I hope everyone enjoyed the premiere competitive event for Gears of War. Yes I’m talking about Hypefestation and it IS the premiere competitive event for Gears of War! Before I get into my experience I want to stress with the community that we need to really invest some time and effort into Hypefestation and keep it going as long as possible. This is something that we should have organized a long, long time ago and if the Fighting Game Community can do it year after year there is no reason we cannot. Let’s continue putting a lot of our efforts into making Hypefestation better with each event!
Our Performance
This was one of the toughest tournaments I have ever had the pleasure of partaking. As testament to that statement, Hypefestation 2 served as my personal worst tournament placement in the history of my gaming career (across every game I have played). Our very first matchup was against Gears of War’s current best team in Infinity and we showed up…for the first map. Hotel, the first map of the best of three series, ended in a bittersweet 4 (Inf) – 3 (zYn) win in favor of Infinity. The downside of our intense first map was that we were unable to keep things moving because of the technical difficulties with the DLC. As a result we experienced a 30-minute delay while the Hypefestation crew figured out how to get Rustlung to work properly (more on that later). I don’t know if it was the delay, my team’s preparation, or just our nerves but Infinity really took it to us on that King of the Hill winning by 184 points (210-26).
I received a number of tweets and messages from people watching the match that asked, “what happened on that Rustlung against Inifnity?” To be honest, they simply handed us our asses and outplayed us from the start of the map to the finish. One minor note is that the weapon swap times were not updated so all teams were using the out-of-the-box “After Pickup” weapon times, slightly slowing down gameplay and timing on pushes. That affected a few of our efforts to break certain hills, yet and still at the end of the day Infinity simply outplayed us — like they did so many other teams during Hype 2.
As for the LoX matchup, it honestly could have gone either way. And to be frank, I think their team was probably of the same caliber as the AmazYn team that went to Hype 2. We won the very first match on Old Town 4-3, they took Drydock King of the Hill (210 – 198), and they won the final map 3 (LoX) – 1 (zYn) on Mercy due to the 7-Round Rule. The only map I was truly upset about in the LoX series was Mercy, the final map of the series. Our team controlled the Power Weapons and Grenades every single round, but we were unable to make plays. This is partially due to Mercy’s map design, but LoX was not exactly progressing on the map, rather once they took the lead, they made it a point to grab inks and force us to push them. In the process of controlling the map and Power Weapons we made mistakes that ultimately cost us a couple rounds where we established a man advantage (should never result in a lost round) and LoX capitalized.
Thus is my Hypefestation 2 experience as a competitor. Two-and-out. It was a definitely a learning experiencing and I now know the benchmark for winning as well as areas in which we need to prepare as a team. I’m looking forward to the next Gears 3 event, be it Hype or something else.
Spectator Experience
If you have not experienced a LIVE Gears of War event with all of the best teams in the world competing…man you are missing out. This was probably the most fun I have had as a spectator in all my years competing at events. There were so many huge matchups and great plays throughout the event. King of the Hill was such a great thing to watch with two great teams going at it. Any and by any I mean all, King of the Hill naysayers in the competitive community(if any still remain) need a major reality check at this point. There were some absolutely insane and INTENSE matches that most certainly made up for some of the outright bad Execution map choices that the Hypefestation crew selected.
One thing I was not overly fond of, although it is kind of the staple for competitive Gears is the trash talk that went on in some of the matches. I think personal insults that have no relevance to the game should not be allowed. If a player wants to scream someone is, “F*cking bad at the game!” then I don’t really care, but the refs were letting the insults get a little too personal. Put plainly, if my Mom was at the event she wouldn’t enjoy some of the dialog that was exchanged between players/teams. I think it needs to get cleaned up a bit — it got a little wild fellas.
Other than that, I was pretty satisfied. I didn’t have to sit on a bench and I didn’t really have to sit on the floor too often so I was a happy camper.
Online Viewership and Technical Difficulties
I’m not going to be too hard on the crew here because at the end of the day this is a COMMUNITY-DRIVEN event. I know how much time and effort goes into planning tournaments, handling teams, equipment and managing people. With that said I’ll just make a bulletin of issues that need to be resolved for Hype 3.
- Downtime between matches
- Planned content for downtime between matches
- Thorough testing of equipment a couple days before event
- Referees that check settings before each match/map
- Firing up matches immediately after the 10 minute warm-up period
The one issue I want to see resolved is the horrific downtime between matches. We were losing thousands of viewers at a time because there would be a Hype logo on screen for extensive periods of time after each match. Preferably I would like to see more after match interviews — heck plan an interview with one player from a winning team after each match. Anything to cut down on the downtime that so many people didn’t enjoy.
All-in-all this was an absolute blast to both participate in as a competitor and view as a spectator. There have already been a a number of major roster shakeups as a result of the event, but Hypefestation is definitely the new home for Gears of War 3.
Shoutouts
Dotter – Thanks for filling in for us on short notice! You have an outstanding personality and you are a heck of a player! Appreciate the time and effort to make sure we got out to the event and competed! Follow him on Twitter @JDotter707
Loco – Great meeting you and seeing Apex represent EU in such a hostile enviornment. I have a ton of respect for you guys and I have to plan to make it out to ECL. Follow him on Twitter @Loco
Nick – White chocolote, keep doing your thing! Always a pleasure to talk it up with you! Follow him on Twitter @Nickmercs
Blaze – Keep going strong with Ambition, you guys have the makings of a phenomenal team. Follow him on Twitter @BlazeByNature
PeteNub – Always a pleasure talking with you and thanks so much for supporting the competitive community! Follow him on Twitter @PeteNub
Hypefestation Crew – All of you made the event fantastic! Caesar running round getting sh*t done and making things happen and Barbosa for orchestrating everything with the stream! Thank you all for putting this event together!
There are so many other people I want to give a shoutout! Everyone that showed up to compete! Infinity for establishing themselves as the team to beat and my NSAN3Z boys for putting on a show! I’m looking forward to competing against you all at the next event!
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