MLG Toronto 2008

I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the MLG circus was making a return trip to Toronto after we hosted the Canadian Open back in November 2007. My son and I went last year, so this year we were totally stoked to be going back. I went down with him on the Saturday as he tends to get bored after the thrill of seeing Walshy and the ogres (his favourite players) in person wears off, so sitting for hours watching the final on Sunday would not have worked out so well.

The event was held in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which is significantly larger than the venue from last year, though the MLG portion of the show was quite small. The headlining attraction at the show was FanExpo. This is the ComicCon of Canada (I’ve learned). Personally, I don’t like comics, or anime, but these people sure do! I have never seen so many freaks and Star Wars characters in one room in my life. It was quite a sight. We basically headed straight for the sounds of frags and BRs, you know, cool stuff!

Astro Gaming had a booth set up showing off their A40 headset which I so wanted to buy, but the ‘boss’ put a stop to that pretty quick. I’m still pissed. The cool thing was that you could try them out on a 2v2 set up on Guardian. I’m telling you that this headset is the real deal. I could hear so much detail and directionality. Definitely on my Christmas list. Of course when I got up to the front of the line, Nezir and Maziik (the coaches of Classic and Triggers respectively) were at the front too. I’ve never felt like such a newb in my life. They may be coaches, but they are also very good players. I think I went 3-5-10 in that game. I blame the headset ;)

On ‘Championship’ Sunday, my friend and I went down just in time to see the winners bracket final between Str8 Rippin’ and Instinct. The stands were packed, so we decided to just join the horde of people waiting for seats to vacate. After about an hour of standing and watching the match, we got promoted to sitting cross-legged on the carpet in the front of the bleachers. Other than the ass-pain, the seats were spectacular. We sat there for the next 3 hours.

The gameplay was amazing. At first, it was a little hard to watch so many players at the same time, but after a while, it was really neat watching how teams are set up on the maps by watching each screen.

Walshy was playing like the old Walshy: getting pumped, pulling off sick flag caps and clutch moves. It was great seeing him play so well. The crowd was chanting his name whenever he got a double or capped the flag. I also have a newfound respect for Lunchbox. He was playing amazing. His BR was right on, and his positioning, even better. They were running the table on Construct King (except when they played Str8). It was a truly amazing performance by them.

Final Boss was another story. Neighbor didn’t look like he was really getting along with Strongside during the games. They sat next to each other, and I know that Neighbor is a reserved guy and all, but he was getting upset a few times when he wasn’t being supported. Their play showed that as well. They dominated the TS games, but when it came to objective, they got run over by Instinct. One example of this was on Guardian Ball. There was one point in the game where Instinct held the ball in bottom blue for about 100 seconds straight. FB could do nothing to get close to them. Instinct just outslayed the whole game. When they got close, Walsh would just drop the ball on snipe lift, and someone at S2 would just grab it and the whole team adjusted quickly. I can’t wait for this one to be put on VoD.

After Instinct won, Puckett interviewed Walshy, and asked him what it felt like to beat the team that booted him off. He calmly replied, “It was like taking candy from a baby, but the baby would have put up more of a fight!” The crowd went crazy.

Then was the Championship match between Instinct and Str8 Rippin’. This was a great match, even though it wasn’t particularly close. Instinct played their heart’s out, but Str8 was just too much in every respect. Snip3down showed that he can slay on any team. On Amp TS, he got something like 30 kills, and on Construct King, he got 40+. Incredible.

My favourite moment was when the Amp game came up in the final. Everyone started to yell, “VETO!! VETO!!” I guess people don’t share the fondness that I have for Amp. On the whole, the event was very enjoyable, and I hope that it comes back to Toronto next year.

X.