This Weekend in Esports: What to Watch from April 13-15

Welcome to This Weekend in Esports, a brief overview of what to watch in the world of competitive gaming for the coming weekend.

For this weekend, it's all about Halo!

Halo World Championship 2018 Finals

Game: Halo 5: Guardians
When: April 13-15
Where to watch: Twitch.tv/Halo

The competitive Halo season all comes down to this. The best teams in the world are set to converge in Seattle, WA this weekend, where they'll all compete for a $1 million prize pool.

The Halo Waypoint site points to two favorites in particular. One is the surging Splyce team, which recently won big in Orlando and Columbus. The other is the dominant Halo squad. They're now known as Tox, but long-time followers of competitive Halo will recognize them as the former OpTic Gaming, who enter this event as the defending champions.

Splyce and Tox both enter their groups heavily favored, but there are a couple of teams there that could make some noise. Be sure to look out for Str8 Rippin and Mindfreak, who enter the weekend largely under the radar.

Meanwhile, Team EnVyUs enters the weekend in quite a different place than last year. While the squad will look to win it all this year and improve on last year's runner-up finish, but EnVy is only half the squad they were in 2017. The other half of the squad is leading the way on Reciprocity, which enters their group favored.

While Halo fans can tune in on Twitch, those looking to unlock something fun should check out Sunday's action on Mixer. This will unlock the Voices of War pack for Halo 5 multiplayer, which contains Spartan Buck, Yabda the Merciless, and 031 Exuberant Witness as announcers.

Kuwait Battle Royale 2018

Game: Tekken 7, Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, and more
When: April 12-14
Where to watch: Twitch.tv/Fikra

It's not often that fighting games (or esports of any kind) gets the spotlight in the Middle East, but Kuwait and the surrounding territories are hungry to get into the action.

The festivities have already begun with Dragon Ball FighterZ and Injustice 2, but the other main games will be going on in the coming days. While Street Fighter V will be fascinating to watch, in terms of evaluating local talent, Tekken 7's tournament is actually slated to be part of this year's Tekken World Tour. That means there's a lot on the line here, as players look to gain momentum in the early goings of this year's circuit.

So what will you be watching this weekend? Join the conversation and let us know in the comments.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?