PAX East – Smite Is A New, Positive Direction For MOBA Games

It should be no secret how much Heroes of Newerth I play and how much I love the game. I enjoy the tense ganks, the frantic action of a team fight, and how everything can come crashing down if you make a simple mistake. Smite, from High-Rez Studios, is able to take all of said action I know and love, combine it with a bit more casuality of, say,  League of Legends, and present it in a third-person camera view that turns a strategy game into an action title.

Here’s how a traditional MOBA title works: teams of 5 will compete to destroy the enemy base. Before that, they have to destroy the towers in their way. Before that, you have to kill the NPC creeps that continuously spawn, giving you XP and gold. Smite doesn’t work exactly like that; putting far less emphasis on the creeps and more emphasis on, well, killing enemy towers, bases, and other players. While the concept may seem odd to fans of HoN and DoTA, once you play it things turn out quite well.

Let’s be clear about one thing: like any MOBA game, those with an experienced and farmed player will undoubtedly destroy their unfortunate foes, but the mechanics of Smite do their best to balance the game regardless of experience and skill difference. Every attack your hero will make, even auto attacks by ranged heroes, are skill shots that need to be aimed. Even the developers, who were controlling PC stations that were hooked up to the HD TVs for the audience to watch, had issues lining up some of the abilities due to the opposing team dodging incoming attacks.

Add in the fact that the game borrows from League of Legends in having there be no gold penalty upon death and your barracks/inhibitors, which are actually called–no wait, they are Pheonixes, respawn after a certain time of being dead, and it helps to balance out gameplay. If the other team is to win, they need to earn it full heartedly.


Let’s go back for a second. Smite‘s theme is all mythological based; every hero is based on a god or goddess in ancient mythology, hence the Pheonixes being barracks and your “base” actually being a Minotaur that can attack you back. As you can expect, each god has powers that make sense with the specific god; Neptune does water attacks, Zeus thunder attacks, so on and so forth.

What’s most impressive about Smite is the game’s art direction. It has more of a cel-shaded type approach than realistic, but it leads to some gorgeous environment visuals, which is both quite impressive for the game’s alpha state and disappointing when you take into effect that some character models aren’t up to par. But, again, the game is in an alpha state with a beta state hopefully coming up soon.

The bottom line is this: there’s still plenty of strategy to be found in Smite and the camera angle adds more of action feel to it, ramping up the pace while keeping importance on strategy, placement, and teamwork, staples of the MOBA genre. We’ll be getting more time with the game tomorrow and hopefully we can snag an interview or two. There was a lot of enthusiasm at the booth and we caught the bug.

Share this article:

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on tumblr
Tumblr
Share on email
Email
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp

Recent Posts

Marvel 1943 cover art. Captaint America and Black Panther Gaming News

Get a Closer Look at the New Black Panther and Captain America Game | Marvel 1943

It’s been a while since we first got word that the great Amy Hennig was working on a new Black Panther and Captain America game. After creating something like Uncharted, …

Mad Catz Strike 11 Keyboard. A keyboard with red and black keys Hardware & Tech

Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 11 Mechanical Keyboard Impressions

I have been on the search for a decently priced wireless keyboard and there is no shortage these days. Our friends over at Mad Catz sent over their S.T.R.I.K.E. 11 …

Hardware & Tech

Level Up Your Set Up with Nanoleaf

Nanoleaf has been one of the market leaders in the gaming lighting space for years now. They have a variety of products to level up not only your office space …

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Gaming News

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and What’s Next For Xbox | Let’s Chat

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is the next big game set for release and the rumor mill has been set ablaze with talks of Xbox going multi-platform. We take a few …

Gaming News

The Pimax Crystal 8K VR Headset | CES 2024

AR and VR were some of the bigger topics during this year’s CES. Last year I was able to go hands-on with the Pimax Portal but this year it was …

CES

NVIDIA Announces 40 Series Super Cards and More at CES 2024

A year can’t go by without a huge announcement from NVIDIA. During CES 2024 in Las Vegas, NVIDIA announced an upgrade to its 40 series cards. The GeForce RTX 40 …