We regularly hold games tournaments around here, most often on Project Gotham Racing 2 on the Xbox and on Death Tank Zwei on the Saturn.

PGR2

Our most recent invention is a Project Gotham 2 world tour team battle where you have teams of two on a system link setup and race once in each city using a different car class each time. In order to balance the playing field cars in each class are assigned a grade depending on their performance and then players are given a grade that they are able to use depending on their experience with the game.

The contenders are:

Olie – Me! I have had the game since launch and finished everything on platinum so of course was using the lowest class cars, actually they are a lot more fun to drive than they initially seem. Still don’t allow myself to drive the MX5 though :).

Jim – My brother, he is good at the game but rarely plays it so was able to use some of the faster cars, a good technical racer, taught a lot of us how to take the corners optimally. With enough time on the game could probably rise to the top.

Chris – Owns Gotham 2 himself but also has little time to play it. Highly skilled player from back in the days of MSR and PGR so there are a lot of grudge matches between me and him that have been going on since way back. Master of the Lotus Exige and battle tactics.

Leon – Not interested in racing games so this is his first foray into them resulting in him having access to all cars. His Insane methodology and extreme violence means he can cause havoc on any other players driving strategy.

Martin – Another driver like Jim with innate driving skills but little time to actually play, meaning he was put into a high grade without any testing. Has old-skool driving skills from Need for Speed, Ridge Racer, etc.

Sarah – Martins sister, has a very erratic skill level which makes her difficult to grade resulting in us giving her access to all cars. Has an equal chance of her coming second or second last really.

Jess – Friend of Sarah with no driving game experience whatsoever. Has access to all cars, but lack of experience means that many of the other drivers cornering techniques allow them to pass her despite her cars’ high performance.

In the most recent match we had the teams were Jim/Chris & Martin, Olie & Sarah, Leon & Jess. Due to Martin being placed in a high grade without seeing how good he was, the combination of his skills and high powered cars meant he won or came second in most of the races, propelling his team to an easy victory. Olie and Sarahs team came in second with a pretty good performance but Leon and Jess’ team came last since Jess’ inexperience with Gotham (ie never even played it before) prevented them from winning before they ever started really even with Leon putting up a good fight.

Best moment: Jim plowed into the tiny corner on Round the Rikstandtsomething in Stockholm in his Dodge Ram SRT10 and blocked the entire road causing an immense amount of shouting and swearing to be directed at him :)

Closest race: Olie and Jim using the Renault Spider and Lotus Elise in Edinburgh, I just won out of the last two bends after a really hard fought race against everyone else’s 340Rs and Ariel Atoms, just goes to show power doesn’t always mean high position :)

After two rounds of the world tour we have the following leaderboard:

Jim and Chris – 1 win

Olie and Leon – 1 win

DEATH TANK

The other tournaments we play are on Death Tank Zwei and they tend to be four players – Leon (hates the game but usually wins), Chris (Master of Mirvs), Olie (Special weapons king) & Martin (Missile master).

We have had so many incredible moments on this game its hard to list em all but some of them include:

Shielding a missile so it hovers forever

Flying a missile with no fuel directly up into a falling tank

Absorbing a deaths head with a hover coil a second before it levels the playing field

Firing a missile around a flying player that has a curse without steering it!

Curving machine gun fire with a blessing

Nukes costing 12 million credits in the shop (no joke!)

Having fifty odd corbomites so they cause a deaths head effect after you die

And many more.

We would have our wins and losses stats listed here but the memory cleared itself recently (good ole Saturn) so we cant.

Most recent DTZ tournament (11/06/05):- This was a corbomite tourney so you had to buy as much corbomite as possible

1^st: Olie (“Corbomite = the win”)

2^nd: Chris (“Mirv-tacular, baybee”)

3^rd: Leon (“See, I don’t always win”)

4^th: Jim (“I was first for the first half”)

5^th: Martin (“I was using machine gun!”)

6^th: Lindon (“...”)

Highlights:

Jim jump jetted off the screen and by the time he came back into view he was a flaming corpse of a tank thanks to my lucky blind shot :)

Huge numbers of ineffectual air strikes, and mirvs (for once).

Lindon surviving four players constantly trying to shoot him for aages, even with no jump jets.

Corbomite chains clearing the whole screen.

Not a single special weapon collected! (ok maybe that was more like a low-light :)

Martin killing a number of people with a machine gun (wtf!)