ESWC 2003 Retrospective Part 2

Unreal Tournament 2003

ESWC was probably the most star-packed UT2003 tournament last year. From among those considered superstars, only Forrest was missing in the competition. Everybody was galvanised by the possibility of the UT legend GitzZz facing Fatal1ty, but those two were not the only quality gamers in the game. This was ascertained by the end of the event. The big favourites for the $7,000 cheque were Fatal1ty, GitzZz, R0X, Lauke and Solo but only one player really lived up to his name. R0X and Solo straggled in the group stages. Lauke was not far away from glory - having drawn 1-1 in maps with Fatal1ty in group play he was expected to finish far. ESWC was a story of two dark horses, though.

We saw four men ease into the semi finals, all with 2-0 wins. The surprise so far was the performance of the unknown American a.k.a. Lotus, who was the man to stop Lauke in the event. The other rather unexpected guest in the final four was the Swedish ninja-jester zulg whose style of play brought a lot of freshness into the tournament. The semi finals were a feast for UT2003 fans, both were extremely thrilling and ended in 2-1 scores.

The first semi between zulg and Fatal1ty was a rematch for a CPL Winter game, which Fatal1ty won very comfortably. This time around, the American was expected to get the upper hand as well. The American’s unexpected map pick Antalus turned out to be one of the most intense games in 2003, in all games, in all tournaments. Fatal1ty was in a 1-0 lead throughout most of the game and zulg showed great patience in his game. He took over control, put enormous pressure on Fatal1ty and finally equalised. The winning frag for the Swede came in the dying seconds, after a fight either player could have won. Fatal1ty took the chance to equalise the map score on Ironic, a map which was probably his worst in the beginning of the event. The deciding map, Compressed, was a one man show. Zulg got the better spawn and from beginning to end locked the map so tightly that Fatal1ty never got a chance.

The second semi final was supposed to be a walk in the park for GitzZz. And it was anything but. The first map, Compressed, ended rather expectedly with a win for the German. On Antalus GitzZz started off as expected, got control and turned it into a very big lead – one that you would not expect to be wasted away on a map such as Antalus. And then strange things started happening. Lotus went completely berserk and performed a stupefying comeback to make the score 11-10 in his favour. Ironic, the decider map, was also quite exciting and ended with an 18-12 victory for GitzZz. After the tournament Lotus mentioned that he thought he’d won it too early.

The day before the bronze medal matches Fatal1ty had been playing Quake 3. Apparently, it did not affect his performance because he took third place with a 2-0 win over his countryman Lotus. The final match, for $7,000 was also a two-mapper. It was a win for GitzZz in a big international event for the third consecutive time, but for the first time in UT2003. Zulg had to settle for a well-deserved $5,000 prize.

Quake 3

This tournament has gone down in history as the toughest ever duelling competition for Quake 3. Even though the players were fighting for prestige more than money, no other tournament gathered so many galvanising names and no other tournament had a system that made progressing to the final so tough. That included two group stages and a four-man knockout stage with all games played in best of three. Twenty Q3 legends were invited, among them ZeRo4, Cooller, Socrates, LeXeR, Akiles, fox and uNkind. Picking a winner from throng of stars was a tough thing to do.

From the beginning every single map was a game where the players played for life. Surprises have started in the very first round, when the underogged Fazz stole Socrates’ ticket to the second group stage and when the unprepared proZaC (who arrived as a replacement for uNkind) sneaked through past Python and Akiles into further play in a group dominated by cha0ticz.

In the second group stage there was no telling what would happen. Group A had LeXeR, Cooller, cha0ticz and Z4muZ and group B had fox, fazz, ZeRo4 and proZaC. Unexpectedly, Z4muZ lost all his games and LeXeR beat Cooller for first place in the group. Fazz won the other group and ZeRo4 was one map loss away from getting knocked out by fox. At this point everyone was sad that proZaC was out of the tournament because not only was he on fire in some of his games but he also sung and danced for us.

The four men left in the competition lived up to the expectations and gave us an excellent spectacle, especially in the LeXeR – ZeRo4 game which was a rematch for the 2001 WCG final. The atmosphere in the theatre was electric. After each good frag a crowd of 1,000 spectators awarded both gamers with cheers and applause and if there was one thing missing from that match it wasn’t quality frags. ZeRo4 took it 2-1, with an expected win on T4, an expected loss on ZTN and a graceful victory on DM6. The other semi final also ended with 2-1 with Cooller on top, having lost T4 (Fazz’s map in the competition).

After LeXeR had beaten Fazz for third place it was time for the most awaited game: Cooller vs ZeRo4. Again, the show was magnificent to say the least. The match started off on T4, where Cooller was giving the American surprisingly strong opposition only to be broken towards the end and lose 6-5. The second map was Cooller’s home – ZTN. There, he got a few frags ahead and was comfortable until ZeRo4 took and decreased the frag deficit to just one point between both players. At that moment Cooller needed to hide without any armour for half a minute to stay alive in the tournament. His face on the big screen looked as if the youngster was carved of stone but his heartbeat rating was sky high! In the end, it went down to whoever would be better on DM6. And this time it was Cooller again with a 16-4 win over the American. The little Russian crowned himself Quake 3 king for 2003.


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