1) Cosplay Competition
2) Street Fighter 4 tourney (using a extremely modded high-end rig and a choice of game controller: gamepad or arcade-style joystick)
As usual, local online gaming companies organized tourneys for their top-notch games. Only two of them showed up at the event: MyGame Philippines ("Special Force", "Fiesta Online", and their upcoming games namely "Twelve Sky 2" and "I-Date") and E-Games ("RAN Online", "Cabal Online", "ZX Online", "Audition", "O2Jam", and "Granado Espada"). Which means AMPED (ABS-CBN) and LevelUp! Games isn't around. I could care less about AMPED, but I don't know why LUG didn't show up, since Rohan seemed to me as a great game and a sure successful publicity for them. As usual, the local distributor for Lineage 2 SEA isn't there, and so are Mobius Games (MU Online PH) and Eaglegame International Limited (Highstreet5).
Nevertheless, "Special Force" from MyGame stole the attention of the crowd with its lively team battle tournament that reminisce the same energetic atmosphere of most Counterstrike tournaments. After all, they won't use the slogan "Counter Strikes Back" for nothing (although sounds kinda cheesy for me). I don't know about E-Games, it's just weren't the same as before. It seems.... dry. Really dry. It was the same thing last "Road to Domination III". All of their tourneys for their games were dry. You see, Special Force tourney was still going and lots of spectators watched the entire game session (and in a huge projected screen, too) even though it's almost the end of the 2nd day of the event, while the entire E-Games booth is deserted. RAN Online was their top-notch game before that a very long line of players wanted to signup for the tournament, but it was so like yesterday during the event. I don't know about Audition though, since I haven't been there on the 1st day. CMs from every online game failed on getting the whole booth lively, IMO.
I can't say anything about other events since I'm in the middle of the exam week. Really, of all the days DOH can quarrantine STI and other 3 schools due to reports of 6 more students positive of AH1N1 here in Davao City... it was conducted on the 2nd week of July?! The exams were moved from 16-18 to 23-25 because of it. I missed the LAN Party, I missed the DoTA tourney, and most of all... I MISSED THE COSPLAY COMPETITION!! DAAAAAAAAMN!! >.<
As for this year's lineup of heavily modded PCs, it was better than before... A LOT BETTER!! :D There's the Hummer H2 concept with CoolerMaster "V8", a CPU HSF (Heat Sink Fan), which is... yep, a term for a muscle car's engine (and it looks like one, too). There's also an orange-colored PC case with styles of slick curves, edges, and designs that reminisce the style of custom-made body frame of a souped-up street racing car (well, they got the concept from an orange Toyota Supra that Paul Walker used in The Fast And The Furious, as the owner of that concept PC case displayed a car figure of the orange Supra on top of it). But of all the PC units displayed, 2 of them really stand out: "Team DAMAK!" and "L.U.M.O.S. (actually, "lumos" is a bisaya dialect term for "drown", but it's acronym for that concept is Lighted UV-Reactive Micro-ATX Oil-Cooled System), both oil-cooled PC systems with two things in mind, Presentation and Performance. Both have eye-catching presentation with its aquarium-like case (mind you, the whole system is submerged with oil) and a pump (a radiator, actually) is connected to it to circulate the oil from being too hot, just like some water cooling solutions for PCs. Oh yeah, it creates bubbles inside, something that you may find on most aquariums. Truly an attention-seeker. As for performance, oil cooling is one of 3 common methods of cooling a PC system (the other are air cooling and water cooling). But unlike air and water cooling which focuses on certain areas (mostly processor and video card), both oil-cooled systems made sure the whole area is covered with a container full of circulated oil, which can keep the whole system cool. Yeah, sure is a nice concept, but I don't know about the cooling performance though. I've read some forums here and there saying oil cooling is just for looks yet getting worse temps, but some do say it's effective. I'll leave the judgement to you, guys. :D
Ok, this will be all for now. I still have classes, so I'll post the pics when I get back home.
UPDATE: Here are the pics taken from the said event. Click "View All" for hi-res images. Enjoy viewing! :D
