Join Me At The Ultimate Gaming Experience

By Paul Hunter

If you were at the Fan Expo 2009 this past August you probably noticed a strong Rogers Communications presence with their huge gaming arena showing off their new 50 Mbps Ultimate Internet. This was the same booth featuring Halo 3 competitions against the world's youngest pro-gamer, Lil Poison.

During the event a Rogers rep tipped me off that the company will be hosting a huge gaming tournament at a secret location some time in September. As it turns out, the tournament is called the Ultimate Gaming Experience (UGE) and will be taking place on September 26, 2009 from 12pm - 5pm at The Courthouse in Toronto.

The competition is open to residents of Ontario who are 13 years or older and registration is open until 6pm EST on September 25. The company organizing the event is Playgrounds, which is the same group that hosted the Street Fighter IV Tournament on the 103" plasma screen at the Fan Expo.

When registering for the UGE, you are to select your preferred gaming platform (Playstation, Xbox, or Nintendo) and your genre of choice (Fighter, Shooter and Sports). On the day of tournament, entrants will compete against each other for high scores/best performances in each gaming category.

It's a single elimination style tournament with the finalist given the title of Toronto’s #1 Gamer. The winner will also receive an Ultimate Gaming Prize Pack valued at $4,000 and consisting of a 50’ Plasma TV, three consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii), along with five video games.

I signed up and will be out to compete on September 26. My expectations are low because I picked Shooter on the Playstation family which probably means one of Killzone 2, Resistance 2 or Call of Duty, all of which I'm pretty average at. I'm doomed.