Esports Life Review

To become the next Faker, the next Miracle… The next eSports star. A dream hoped by many, achieved by few. Until now. Whereupon playing U-Play Online’s Esports Life: Ep.1 – Dream of Glory, you give up on any desire to be remotely connected to the professional gaming scene and gaming in general. Yes, this game makes games boring; a frustrating outcome for an idea that held much potential.

When reading about the premise of Esports Life, I was intrigued and excited. An RPG as an up-and-coming eSports pro? Awesome. As an avid DotA player, it seemed like the only feasible way of obtaining that dream. However, the monotony of mini games, unnecessary amount of grinding, extremely poor dialogue, and a sense of developer carelessness removes any potential immersion and enjoyment. Case and point:

The story actually begins with an awesome cutscene of your character dreaming of playing alongside his favourite eSport team (an impressive real roster to choose from including the likes of Fnatic, PSG and Team Solomid) lifting the trophy for Master of Champions before waking up. Returning to the reality of school, you are introduced to the slanderous snake Russell as the local eSports bully stealing your best bud Mike’s laptop – for no particular reason, by the way. Amy, the fourth member of your aspiring eSports team, keenly observes Russell’s intention to in fact remain in possession of the laptop. Logan, my created soon-to-be star, intervenes after this venomous exchange, calmly asking everyone to “stop with the provocations”. Riveting stuff. But, sadly, this isn’t even the worst of the dialogue. Occasionally capital letters were missed out, the emotion of the script wouldn’t have even suited a robot, and your mother tells you she will only love you if you take out the trash (feeling all too close to home).

Further evidence of woeful character development is abundant even outside of the dialogue. Your character, who let me remind you begins this story wishing to become an eSports superstar, reveals he knows nothing about games and has never seen or played Master of Champions, this world’s version of DotA 2. Was his dream just prophetic then? Am I to believe this dream was spawned from destiny or the divine and incited my Logan to pursue the gaming life? Not likely. A more believable account is that this is just a half-assed attempt by the developers to explain why your character starts with zero stats in each of the three skill trees: communication, intelligence and coordination. The way in which you level these stats is on par with the mechanics of a mobile game. Hang on, that’s wrong. The way in which you level stats is worse than grinding mobile games. Paying virtual $5 or $10 (money not that easy to come by) allows you access to a computer – that is until you are gifted your own – where you can choose to watch Mirch (Twitch) or practice Masters of Champions. Watching provides the most basic memory mini game where playing tasks your reaction time in an equally primitive manner. They are the sort of games you wouldn’t have even played at school during your time in a computer room. Miniclip would have been ashamed to have them on their website.

When you finally get a chance to play Masters of Champions with the other three members of your team, an interesting card game is introduced. It reminded me of a simpler version of Witcher’s Gwent in some roundabout way. Essentially, it’s a matter of trying to score points by dealing damage to the opposite team in which your set of ten cards either buffs your team or debuffs the opposition. You can play three cards a turn and aim to reach the target of 120 points first. As the game explained the rules, I was optimistic; it sounded fun. I was wrong. Guess what? You guessed it! It was trash. The game physically slowed, there are minimal animations, and the cards are unnecessarily convoluted. Applying strategy reaped no rewards. It was the like the system just invented what would happen next spontaneously. Worst of all, this, the supposed highlight of the game, so rarely happened in the first three hours. In fact, it happened twice and the first time was a tutorial where you didn’t even get the chance to play for yourself. Add in an annoying commentator who will, around fifty percent of the time, shout “OMG That fail!” and you start to realise why Esports Life is such a failure.

U-Play Online clearly doesn’t understand its audience. It wasn’t even like your parents, who might never have played a game, trying to be “hip”, it was further removed than that. Like your grandad had just discovered the hilarity of memes and begins to share his own version of them with you. THAT level of understanding and consequential awkwardness is what defines my time playing Esports Life. The awful attempt to banter and break down the fourth wall - that in U-Play’s eyes is so subtly guised when in actuality the player could not be further removed from the game’s world - sums up the awkwardness. The developers had no logic. The stress meter filled when practicing Master of Champions but reduced when taking out the trash for your mum. What. WHAT!!!

To bring an end to what has been a cathartic rant, Esports Life is a game that had potential. In the hands of another developer, it may have succeeded. However, the lackadaisical creation by U-Play Online is not good enough for a price tag of £14.99. It isn’t even good enough to become a mobile game. It is a game that we should say, in the wise words of failed eSport star Logan: “Well… see you another day”.
That day being never.