Michael McGhee speaks to the newest Epsilon recruit, Marek '.PhP' Kadek

The best player to come out of Eastern Europe, Marek '.PhP' Kadek has made a return after a lengthy spell on the sidelines, hooking up with Epsilon eSports. It was as part of eSuba that Marek began to attract attention, with some dazzling displays in online tournaments he recreated his online form at LAN79, propelling his team - along with WT - to victory at their first major event. The win was enough to secure them a spot in one of Britain's leading organisations, Reason Gaming.

Under the Reason Gaming name they achieved unprecedented success at numerous LAN events around Europe, including three i-series wins, a win at Dreamhack and plenty of podium placings. They even did enough to be crowned Heaven Media's team of the year, winning the public vote ahead of the mighty VeryGames and were arguably the last team to challenge the dominance of VeryGames on a regular basis.

After starting university he was forced to take a back seat and the team soon faded into obscurity, he has now returned and looking to challenge VeryGames at the peak of the CS:S scene once more, this time alongside some of his former rivals in Epsilon. I caught up with him to chat about Verygames, how he's settling into his new team and whether or not they have it in them to be the best.

Hello Rick, hello Cadred! I've been quite busy lately. University has been taking up most of my time during the school-year, and rest was filled with my work a one nice company here, in Bratislava, which is the place where I am currently both living and studying.

Reason Gaming triumph at i36

I guess so. I really wanted to have a nice team and go to lan during summer as I missed the feeling of playing under pressure, I just want to to enjoy source once again.

I don't know. I will try to play as long as possible, and I will see what future will bring. It's impossible to predict what will happen in next few months, I only know that I will have a very tough year at uni.

When I was in Reason Gaming I was only at high school. Now I'm a first year at university, and during my first year I found it nearly impossible to play with a time-demanding course and job, maybe I'm just not clever enough! What I'm trying to say is that it depends on school and various other stuff whether you can play or not, and during which periods. It's possible to have time for everything if you have good time management.

I agreed with OX that I would be going to I-series with them. We practiced and everything went really well, but it's just that OX-Gaming said they couldn't pay for us to get there, and we had some difficulties in finding the right organisation. Then I got this offer and it got me thinking. It was all good with OX and they are great guys, I enjoyed playing with them, but there was still a language barrier which I underestimated. I tried to 'force' them to speak English, even when it was natural for them to speak Italian, like when I was dead - even then I wanted to know what's going on etc. It was a really hard decision to make, but I spoke to OX and few other people and made up my mind.

They also had lots of holidays, during different times, and that team needed so much work that we just wouldn't be prepared for i-series. It probably wasn't fair on the OX guys, but I had to choose fast, and so I did. In all honesty, Stylah, Kimera, Gugli and Overfly are great players, who tremendously surprised me. I didn't expect it at all. But I just didn't feel right forcing them into something they weren't used to.

After my decision I started talking to Epsilon about what they can provide and eventually decided it was the right home for me.

Reason at the PC Gamer event

Yes, it is something completely different and new. The organisation is very professional so far, our manager is really taking care of us all. It's nice to play with these guys and they are quality players, although I am so used to my old teammates it sometimes it feels like I'm re-learning CS:S all over again.

They are around. We speak sometimes and all, I mean if I wasn't going to i-series we would have gone together to Hungary for a LAN as they all still play now and then. I don't think they want to play without me, but there are no hard feelings, I asked them if they are OK with all of this, and if they want to play all they need to do is just say it, and they said that it's fine and to go for it. We would normally play, but we had troubles with GuardiaN, and since there's noone else to replace him, we didn't have enough motivation as team to start all over again.

I wouldn't like to go into this 'what if' etc. I don't know anything about eswc, and if something happens in czech I'm pretty sure it will get screwed by someone in behind the scene, so noone will go.

Maybe at some events we could have performed better, but we've been very successful when I look back in retrospect at it all. I mean, even if we weren't at our best, we still ended up top 2-3 at most events bar a few. We all REALLY wanted to win Dreamhack, which couldn't have ended in a nicer way than to beat Verygames on inferno, a map which we played extremely rarely at tournaments. That was probably the ending point for us, three times golden at i-series and then Dreamhack win. I feel that hunger again though, to take down Verygames, so let's see how things turn out.

I haven't played them yet, so I don't know. I've only had the chance to watch them in action once :-)

I haven't really checked anything, I'm looking forward to seeing it 'live'. Is the prize-pot increased? Honestly, I didn't know, I'm not coming for money, although I'm glad about it. Hopefully it will attract better teams - I heard mTw, CKRAS and vG are coming!

Marek in action at the CPH Games

To win it of course!

No, I don't think it's worse. There are lots of things which could use improvement though, but the game's getting better. I am really not in position to comment on things such as netcode after such a long break without proper testing, so I don't know if it's just me being bad or it is netcode. The game is improving though and I doubt it's netcode :D

No comment

For sure the language barrier can be a problem for teams. But if players have time and motivation to work on it, it's not that bad. I don't really know much about why teams have began mixing things up, but I don't think it's a bad thing.

Thanks for interview, have a nice day everyone, and don't worry, be happy! =)