Lots of gamers play first-person shooter games, but what they are missing out on is an experience no FPS can offer better than a game like “Inside." “Inside” is an indie, 2.5D puzzle platformer. The game has some 3D aspects like allowing the player to get behind objects, but the environment is primarily two-dimensional.

Throughout the game, there is lots of action varying from being chased by a pack of wolves to playing as a big blob of limbs trying to escape a lab. You play as a boy and start by sliding down a cliff into the frame. I didn’t mind the absence of the back story because it allows the player an infinite amount of creativity. “Inside” makes up for its lack of story with the chilling but beautiful 2.5D environment. To solve the puzzles, the player interacts with boxes that can be pushed or pulled and walls that need to be climbed using colorful birds. The black and gray color scheme allows for the developers to play with other colors as part of the storytelling.

One might think that since this is an indie adventure game there won’t be challenges, but that is untrue. A simple FPS enemy couldn’t compare to some of the puzzles in this game that require creative thinking more than spamming. The game challenges you the second you slide of the cliff onto land. Rather than just fighting, you’ll have to find ways to avoid dogs that chase you down and snap your neck, mermaids that try to drag you to the bottom of the sea, evil men who are trying to kill you, drones that are trying to track you down and tase you to death, big sonic cannons that blow the flesh off of you and possessed animals trying to kill anything and anyone that crosses their path. The challenges that you face really push the average gamer to think harder.

There may be a lot of enemies, but you have allies. Two little chickens follow you and help you get through parts where you need to get over large obstacles like walls, and there are mindless human bodies — fully intact but empty vessels — that follow you when you gain access to the helmets that control them. The vessels help you jump higher by picking you up and stop you from falling to death by catching you.

The game has different settings and lots of  puzzles and you complete the game after you solve them all and escape the lab. If you are scared of getting lost in the challenges, there are lots of YouTubers that post walk throughs you could refer to for that little bit of help. If you complete all the hidden challenges, help or no help, you will unlock an ending fit for all the work you did with more mystery and questions than the normal ending. “Inside” is a perfect mix of thriller and adventure all fixed into a perfect package. The game will take on average 3-4 hours to complete and will leave you feeling accomplished.

“Inside” is available for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Playstation 4, iOS and PC. Find out where to purchase it for your device at https://playdead.com/games/inside/. Rated M (17+) for Blood and Gore and Violence.

Over the last few decades, the rise of a new form of athlete has become commonplace. The esports athlete, a professional video game player who competes on the global stage in their game of specialty, has become the career inspiration for kids all over the world. One of the biggest games in the esports scene is “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege,” but this game did not always see this level of success. 

Published and developed by Ubisoft Montreal, “Siege” was released on Dec. 1, 2015 and met with extremely mixed reviews. “Siege” is a first-person shooter built around 5-on-5 tactical team-based gameplay. Players take on counterterrorism operations like rescuing a hostage, taking control of key locations or defusing a bomb. At its release, it quickly became apparent that the game had a number of problems: poor lighting quality, a small roster of characters, known as operators, and several game-breaking bugs and weapons that made the game unenjoyable to play at home and impossible to play in a competitive environment. 

Nonetheless, Ubisoft stuck with it. 

When a game published by a AAA developer tanks, they tend to just let it die and make whatever profit they can from the ashes. Though AAA projects are the games with the highest budgets and expectations, developed by the studios that control the games industry, most developers decide that taking the loss is better than putting more time into a game that’s already been written off.  Despite this, Ubisoft, one of the biggest developers in the world, decided to stick with their project, and continue to develop it into a polished, finished product. 

Through a series of updates over the past three years, “Siege” has slowly patched itself into a beautiful, fully-functional game that supports an open and diverse community, both in the competitive scene and otherwise.  I initially thought it would never be the type of game I would enjoy, but “Siege” has kept me hooked since I first got my hands on it in August 2016.  It was the game that motivated me to buy a PC, the game that motivates me to get better and better, the game that I have sunk countless hours into and play competitively in the hopes that one day,  I, too, may make my mark on the competitive esports scene. 

Currently, the pro scene for “Siege” has two leagues — the Pro League and the Challenger League — run by Electronic Sports League, the world’s biggest esports platform. The Pro League is where the best of the best play and the Challenger League is for the second-tier teams, although every team in the Challenger League still has a roster made up of some the best players in the world.  At the end of the season, relegation matches force the bottom two teams from the Pro League and the top two teams from the Challenger League to play each other to determine who gets to play in the following Pro League season. The Pro League is currently in its tenth season. 

As it currently stands, there are two six-month seasons each year for the Pro and Challenger Leagues. Each season, the top two teams in the regions of North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia/Pacific compete for the title of Pro League Champion.  Additionally, there are two other primary competitions during the year, known as the Major and the Invitational, where 16 of the best teams from all over the world, regardless of region and league fight for the trophy and title of world champions.  There are several other official tournaments and leagues hosted throughout the “Siege” world, including several community-run leagues and tournaments, but these are the most important ones. 

Last month, the second-ever Major was hosted in Raleigh, Texas, where five teams from North America, five teams from Europe, three teams from Asia/Pacific and three teams from Latin America battled to claim the better part of the $500,000 prize pool. The competition was won by Team Empire from Russia. 

The 2019 Invitational and it’s $2 million prize pool were won by the European team G2 Esports, the greatest team to ever play the game, taking home the title of world champions and $800,000. The G2 roster — currently composed of the players Fabian, Pengu, UUNO, Kantoraketti and Goga, along with their coaches Shas and Sua) — has earned the reputation of being the best after winning the Paris Major in 2018, the 2018 and 2019 Invitationals, and 4 out of the 9 Pro League seasonal finals.  Other great teams like Evil Geniuses and Liquid have seen great levels of success, but none to the extreme degree that this titan of the “Siege” esports scene has seen. Over time, “Siege” and its competitive scene have evolved into what it is now: a thriving, lively community of people who all share the same passion, “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege”.

Did you ever expect to see a comic book moving on the screen? Well, in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the movie brings originality with its animation of the comic book, by bringing speech balloons and emanatas to the screen.

Many Spider-Man movies follow the traditional storyline: a boy named Peter Parker, who works at the Daily Bugle newspaper, gets bitten by a radioactive spider and inherits crazy super powers and uses them to fight crime. But, directors Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman bring something special to this new Spider-Man movie, revealing that Peter Parker is not the only Spider-Man. Better yet, he’s in a world that has more than just one spider person.

This film follows Miles Morales, a high school student who acquires spider powers and doesn’t know how to live his new life. In the movie, there is a secret portal that leads to other dimensions, and this causes the death of the original Spider-Man (Peter Parker) but also brings different counterparts from other dimensions. And with the counterparts’ help, Morales tries to accept his new identity and also tries to close this portal so that everyone can go back to their dimensions.

A word that can describe this movie: original. One of the reasons is that this movie brought the 2014 comic book series “Spider-Verse” onto the big screen, a Spider-Man storyline that has never been shown in theater.

The other reason is that the animation used in the movie is really innovative. The halftone, the hatching and the line work clearly demonstrate that it’s a comic book, but it’s a moving comic book. They make the characters from the comic book come out from the paper and onto the screen, do their actions, and sometimes show talking balloons.

The animators did great work.

This movie exceeded my expectations and also overcame the sad part, which happens in all the Spider-Man’s movies — the death of our hero’s favorite uncle. Even with this tragic event, the scenes and the action were really great, and I could forget about the sad part. I highly recommend people watch this amazing movie and be entertained by Miles Morales’s adventure.