Online Shooter Showdown 2013: The Aftermath

Now that the gunpowder has settled and all the blood drained from the slain competitors, it’s time to go over the lethal race to the top that is “Shooter Showdown 2013” marking the 5th annual event of this contest.

Those who have been following the festivities–and dodging bullets–will already know the winner and I am happy to announce that Wargaming.net’s World of Tanks has won the day.

Needless to say WoT’s rise to the top of this brutal, no-holds-barred contest, has been nothing short of nail biting and nerve pinching–no doubt several users have been hospitalized for voting too hard!

Round One: Shoot!

The first round of battles set up amidst amazing games. Planetside 2 vs. Crysis 3 placed two excellent gaming engines against one another with P2’s MMO styled warfare and C3‘s extreme prettiness–however, as is generally true, beauty fell to brawn and Planetside 2 went on to glory. Next up silly faced off against popular in the showdown of Battlefield 3 vs. Gotham City Imposters–and as it usual for these popularity contests, the bestseller BF3 left a crater where GCI used to be by a wide margin. Halo 4 vs. Quake Live makes for an interesting pairing and in what can only be a disappointing route, H4 destroyed QL in voting 12 to 0. The final round saw yet-another popular shooter vs. a free-to-play title with Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 vs. Blacklight–and while Blacklight makes for a fairly interesting game, CoD has sheer popularity on its side to the tune of 8 to 4.

Round Two: Bob and weave! Zig-zag!

Finally two extremely popular games find themselves head-to-head, Valve’s Team Fortress 2 vs. Halo 4–and while Halo has all the fun sci-fi bits that vaporize heads and limbs, TF2 has Pyrovision and that netted it a win 9 to 1. The next round pit the eternal-beta Firefall vs. Battlefield 3–once again, sheer popularity brought BF3 to winning status with a 7 to 2 vote.

Next up an interesting shoot-out between two extremely popular games that exist for totally different audiences with World of Tanks vs. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2–which saw WoT prevail with a landslide of artillery in a 12 to 0 vote. The next stand-up ended almost-as-expected by putting APB: Reloaded vs. Planetside 2–and Planetside nuked APB from orbit with a solid 9 to 2.

Semifinals: We’ve got them pinned down, move, move, move!

In this round two fierce opponents go face-to-face with Battlefield 3 vs Team Fortress 2 and it shows in the voting round where TF2 wins by a small-ish margin with 7 to 5.

Next up, two massive-battle games found themselves in open field warfare face off with World of Tanks vs. Planetside 2–however, this time being set on another world couldn’t stand up to vehicular superiority for a win sending WoT onto the finals.

Finals: Boom. Headshot!

Team Fortress 2 vs World of Tanks planted two predators in a very small space and the voters really went to task. With TF2 being a favorite in the class-based FPS (not to mention flamethrowers) and WoT being…full of tanks. Although WoT did eventually win the day, it didn’t do so without a massive fight ending in a very tight vote of 10 to 9.

And that’s how a victor is made. World of Tanks wins GameOgre Online Shooter Showdown 2013.

The silver and second place goes to Team Fortress 2 for an amazing show and a near-miss of the gold; and the bronze for third place goes to Planetside 2.