Championship Gaming Series Season 2 premiere: Carolina comeback, Dallas heartbreaker

After a six-month hiatus, the Championship Gaming Series (CGS) is back for its second season. The 2008 North American competition began today at Electronic Arts’ headquarters in Los Angeles. As with the 2007 season, six franchises will compete against one another in four video games. The two finalist franchises at the end of the two-week competition win the chance to continue to the World Finals.

There are a few changes to the games lineup this season. CGS fans will be glad to hear that fan favorites Counter-Strike: Source and Dead or Alive 4 both return. The popular soccer game FIFA has been upgraded to this year’s version, FIFA 08. Perhaps the biggest change is the choice to replace last year’s racing game, Project Gotham Racing 3, with the more simulation-oriented Forza 2.

Three matches took place tonight. As with last season, the CGS divides each match into five rounds relative to the four featured games (there are five rounds because male and female DOA 4 players fight seperately). Each team has ten members: five Counter-Strike players, two DOA 4 players (one male, one female), two Forza 2 players, and one FIFA 08 player. Both the Counter-Strike and Forza 2 players act as a team to achieve victory.

Chicago Chimera vs. Carolina Core

First up was a re-match between rival franchises the Chicago Chimera and Carolina Core. This rivalry is no doubt due to the fact that Chimera won both the North American and Worldwide championships over the Core in 2007. Fans will remember that the outcome of both matches depened upon the results of the Project Gotham Racing 3 competitions. Ironically enough, Forza 2 was the opening game of 2008 season. Unfortunately for the Chimera, their star players Ch0mpr and Jason-X were almost immediately knocked out by Core players GeneralELive and Phantom. The Chimera could not recover from this start and lost the race, 6-1.

Things didn’t go much better for the Chimera in either of the Dead or Alive 4 competitions. At first, the match was fairly between the two female players. Chimera’s Kasumi Chan and the Core’s Mystik faced off again in the BioLabs 4 stage. It became abundantly clear that both women were almost equal in skill, as neither defeat the other with more than 50% health. At the end of the round, Mystik was up 5-3. The male DOA 4 match was a decidedly more one-sided affair. OffBeatNinja, the nearly unbeatable player from last season, continued his reign of terror and shut out Black Mamba, 5-1.

Chimera came back somewhat with the FIFA 2008 competition. Here again both players were equally matched. The Core’s player Anomaly was part of the Chimera franchise last season. He went up against his replacement, Eafra. The game was back and forth like a classic game of Pong until time ran out with neither player scoring a single point. The game game defaulted to a shoot-out, where Eafra came out ahead, 3-1.

By the time the time Countersrike rolled around, the Core had a huge lead over Chimera, 17-8. Unfortunately the first-person shooter didn’t help the Chicago team’s chances as the Core shut them out as both Terrorists and Counterterrorists with their super-aggressive play style. By the end the total score was 30-13, making Core the overwhelming winner.

San Francisco Optx vs. Los Angeles Complexity

Complexity proved that comebacks do happen with Counter-Strike. Jason Lake’s team of expert CS players mopped the floor with the Optx’s squad. Things were a bit more even with Complexity as the Counter-Terrorists, but once L.A switched to Terrorist, they brought it home. By the end of the Counter-Strike portion, Complexity had narrowed Optx’s lead to 21-19.

Ultimately it was up to the FIFA 08 players to decide the match. Unfortunately for Complexity, their player KreeganBG only managed to score one goal compared to Optx’s  Stermy (4 points). This handed Optx the overall victory, 25-20.

3D NY vs. Dallas Venom

FIFA 08 started out this match. WiZaKoR, the number #1 FIFA player of the 2007 made his return to 3D.NY. Meanwhile Barmoa, a newcomer, represted the Venom. Barmoa actually scored a win off WiZaKor during training, so the match was seemingly more even. Wizakor as Spain and Barmoa as France. The two played a soccer like, chess but at the end of the round and after several close saves no player had scored a single point. As with before the match went to a shoot-out. At the end of the shoot-out, WiZaKoR won by the skin of his teeth, 3-2.

Cheppelle played for Optx in Season 1 and is now with 3D.NY. Using Ayane, he was up against Master for the Venom, who uses Ninja Gaiden star Ryu Hayabusa. Gambler’s Paradise again. Chepelle was no match for Master as he used his ninja to only one loss. 5-1

In DOA female, Coolsvilla (Christie Character) for 3D.NY faced off against Dallas Venom’s new draft pick Phoenix. Coolsvilla started off strong and was seemingly going to dominate, but Phoenix came back sortly thereafter. The game was tied 4-4 and Phoenix managed to win over 5-4 for the Venom.

Counter-Strike was again on Dust 2. 3D.NY started as Terrorists. The game went back and forth for the first half, with 5-4 with 3D.NY in the lead. Things continued through the second half, with a 9-9 tie, though NY would go on to win it 10-9.

NY and Dallas tied 23-23 again near the end of the Forza 2 matchup due to overall points, and one more lap was scheduled to decide the winner. In the finale, Dallas’ Muffinman attempted to cut a corner but instead plowed his car into a wall. 3D’s ComeBackDan lived up to his name, and brought home the win for the New York franchise.

The victory capped off a tremendous premiere night from the CGS. Keep your eyes peeled for more coverage of this league here at GGL.