LOOKING BACK ON THE TEAMS:

THE GOOD -
It's hard not to talk about the Doctors as the cream of the crop, but compared to their dominance at the GGL event, they were little on the sloppy side during this event. It was blatantly obvious that they weren't comfortable in the Conquer All game type, as most of their play over the course of the event was close. Still, I would call Mark 'Wombat' Larsen the MVP of the entire tournament, with his consistently strong play throughout the event, and in most situations, being the defining factor in the matches he and his team played. While the other three players from Doctors held point three in the middle, Wombat would be behind enemy lines, harassing the respawns and opening up offensive opportunities for the rest of his team. It's usually a bad idea to have one player running around on his own, but if your team has an impact player like Wombat, than you should definitely send him on the attack.

On the other end of the bracket, was Team Central Slayers, the veteran FEAR team and second seed. TcS managed to dominate their opponents, with a points won to lost differential of 199. Where as Doctors' differential was only 57 points, and surprisingly, Doctors won the event. Jeremiah 'Epic' Bunker led TcS throughout the event and nearly edged out their rivals Doctors. Most of the time, Epic was found around the three point and choke points of maps like Labs and Spillkill with an ASP holding entire teams back single handedly. It was your standard case of leading by example. FEAR's resident Fatal1ty, Neal 'HB' Sisbarro, played a bit spotty during the Invitational. But when he was on his A game, he was seen destroying the opposing teams' star players. TcS also led the scoreboard for about 25 of the 30 minutes during the finals match until the Doctors were finally able to make the offensive moves and take the close lead at the end. This induced the most exciting game in the event, with an absolute massacre on the neutralized three point for the last thirty seconds of the match.

Match #6 VOD - Finals - Doctors vs Team Central Slayers

The runners-up for 'The Good' column would be Last Man Standing and Zerohour. They were the two teams that fought hard despite the circumstances and showed us some standout performances. While Kinetic placed above Last Man Standing, I think that LMS put up a much tighter fight on Doctors than Kinetic had. Along those lines, Kinetic is a breakout team that has been performing in CAL FEAR, where as Last Man Standing has been largely inactive and was invited to play in the tournament with a day's notice. Zerohour, missing Firefly, whom I would consider their strongest player, showed that experience and teamwork could win matches. They even pulled out a victory against the GGL's second place finisher, Headshot, winning by three points with a last minute cap. Still, Zerohour lost steam and died with a whimper against the strong Team Central Slayers.

Match #3 VOD - Round 2 - Doctors vs Last Man Standing

Match #4 VOD - Round 2 - Headshot vs zerohour

THE BAD:

With some of the standout performances by teams over the course of the event, we also saw quite a few less than stellar showings. Headshot comes to mind as a let down, but the word leading into the event was that Headshot was struggling in scrimmages, either because of the Conquer All game type, or just simply the rust. They fell to a huge upset against a team three seeds below them, as well as losing a match that was in the bag. Tsk tsk Headshot, we expected more out of you.

Kinetic was the fifth seed in the event, and all that they managed was a sloppy win over Exigent who played half of the match a man down. Even though they gave Doctors a run for their money, or in this case, laptops, I observed that Kinetic has a long way to go before they can consider themselves a dominate FEAR team.

Disposable Heroes came up a little short against Team Central Slayers, losing by over a hundred and twenty points. DH, being a veteran team of the sport, should definitely be putting up a better fight. However, one cannot really hold it against DH to have fell to TcS, who was charging through a bracket of America's oldest FEAR teams.

The last team that belongs in this grouping is Exigent, who managed to keep a close game against Kinetic even though Stinger77 had disconnected from the match. Exigent was a popular team heading into the event, having given Doctors their only recorded loss in FEAR during the GGL online qualifiers. Exigent was showing signs of rust, and the true nail in the coffin for Exigent was the handicapped match. Hopefully, this isn't the end of one of FEAR's newer stars.