Crossfire Season 2015: When Stars Are Rising
GameClub Philippines, the publishers of popular free-to-play (F2P) first-person shooter CrossFire (CF), announced the CrossFire Stars 2015 National Finals.
The National Finals will feature 16 teams from all over the country, fighting for the right to be called the Philippines’ best CF team as well as the chance to represent the Philippines at the Global Finals to be held later this year in China. Previous participants to the Global Finals included Pacific.Wara and Pacific.Macta, both of which are showing good performances this year.
The tournament will be held at the SM North Edsa Skydome on October 11, 2015.
Who should we watch in the National Finals?
With ten regional legs to go, there are still a lot of teams to watch out for.
Teams such as HL.Decapitatorz and Pacific.Wara have already topped their respective qualification legs. Both teams are known for being among the few who can take maps off Pacific.Macta, which is considered to be the number one team in the country at the moment.
Can Pacific.Wara get another chance to bring the bacon back to the country? Photo: GameClub Philippines
One thing is for sure: With the things that are at stake here, everyone will do their show their best performance, so expect quality matchups from the teams that will be present at the tournament.
Why should we even follow the game?
Many people ask: What is CrossFire all about? Is it just another “F2P FPS”?
At first glance, people may think that it is a clone of Counter-Strike (CS). In reality, it is actually a very different game due to the fact that many of the guns in the game have added capabilities that give the player an advantage in certain situations. The variety of the guns make sure that there are many types of tactics that can be employed throughout the match.
Like many FPS titles, CrossFire is a fast-paced game that focuses a lot on aim, execution and proper positioning. This is evident especially in the international level as teams devise certain strategies for each map and try to find ways to counter the play of the opposing side, whether it is through going for fast pushes to destroy predefined setups, winning aim duels to gain a man advantage or simply covering a certain area with smoke to isolate that part of the map, gaining a huge advantage for the team.
The competitive map pool is pretty diverse as well, from chokepoint-heavy sites such as Mexico to fast-paced maps like Ankara. This gives a chance for certain teams to run special setups on the map of their choice and this makes the ban-pick phase really interesting as each side tries to get the maps that they are most comfortable with.
What will this year’s CrossFire Stars Global Finals look like?
This year’s Global Finals will feature 12 of the best CrossFire teams in the world, with each of the teams gaining entry through their respective qualifiers. Aside from the Philippines, China, Korea and Europe will take part in this tournament.
The 2014 edition of the CrossFire Stars Global Finals featured a $115,000 prize pool.
Do we have a chance at getting the championship trophy?
Philippines’ CrossFire teams have been traditionally feared in the international scene, as the Filipino squads routinely make it at least to the semi-finals of many large tournaments such as the World Cyber Arena (WCA) and the World Cyber Games (WCG).
Last year, Pacific.Macta continued the sreak as they surprised everyone by taking third place at the last edition of the CrossFire Stars Global Finals, where they were beaten by eventual champions Modern.DYTV.EP from China in the semi-final match, 2-0. In the third place match, they defeated European side PENTA Sports, 2-0, winning $15,000 in the process.
Last year, they made it to the podium at the Global Finals. Can they get another chance again? Photo: GameClub Philippines
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