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Author:
NE_ra
3,555 Views
15 Comments
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Interviewed: CombatCarl
Interviewed by:
NE_ra
Personal Information:
Name: Sean Steele
Age: 19
Location: Portland, OR
Occupation: Student
Clan: Check Six
IRC: irc.enterthegame.com #check-six
1.) First things first, what’s with the name? Care to share with everyone where you got it from?
Well before I played games competitively (or rather in competitive communities), hell, before I even had my own computer really, I was at a friends house staying the night, and we had been taking turns playing CS (Before I ever played UT). Some guy named “Action Hank” was playing on the server and being a complete lamer, so I decided to rename to CombatCarl and mock him. Unfortunately, it stuck.
2.) You have a variety of so-called rivals within the community. Who is your ultimate arch-nemesis?
Well, a rival is different than a nemesis :P I don’t really have any nemesis’ in the North American community except Stryfe. Everytime we have played a LAN match it has been the most ridiculously close match ever. (7-8 Overtime WCG.USA 2003 Antalus, 10-9 Rankin WCG.USA 2004, I forget the score of the other maps). It’s always a superb match and on LAN he has always squeaked out a very close victory.
As for rivals… Or supposed rivals, I don’t really consider anyone else a rival. I mean, I could consider Nytejade a rival, but when it comes down to it LOB doesn’t stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning vs. us, so what kind of healthy rivalry is that? Ok, I just knocked on LOB/Nytejade, sorry. Before you flame me and call me fat and say that I have no life, I would just like to say that I was at the beach this weekend with a large amount of friends, and what were you doing this weekend? Ah, blogging on www.nytejade.com about Nvidia drivers on a Saturday night, rad dude.
Other rivals people might think I have are wingzero, nox, warlock, among others, but I don’t really consider them rivals, just retards.
3.) You and many other top players are often mocked for having no lives. They often claim that the only way to get to the level you are at is to practice constantly. What is your response to that? What are your opinions on the issue of talent vs. practice time?
I am not going to lie, practice time does help. But it is not everything, and it is not even close to everything. Although I am not sure about “talent,” I do believe some players are just smarter people, or have better eye hand coordination. However, I believe the biggest difference is… How should I explain it… Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Someone can practice 8 hours a day, and probably 6 or so hours of it is going to be worthless sloppy practice that might even start some bad habits for them. I have a healthy social life, and in college (Sort of on a break right now). Gaming isn’t near a priority for me. I know you really bad players who hate me out there would like to think that I’m only good because this game is my life, but you’re wrong.
4.) You are known as a very versatile player having played CTF, 1on1, TDM and even some Onslaught. Is there a gametype that you enjoy the most? What do you consider yourself best at?
Well I guess I would be best at 1on1, although I prefer playing TDM over everything. My timing could be stronger in both 1on1 and TDM, but it shows more in TDM I guess. In 1on1 I can get by with sloppy timing (believe it or not I don’t even time powerups most of the time). I really really enjoy TDM the most, 1on1 is semi fun if I am playing someone who actually makes me think. As for CTF, I wish the CTF community was better. When I actually played CTF we only scrimmed vs. maybe 2 or 3 different worthwhile clans. I started playing UT with CTF, but that was UT99, and CTF was so amazing in that game. I think it’s the only game/MOD that has kept my attention for 4 years. UT2K4 CTF is not quite as good, and the UT2K4 CTF community sucks, badly, making it not very fun.
5.) You have occasionally ventured into other games. What are your opinions of the games you have played besides UT2004? If you weren’t playing 2K4, what would you play for fun?
Well before this GGL stuff about UT2004 happened, I was playing CS:S competitively with Check-Six, and was playing CS1.6 for fun on the side. I prefer team games to 1v1, and both games were actually a challenge. I think I would play those games for fun if I weren’t playing UT2004 competitively. CS:S is like UT2003 to the CS1.6 community. They shouldn’t have launched it with so many bugs because now the community is forever bias to it, although I think both games are fun as hell, but frustrating.
6.) Your current team of Check Six is quite remarkable, a dream team of sorts. Could you give the readers some information on how the team is formed, and what benefits a member in Check Six enjoys?
Well Check-Six was more or less a west coast clan with Nox, Str|fe, Frenzy, meta, with easties GiMiX and ep1taph. I played for Check Six after Kaizen retired after CPL. I played with them a bit, finding that Nox was a complete moron and made the team experience with Check Six really stupid and not fun. I stuck around with Check Six though because of CS:S and because I was still playing 1v1 and they had been sponsoring me. Before this GGL stuff happened I had a desire to play TDM again, with friends. Yes, that’s right, Obsoleet was not a “super team” (although every player on that team was great), but I thought of it more as a friends team. I would personally give handjobs to each one of the members in Obsoleet… well no.
When GGL announced the Americup, I got phone calls on my cell phone (I was out of town, no computer) of people asking me to play, who was I playing for, that kind of stuff. I told the Obsoleet guys that if Kaizen went active that I would play for them. Although I feel like I ditched the Obsoleet fellas, the new Check-Six is basically an altered Kaizen. It has 4 kaizen (Me, Stryfe, Tex, Elix) with old x6 members GiMiX and Frenzy. Gimix is most responsible for assembling this team, because he did all of this while I was out of town, although I think it was my idea.
