Why you should check out Splitgate: Arena Warfare

Splitgate Arena Warfare is a game that has been on my radar since the days when it still went by the name Wormhole Wars. It instantly piqued my interest. While as many will say it has halo vibes and it’s hard to deny that it’s clearly inspired by halo and portal. Splitgate feels like its own thing. It feels different enough to the developers influences to stand on its own two feet.

The combat is smooth and relatively easy to grasp. However it’s difficult enough that there’s a noticeable skillgap between players. This gives me hope for the competitive future of Splitgate. The rifling is crisp and feels satisfying when you manage to mow down multiple enemies in a gunfight or build up a killstreak. The Jetpacks and wormholes speed up the gameplay significantly. Using momentum to speed through the map while picking off enemies almost give the game an arena FPS feeling. It makes me wish there was a railgun to be speeding around with.

Speaking of the wormholes, these are without a doubt the games most intriguing feature. They make Splitgate extremely dynamic as the use of wormholes gives the player a plethora of tricks up their sleeves. You can use a wormhole to sneak behind an enemy and shoot them in the back. You can use a wormhole to escape a pursuing enemy who you can’t quite kill. You can jump from a great height into a wormhole to enable you to use momentum to bridge a large gap, perhaps even snipe someone while gliding through the air… you get my point, it gives the player options.

While I feel that many die hard competitive FPS players will look down on the game for it’s odd gameplay mechanics and for its potential outdated combat style. I hope that people give Splitgate Arena Warfare a chance. It’s a fun game with an endless ceiling. A pro team using pre-planned portals to counter-act an enemy teams portal placement would be absolutely phenomenal to watch… and I hope we reach that point.

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Why Rainbow Six Siege is a Game to Watch!

The biggest surprise of the esports landscape of 2017 or 2018 is not PUBG, it’s not even Fortnite. The biggest surprise is without a doubt Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Having bought the game in early 2016 and enjoyed playing through the campaign and tried my hand at multiplayer, I put the game to rest and thought nothing more about it. This game didn’t have the merit to make it as an esport as no Rainbow Six had done before in a big way. Boy was I wrong.

Ubisoft attempted to get the esports scene in motion almost imedeately with the first pro league in partnership with ESL taking place 4 months after release. Running on Xbox and PC concurrently each finals saw the top two EU and NA teams fly to cologne to compete for $50,000. This continued for 3 seasons throughout 2016. Viewership was low, the future looked bleak. Ubisoft didn’t give up however. As 2017 rolled around, the game had continued to reviece updates to keep the playerbase active and engaged. The game was becoming more and more balanced, offering many unique strategies and loadouts to become viable in competitive play. Most importantly in the FPS market in which you were either a Battle Royale or CSGO. Rainbow Six was offering something different.

The 2017 season brought with it some big changes. Firstly a more than tripled prize pool at $167,000 per season. The introduction of Latin America, which any esports fan will know is a huge potential playerbase of active gamers, thirdly an increase in the numbers of teams at the finals from 4 to 8 and finally a focus on the PC side instead of the Xbox side. These changes made the scene more competitive, more interesting and more and more viewers continued to flock to the scene. As 2017 was coming to a close global brands like Evil Geniuses began to join the Rainbow Six scene by picking up one of the strongest North American teams.

Concurrently the pro league, Ubisoft ran the Invitational, a yearly super tournament in the spirit of Dota’s International. The 2017 tournament saw $100,000 given to the PC teams and $100,000 to the Xbox teams, a final hoorah for the Xbox gamers. The 2018 season would change the game entirely. Acting as a final stop on pro world tour style tournament, The 2018 invitational saw half a million dollars given in a PC only event that saw teams like Evil Geniuses, Faze Clan, Team Liquid, Rogue and CLG take part.

The 2019 season has continued to ramp things up as the teams begin to qualify for the February event. The inclusion of a Japanese team and additional Asian teams highlights just how global the game has become. Viewership continues to soar, more and more global brands are starting to get involved and Rainbow Six Siege shows now signs of slowing down in the near future. The game is solid to play, thrilling to watch and with a well structured esports landscape, it’s built to last.