On last night’s episode of WCG Ultimate Gamer 2, the contestants drove each other crazy on a real life track and in the isolation challenge where they played Forza Motorsport 3. It revealed who knew how to handle their car and who was a hazard on the road, but more importantly it showed which contestant’s egos were easily bruised and who was a force to be reckoned with.
We caught up with Yaz Ammari, who won both challenges. With the goal of having the shortest time, the contestants had to drive a blacked out car where the only way to see was using camera monitors mounted on the side and on the front of the car, mimicking playing a video game. They had to pick one of their fellow contestants and maneuver to hit a cutout of them placed on the course. The person who was targeted the most would get one minute added to their time. Any other obstacles or extra cutouts hit would add time as well.
The episode showed Caesar Noriega freaking out when alliance member Jake Pfister picked his cutout to run over. The guys of the house agreed to team together to get the rest of the house out by strategically picking who would go to the elimination challenge. (The bottom ranked player of the week always faces off against a person who the first place gamer chooses.) Even though Pfister claimed the reason he chose Noriega was because it was the largest cutout – Noriega is easily the tallest in the house -the other gamer wasn’t buying it, hinting that the alliance might not hold out until the finals.
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But, Ammari admitted he had an equally volatile reaction off-screen. Vanessa chose to take him down, and since they were friends before the show he was confused – and a little pissed.
“Vanessa was the only one who hit me,” he said. “She said, ‘I thought it would be funny.’ I wasn’t laughing.”
However, he didn’t let his hurt feelings get in the way of his friendship. Ammari listened to Vanessa Arteaga, who got last place this week, and chose Rachel Quirico to go against her in the elimination challenge. He simply wanted Artega to have the best chance of getting back to the gamer house. “Rachel didn’t have any hard feelings about it,” he said. “I gave Vanessa the best opportunity. It played out perfectly.”
His kind intentions didn’t pay off: In a surprise upset, Quirico defeated Artega.
“It wasn’t fun when it happened,” Artega admitted. “In the past two games I’ve been coming up on top in isolation. I was operating on about two hours of sleep, if I’m being generous.”
Artega drove super slow in the real life challenge. Her competitors thought it was funny, but she revealed she got claustrophobic in the car and decided to be more cautious. If she could go back, “I would have done it and hit everything on the course if I had all the old castmates.”
“Racing games are not really my thing,” Vanessa said defending herself. She’s the WCG Pan-American Champion in Dead or Alive 4. “I love cars so it’s amazing. I don’t like racing games.”
Many were shocked that she went down, although not out: She’ll be training for the new Dead or Alive competitions when it comes out. But, Ammari has been surprising people on his own. Everyone on the forums he read thought he was going to be out, but after winning two of the four episodes he’s been on form. “Everyone was predicting I was going to be one of the first three out,” he said.
“My biggest competition is Jake,” he said. “We’ve split the first four challenges, so he’s my biggest challenge.”