As for benefits, we get free blowjobs from clan h20.
7.) While on the topic of clans, you have been back and forth between quite a few. Out of the clans you have been in including Check Six, which would you consider to be the most dominant at their respective gametype?
Well as of right now I do believe Check Six is the most dominant clan I’ve been on. I think we have only lost 1 map in scrim or matches, and that was to you guys in a very close game on our first day back playing the game. Although while I was on P*S in UT2003 for CTF I don’t think we ever really lost a map at all, at least when I played, and no I’m not taking credit for that because CTF is truly a team game and P*S was loaded.
8.) Check Six is heavily favoured to win the recently announced GGL Americup, what are your expectations for your team? If any, what teams do you consider to be a threat?
I expect to win Americup to be bluntly honest. We have the talent, the desire, and the practice ethic to win. Might be surprising to people reading this, but I think our team has improved more and faster than any other team since the resurgence of UT2004 TDM.
As for other teams being threats, Gravity has enough talent to give us a run for our money. Ross Lavery is a sexy team player, Alex Grantz is a sexy fragger, and you can never really underestimate the mathematician Lotus. Combined with Cursive’s sexy southern accent and portal shield gun camping on Goliath, you’re looking at a team that could be a threat. Xyber is a very talented aimer and Gravity just picked up xspain, who MIGHT be useful in the future.
Another team that could be a threat is continuance. Given the right maps, the right teamwork, and they might be able to squeak out a win. They truly have an understanding of how to play TDM.
Other then that, there some teams that are decent like SBP and h20 but I don’t consider them threats (Sorry?).
9.) What do you consider to be your biggest strengths as a player? What are your weaknesses?
I think my biggest strength as a player is my aim. And not just my aim with a lightning gun or shock rifle, but with every gun in the game. Other than most players, I can grab 1 gun (Any gun, other than maybe goo) off the spawn and run at my opponent and probably out aim them and kill them. Although I prefer hitscan, my rockets and flak are real nice as well. My weaknesses is that I can get frustrated when I start losing, in 1v1’s mainly. I give up a bit too many frags sometimes. Another weakness I have is timing, but I don’t view that as a huge weakness.
10.) You have been lucky (and skilled) enough to have had the opportunity to travel the world to events like WCG, ESWC, CPL. Is there an event that you consider your favourite? Which organization do you respect the most?
This last year I liked WCG the most, but now I will burn them to the ground because they picked like 50 shitty RTS’s over UT2004. Although all tournaments have flaws, there is no such thing as a perfect tournament. For example, CPL had a shitty map system and shitty double elim brackets with shitty seeding. WCG was just weird, I won 6 matches and lost 1 match, and placed T-5th. GitzZz wins 4 matches and loses 3 and places 4th. Not that I think I am a better player than GitzZz but it was just odd like that, I guess he won his games when they counted the most :P ESWC also had poor PC’s, but the tournament bracket system was ownage. Overall I liked WCG and ESWC much more than CPL, better atmosphere, overall more fun. CPL is lame because they don’t give a shit about the players, if they please their sponsors then they are happy and ignore all the players wants and needs.
11.) Being a west player, you often have ping and packetloss issues. How do you overcome these challenges? What are your suggestions to teams suffering from the same issues?
Well before I played so much LAN for 1v1 tournaments this summer, I had no problem compensating for ping and packet loss on my own. I mean, I still had 60-100 ping on central servers but I was much better at leading and compensating for ping. Then I played a few months of pretty much LAN only play, or when I played online I had something like a 16 ping to a Seattle server. Now that newnet is out, I like to play with that, because whether you kids like it or not, it works really really well. There are very few bugs in beta8, and for you idiots who make up impossible bugs about newnet, beta8 really doesn’t change the game physics. The game is very close to LAN play with it, if you have 80 ping or less or so (Some projectiles and combos still lag).
12.) Whatever team wins Americup TDM Season 1 – do they stand a chance against the Euros?
Depending on the map yes… We will see, Euros will be the better team but that doesn’t mean they will for sure win.
13.) Finally if you could take only 3 things to a deserted island, what would they be?
I could think of a few combos of things to bring…
Combo #1 : Shock Rifle, Nytejade, Coffin
Combo #2 : Untold, English teacher, astroglide
Although I think I’d take a never ending keg of Fat Tire, , and some food (CUZ im FAT lOLZ?)
14.) And finally, any shout-outs, comments, flames? It’s all yours!
Flames :
-h20 you guys are NOT good. You are NOT a super clan. Do NOT pass go, do NOT collect $200.
-WARLOCK I Hope you aren’t sucking as much at being a pro painkiller player as you did as a pro UT player!
-Nytejade keep writing 10 page essays about me on your blog buddy! Your life must own mine! (Note: I actually think LOB are generally cool guys.)
Shoutouts :
-To continuance, for not sucking at TDM.
-To former obsoleet members, ra, dawgpound, and cafe, for being awesome guys.
-To Saito for being an awful admin
-To Check-Six!
-To JurniS for making the borg look dyslexic!
Thanks to CombatCarl for taking the time to answer these questions, best of luck in Americup! |
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