A Trip Down Memory Lane: Summer of 2008 - Summer of 2008

Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah - I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

Nodding to the drum of this beat, I am sure some of you, perhaps reluctantly, have done it before. Moreover, I think Mr Adams was onto something, he knew that sometimes there is a Summer that you cannot simply erase from the depths of your hippocampus, nor should you. Only, he was talking about the wrong one.

The Summer of 2008. Undoubtedly Call of Duty 4's peak year, with a unique gimmick to boot. Three weekends, three events and before we knew it, we had ourselves a genuine Call of Duty 4 Summer Tour. A Tour that did not only see the best from our continent, but we had ourselves some Yanks and Canucks to boot. It was truly one of those unparalleled moments in Call of Duty history and therefore seemed to me like a good starting point for TEK9's newest series: A Trip Down Memory Lane.

So there we were, embarking on a trip that combined so much more than the normal routine of showing up and doing your thang to then take plane, train or car rides homewards two days later. No, we all became part of the moving circus that was Call of Duty 4, some teams planning joint trips, joint stays and some teams hopping aboard a little later or leaving the carousel earlier than expected. None of it mattered, important was that you had been part of it in some way or another.

Of course, the crème de la crème wanted to take it all in, shower themselves in a three week journey that would take them from Belgium over Denmark to Newbury, United Kingdom. They would all be fighting for a spot in the memorials, as everyone involved knew that it was indeed something unlikely to replicate itself to the same extent.

Yet quality was not the only yardstick these tournaments will be remembered for, as we not only shared table and chair with the very best of the best; the sheer size of the tournaments allowed for so many unexpected teams and the turn-out ensured there would be an abundance of stories, enough to fill the entire west wing of Call of Duty’s library.

COD4 community prepares for AEF Grand Final in Hilton Ballroom

It takes us back to far-off days of splendour and grandeur the likes of us had not yet witnessed, we saw the back-then ugly ducklings of our own scene develop into real swans, fulfilling their own dreams, at the cost of shattering others’. We witnessed LowLandLions' upsurge, Team-Dignitas' downfall, EG's rivalry and Pandemic's misfortune and so much more...

Antwerp lit the torch and the unfortunate technical issues pushed the tournament into the wee hours of the morning each time, putting a strenuous amount of stress on the players. However, the Hilton hotel proved to have a soothing effect on the teams who spent a lot of time either waiting or wandering into town to enjoy the sunlight after peering relentlessly at their monitors for hours on end.

Day 1 nearly saw the British youngsters of MeetYourMakers screw up and by the skin of their teeth did they even make it into the bracket stage. Due to the smallish and somewhat unnecessary group lay-out, no real other upsets could be noted and moving onto the huge bracket, the teams prepared for a money finish. After all, €20 000 was up for grabs and such an amount of prize money had previously only been reserved for major Counter-Strike 1.6 tournaments. A long-awaited record, already falling the week after.

Bracket time and with such profusion of big name teams on display, there were bound to be early victims with contemporary names such as eSuba, LowLandLions, SK-Gaming, Reason-Gaming, Serious Gaming, Fnatic not making the TOP 6. Extraordinary, as talent such as this is usually expected to end up a few notches higher.

Team-pandemic eventually took their map and their tournament, shouting vigorously from the tournament area, while the majority of the scene sat behind the barriers to gaze upon the eventual winners, hoping to bask a bit in their glory and to once share in the same experience: winning a major tournament. However, KomaCrew had already planted the seeds at what later would become the ButtonBashers extraordinaire, marketed as the first pro-gaming Call of Duty team ever, they could not continue on in the Summer Tour and stayed home to perfect their strategies, making sure they were ready for the aftermath of the 2008 Summer Trifecta.

The crucial battle between EG and LLL in the Danish X

Roskilde, Denmark now became the new hot spot and while some wanted to keep up the same performance, others retired to their homes for some last-minute tweaking and revising to find the missing puzzle piece to lift them up another level. The prime example of this were none other than LowLandLions who, after a lacklustre AEF performance, moved in Jan "Sticky" Craeynest’s home to intensify their preparation, enjoying the occasional Jacuzzi and swimming pool break. Their hard work and forceful bounding moved them from a ranking filler to a real contender.

They proved way more interesting at The-eXperience '08, with several top teams scattered across the four groups and speculative results. The five day break had not ensued five days of radio silence and tongues were blabbering all over, asking who could possibly stop Team-Dignitas, Team-pandemic or EG.

Team-Dignitas had done well in Belgium, but the star-studded line-up proved irresistible against the constant and forced intra-team face time. Being compelled to spend time in each other’s faces for so long and so intensively obviously had put a big toll on the team's abilities and the first cracks had already been spotted in their armour, dropping out two rounds earlier and going home without any prize money.

While Team-Dignitas was falling apart, Fnatic and LowLandLions gelled well and were going strong in the tournament. By far, the most interesting round of the tournament was the third upperbracket round with LowLandLions facing Evil Geniuses and Fnatic hoping to topple Team-pandemic.

LowLandLions continued their shock and stun campaign by dropping jaws all across Europe with a 13 to 02 win over Team-pandemic on the team's home map, mp_strike. In the lowerbracket, Evil Geniuses shook Team-pandemic out of the tournament and were gunning for a rematch. A Greek tragedy was now in place, as LowLandLions saw their success story cut short with Thomas "Restyle" Billen cracking under the pressure of intercontinental stage fight and Evil Geniuses were not altruistic enough to hand them their win on a platter.

The single-most "WTF" moment in Call of Duty 4 history occurred at the height of the tournament, with LowLandLions sitting back at mp_strike and tac nading the bomb spot perfectly, taking out four EG players successively to block them planting the bomb. A true testimony to LowLandLions tactical style of play, however, not enough to give them a win and EG were crowned the winners of Denmark.

What EG managed to take home

Had Team-pandemic been able to stay in Europe as well, i34 would have played host to three dogs vying for the crowning win and being elected the Summer Tour all-round winner. Their absence played in favour of one of the most interesting Call of Duty rivalries, EG vs LowLandLions. Both teams played each other frequently and the winner would go down in history as the global champions.

i34 was probably the strongest i-series event to date, with an unrivalled prize purse and a BYOC setting. The order of things seemed right, with the more homely and more slowly progressing schedule acting as the perfect closure for the three weeks of Call of Duty.

The atmosphere and surroundings did not take anything away from the cut-throat competition and action going on, though, despite the fact that quite a few top teams lacked the funding to attend all three events and it all became about four names: LowLandLions, Evil Geniuses, MeetYourMakers and Fnatic. Team-Dignitas had already checked out mentally by this point and the residual British teams would need yet more time to frequently beat Europe’s top teams.

The event ran its expected course, LowLandLions meeting Evil Geniuses in the Winner Bracket Final and once more challenging the American-Canadian freight train to outdo them twice in the Grand Final. This time around, The Belgian-Dutch combination seemed capable of closing out the match in their favour and earning themselves quite a bit of change.

The final battle of the COD4 Summer Tour

When looking back at these wondrous three weeks, I sense a feeling of nostalgia, something irreplaceably inimitable, something the Call of Duty community had not experienced before and has not experienced since. That the pressure of practically living together became too much for some and the selling point for others, just showed that competitive gaming is about so much more than being able to hit the best or most accurate and in the end, those teams that got along great went home being the richer and the others started the arduous and repetitive strain of line-up changes to chase that perfect combination.