Competitive spectator video games, or esports, have surged in popularity in recent years. They now fill stadiums around the world and are the focus of millions of hours of content on YouTube and Twitch. If you’re looking to get into esports as a player or just a viewer here are the top five titles to start with in 2019.
Rocket League.
A criticism of lots of esports games is that there is just lots of stuff happening on screen. Rocket League is 3 v 3 car football. It’s easily recognisable and simple to work out what’s happening even to non-gamers. If you’re a fan of racing games you may enjoy this, but even if you’re not, there’s nothing quite like driving on the ceiling of the arena and rocket boosting to put the final touch on the winning goal.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Known as CS:GO, newcomers will easily be able to get a grasp of what’s happening. One team of five has to defend bomb-sites on a map, the other has to plant a device and make sure it goes off to win. CS:GO has an open circuit and four big tournaments a year, so you are never far from top-tier action. If you’re a fan of FPS (First Person Shooters) this is the game for you. Matches can take up to 90 minutes, but there are a range of other modes that provide a quicker experience. The game is quite serious in its ranked mode, with a headset and vocal communication almost necessary to be able to hear footsteps and to communicate quickly to your team. Being an FPS, if you have good reflexes and shooting skills you can bypass a lot of the early ranks without really learning a great deal of the strategic minutiae.
Fortnite
It’s almost impossible to ignore this juggernaut of a title. It features more cartoon-like graphics and is far more geared to the younger gamer. There is a huge selection of items to unlock to further customise your character and it has an element of construction within the game to help defend your team and distract the opponent. It’s not uncommon to be trying to shoot someone as they build a ramp up into the sky. If you like over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooting games then this would be a good game for you. It comes with a range of game modes and focuses around short battles in an ever decreasing game zone until players are forced to fight to crown a victor. Fortnite is the youngest of the esports games on this list, but has experienced a meteoric rise to prominence.
League of Legends
LoL is the game that has long dominated the esports scene. Geographic regions have their own multilingual streams and several international tournaments a year. League belongs to a genre of games known as MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas). You control a single champion with four abilities on a team with four other players. How your champions compliment each other is key to victory, as is teamwork. If you’ve played an RTS game (Real-Time Strategy), like Warcraft 3, with controllable hero units, you may enjoy this intense battle experience. There is a steeper learning curve with LoL. The best way to play would be to find a champion you like and stick with it to learn the basic principles. The user experience as a new player is also not the kindest. In levelling your account to the maximum level, you will encounter far more experienced players playing on low-level accounts called smurfing. They tend to be fairly impatient of new players. Don’t let the early experience derail your journey to a discovering a fantastic game. LoL does a great job of making you feel like your contribution was huge in securing victory.
Overwatch
Iconic games developer Blizzard failed to truly capitalise on esports with Starcraft or with DotA (A mod within Warcraft that spawned the MOBA genre). Overwatch was developed with esports as a prime focus. Anyone who has played Team Fortress will be familiar with Overwatch straight away. Sitting between CS:GO and Fortnite, it is a hero shooter with cartoon graphics. It achieves the usual high standards of anything that Blizzard produces and is unique among esports as it has geo-specific teams, following the traditional sports model. In other esports you may follow an organisation you like that is half way across the world. In Overwatch you can support the London Spitfires or Dallas Fuel or any other reasonably local team.
The above list of games spans the medium enough that any gamer is likely to find something they enjoy. These titles are certain to continue leading the way for esports in 2019.
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