Less than a month ago, SK's fooKi took fourth place in the CPL Quake 4 tournament, a qualifier for the CPL Summer event at the Gaylord Texan. fooKi ran throughout the entire upper bracket, sending down PURRI, Destrukt, and TooGoood, before falling to his teammate toxic in the upper semi finals, with toxic going on to take second place to Russia's cooller. fooKi dropped to the lower bracket, eliminating America's last hope at that point in the tournament, the compLexity syndicate's socrates_. After the brutally close match against socrates_, fooKi fell in the lower bracket finals to fellow Swede fox in a series of three maps. I was able to track fooKi down through the Euro recesses of Quakenet in order to ask him a few post CPL questions regarding the event, the future of Quake 4, and the future of fooKi himself. Enjoy.

How does it feel to be apart of a legacy such as SK Gaming? Was it exciting to see the SK CS team take first, and toxic and yourself place top 5 for Q4?

It feels great, a real motivation booster. I was very pleased by SK's performance at cpl winter and can't wait til next cpl where (the q4team atleast) will be much more prepared and ready to kick ass.

You fought through a fairly tough tournament, beating names like Purri, dkt, and TooGoood by very large margins. When you came up against toxic, did you know that toxic would win? Did the two of you practice together going into the event, and did that add to the domination you displayed against most of your opponents?

I was asked by djWHEAT about my thoughts before the game vs toxic. I told him I was going to lose and he laughed and told me to stop being modest all the time. I wasn't being modest, I was 100% sure I was going to lose as toxic had prepared himself alot more before the event. No we did not practice anything before the event. I hardly practiced at all because I wasn't going at first. six hours before the flight i changed my mind (hence why I was so surprised and happy over my top4 finish).

You edged socrates_ out by a single frag each map; during the first map, you won literally by 16hp. How stressful was that match to play in the lower bracket, and did you feel like the match was slipping from your grasp at any point?

Yes it was very stressful and I didn't play that well(too nervous). After the phrantic [sic] game I was shaking like crazy and it really affected my game on galang. I thought I was gonna lose galang for sure at many times but kept playing. After THAT game I couldn't stop shaking for like an hour :), craziest game I've played( double overtime) and worth seeing even though the skill level wasn't that high.

There is much debate about the Euro Q4 scene versus the American Q4 scene. Based on your experience from playing destrukt and socrates_ at the CPL, what's your opinion of the US Q4 players, and do you feel that Europe holds the talent?

I think overall the euroscene will do much better. At least in scandinavia thanks to great connections and cold weather ;). Playing online everyday vs a lot of different very skilled players with both pinging like it was LAN is a great advantage. North America has some great players though, socrates_, fatal1ty, nomadic... very skilled and cool guys. Europe needs to watch out for them.

While the top placings at Dreamhack were somewhat consistent with the play at CPL, do you feel that CPL was a better showing of the Q4 year to come? What is your projected top five players for 2006?

I didn't follow the Dreamhack tourney, also I don't think CPL showed how the top will be placed next year. People didn't prepare enough and the game is so new. A lot of top players were missing. Next years CPL tour will be EXTREMELY hard to predict and play in. I would say that even coming top8 will be pretty hard for everyone.

Since Q3's fallout with the CPL, the DM duel scene has jumped through a couple of different games, while Counter-Strike has essentially stuck around for years. Do you feel that Q4 is here to stay?

It depends on raven. Q4 out of the box is a really horrible game. If it wasn't for the Q4maxteam I(and a lot of other people) wouldn't play the game. If they fix the game within a near future it will probably grow a little. I doubt 1on1, tdm and ctf will be that big though as it is not as easy to get into as Counter-Strike, Battlefield or the newbish game CPMA.

How do you feel about Q4 compared to Q3, UT, and PK?

I didn't play much UT and PK, but Q3 is a billion times better than Q4. PK might be a better spectator game. I watched some games from last year on TSN's videostream and it was fast and pretty exciting :). PK is very very frustrating to play though.

The CPL showed us that many players are very map dependent. The addition or subtraction of the railgun can make or break a match for a number of players; do you think this is functional, or should it be balanced? If so, how would you balance it?

The rail is overpowered, so is the Lightning gun and shotgun. When I came to cpl I was unprepared and aimed like a blind person. I lowered my sensitivity so much it was almost impossible to play. Then I over used the shaft (which is very easy to use on low sensitivity) and could at least give some damage with one weapon. They need to make the hitboxes smaller and make the spread on the shotty wider(so its not so powerfull on mid/long range). If they fix the zoom sensitivity (right now the sensitivity doubles when you zoom with rail and machinegun) and leave the hitboxes the game will be ruined.

Fatal1ty was named the number 2 most feared person in sports by the Fox Sports Network. Do you agree with that? What are your thoughts on the media exposure that fatal1ty gets compared to his play at events, do you think he might get a rude awakening in Q4?

I doubt anyone fears fatal1ty, its a *bleep* computer game. As for his media exposure, I don't really have an opinion. He has been successful in a lot of games so it's cool I guess. He will have a real tough time in Q4 and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't finish top3 in any CPL event(no offence to him, same goes for any top player).

Thanks for answering these brutal questions. If you have any closing statements or shouts to friends and sponsers, go ahead and toss them in here.

I wanna thank SK for helping me out even though I can be quite the pain :), the Danish players (zeicon brescia prime) for teaching me how to play this frustrating game and fazz for talking me into going to cpl winter. Love you all.