Go for Pro – Catch up  

Go for Pro – Catch up

 

A lot has been going on in the eSports realm these last few weeks and by a lot, I mean some really big events! The DOTA International just finished up, we had a huge Overwatch event in Sydney as part of the Overwatch World Cup and EVO had yet again come and gone.

In each event, fans were definitely in for a treat and in many cases had us on the edge of our seats (if my Twitter feed was anything to go by!)

So let’s do a catch up of events in case you were unfortunate enough to miss these or if you simply want to go over the awesomeness that they were!

 

EVO 2017 – The Demon unleashed!

 

Smash Bros Wii U

Smash really doesn’t get the respect it deserves in the FGC scene, but this hasn’t stopped it from being one of the most consistently popular games at EVO every year! This year saw Salem vs ZeRo in an absolute thriller!

ZeRo took the early lead in their final bout and it all came down to one stock a piece with Salems Bayonetta starting on 100%. Salem must be able to eat coal and spit diamonds because he ate that pressure up and took out ZeRo in amazing fashion. Honestly, I can express how amazing this was, so go check it out here:

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3

I’ll be honest, I thought Marvel wouldn’t be at EVO this year, but through the power of the vote, fans were treated yet again to hype that this title tends to bring! Some big name players were clearly absent (sadly) but one name that we all expected to see was ChrisG, coming back to defend his title from 2016.

To meet him there, however, was Ryan LV, a player who was tearing up competitions everywhere in the lead up to EVO. Ryan had clearly done his research before this match up because he showed complete dominance over ChrisG’s bread and butter team. Don’t take my word for it though, check it out here:

Tekken 7

Anyone surprised to see JDCR vs SAINT in the Grand Finals for this one needs to spend 10 minutes Googling Tekken eSports. It’s always great to see these two teammates go head to head and they demonstrated why they’re the best in the world by dispatching all other opponents whilst making it look easy.

It’s always nail biting watching these two go at it as it’s always a back and forth affair with each player adapting just as quickly as the other. Saint fought back hard from the Losers bracket and took the reset, but JDCR re-picked his Dragunov and steamrolled Saint taking the final set 3-1. Tekken 7 is shaping up to be an excellent eSports title and I expect its popularity to grow from here, check this Grand Final out here:

Street Fighter 5

And now onto my favourite game of every EVO … Street Fighter! Quite possibly because I’ve been following a lot of these players for some time now and it always makes viewing more special when you see them do well.

The top 8 didn’t really have many surprises with NuckleDu and PUNK in the winner’s side looking strong. But all eyes were on one player in the loser’s side, Tokido and his Akuma. Starting a little shaky, Tokido ended up tearing through all his opponents in stellar fashion to meet PUNK in the grand finals. What transpired next was nothing short of concentrated emotional hype! Resetting the bracket, Tokido snowballed and styled on the E-League Champion taking first place to the ear bleeding cheering from the crowd. His post match speech somehow made it really dusty in my living room and my eyes started watering up as a result, I think some of that dust also got into Commentator James Chen’s eyes as well.

If it’s only one link you click on to watch, make sure it’s this one, it was brilliant:

 

And if you’re after some specific hype moments, please check out Maximilian’s Top 5 hypest moments:

DOTA2 International 7

And here we have the DOTA2 International with a prize pool of … good Lord … 25 million dollars! It was Newbee vs. Team Liquid with the winner walking away with the lion’s share of this incredible prize money. What made this even more special was seeing an Australian player Kpii in Team Newbee! Sadly for this fine player, it was not to be with Team Liquid making short work and taking first place. Naturally, these matches take quite some time to get through, but luckily someone has done an awesome highlight video for us to consume:

 

Overwatch – World Cup – Sydney Event

Now unless you were living under a rock at the time, Sydney played host to one part of the Overwatch World Cup qualifier with the two top teams earning a place! Australia was looking really strong early on but was stopped dead in their tracks by Sweden.

It was always going to be tough road ahead from that position but the Australian team never lost confidence and had to face off against Japan! What ensued next added more collective stress across Australia than a national beer shortage. It all came down to one final stage, Oasis. Australia managed to clutch the point in overtime but had to battle uphill starting from 0%. Try as they might Japan could NOT crack the Aussies and Australia took the win and the second spot for the World Cup!

You can watch the entire event on their Twitch Page here:

If you don’t want to wade through the 10 hours of content there, then fast forward to ‘8:12’ and prepare to be dazzled! This was the perfect match to show people WHY I love eSports so much.

Until next time, may all your games be devoid of salt and full of glory!

Have you seen our Merch Store?

Check out our Most Recent Video

Find us on Metacritic

Check out our Most Recent Posts