Electronic sports = Competitive gaming at a professional standard. Although i was not a ‘player’ i once was an extremely successful manager and lead my team to a 2nd place at a major lan event. Asia produces extremely high standard mmorpg / strategy players but there are only a couple of professional FPS players (first person shooters) this is the area that Fatality specialises in - He was beat by Rocketboy a couple of years ago inwhich he recieved 100,000 dollars for as Fatality at the time was undefeated.
Nowadays i run websites as theres more money but i do keep intouch with the esports arena. My game is Warsow - http://www.warsow.net its a free open source game similar to the quake series.
Comment by Brown Baron on 17 June 2007:
I’ve been playing Condition Zero for a couple of years now. The scout is my favorite weapon to annoy people. I rush with it no-scoping them and I get the hacker accusation every now and then. I call the scout my shotgun with a scope haha. When I’m not doing any blog related activities, I’m usually at my clan server playing.
Comment by John on 17 June 2007:
My name’s John and I used to be a Quaker…
More recently like Rob I’ve dug out TA and managed to waste an aweful lot of time on that excellent game.
Comment by Everton on 17 June 2007:
I’ve been keeping my head down for a couple of years since I quit AOK, although I took PGR3 pretty seriously until they switched all the cars and tracks which really messed me up. I was going to play Age of Empires 3, and I even built a new PC to be ready but (luckily?) I never brought the game.
I think I’m going to come out of retirement for Halo 3. I think I’m pretty good at FPS. I’ve never tested myself online, but I always kick my friend’s asses offline.
Comment by Mosey on 17 June 2007:
I play TFC (Team Fortress Classic - HL1 mod) for recreational purposes and can’t claim to be world class at all.
The maps I play on are fairly limited (and don’t require too much travelling :P) so it’s easy to be ‘good ‘at them after a while, especially if defending.
Rubbish at CS tbh. ^^ Loved Age of Empires, and quite liked Age of Kings, due to the better proportioning of the um.. characters, but there’s something endearing about big berthas, the hoo-lala sound of the monks/wizards(?) and nuke/photo man or something like that from the first game.
Comment by Everton on 17 June 2007:
@Mosey
Did you play AOK online? Nicks?
Comment by Mosey on 17 June 2007:
Everton: alas I never did. It was always against the computer. Sorry! ^^
Comment by Martin on 17 June 2007:
Well the real problem that most of us face is that you need time to be good. You need to practice a lot, learn the levels, shortcuts, build orders, strenght and weakness of players, races and units.
When I had the time I played CTF in a very successful Unreal Tournament clan but stopped putting to much time into playing games since then. My next big games will probably be Starcraft 2 and Hellgate London.
Unless you know the game in and out and practice daily there will always be someone better online. think of all the kids that come home from school and play all day, think you can beat them ?
so, it basically sums up to this. Invest time, become better, if you got talent you become a top player, if not you become above average.
Comment by listikal on 17 June 2007:
I like to think I was a pretty good Battlefield 1942 player. Probably the most hours logged for any online FPS of any game of all time. I’m hoping this future release can live up to the hype.
Comment by Angie on 17 June 2007:
Yeah. I pwn Pong. Other than that, I got a rock (as Charlie Brown would say).
And as an aside, why dows everyone throw Chow free linkage. It’s not like he gives back.
Comment by Everton on 17 June 2007:
I don’t think I link to John Chow that much, and he does link to other sites unlike some sites so I think that’s a bit unfair Angie. Plus, he’s the original source for the story!
Comment by Raphael on 9 April 2008:
Haha, so I was getting a little bored today and decided to find out what’s going on with AOK… eventually typed in my name iLLuMe_NuiSanCe to see if ppl still remembered it, and i just have to say you made my day haha, althought I can’t say I remember that 4v4 game…. have a rec? send to blackeye101@gmail.com! And, if you still have any cool recs of your gg’s too… its nice to reminisce on the good days haha
take care bro
Comment by Everton on 9 April 2008:
@Nuisance
Hi Raph-how’s it going! I don’t have any recs anymore although there are still quite a few of yours on the web in various places. I’m going to install it again to watch some recs - will email them through to you when I find them.
There’s one 4×4 BF game where I went full on scorp+mang whoring and it’s hilarious watching me wipe out 4 bases in quick succession - can’t beat the micro on seige!