There’s a lot of history behind Dota 2. It’s practically the
pinnacle of evolution of gaming. Believe it or not it could actually be called
the grandson of Counter Strike errrrr
or maybe the nephew of his brother or something like that.
To put it simply Dota is for Warcraft 3 what Counter Strike
was for Half Life in the past century :)
.
And finally we get to Dota 2
which is the spiritual successor and the evolution of Dota .
The idea is simple it pits five players in a fight on a
balanced map in which they have to the destroy the enemies base. Now where have
we seen that one before?
In case these names before you don’t mean anything Dota 2 is
a MOBA which stands for multiplayer online battle arena and it’s the successor
of the game who created that genre. In every real time strategy there are two
parts of the gameplay process and it doesn’t matter what RTS it is, bee it Starcraft, Warcraft or
Warhammer and that is micro and macro. Macro focuses on base building and unit
creation and management of resources while micro focuses on how well you
control your small party of units in acting out and destroying your enemy.
Now
tell me which of these sounds more fun ?
Dota 2 cashes in the micromanagement
of strategy games.
The layout is simple (action is set in a square map with a
forest set in a medieval background)
each team of 5 has a main base 2 towers at the base three main paths to
the enemy base whit a set of two defensive tower, a number of creep that spawn
periodically in the main base that attack the enemy and creeps that spawn
periodically in the forest. Players meet up at the middle of the map and fight
for conquest versus the enemy team in the final goal to destroy the enemy base.
Players can choose from three types of heroes, strength, agility and
intelligence (about 111 of them) each
with their own strengths and weakness. In order to win they must cooperate and
overcome the enemy team.
Game offers endless strategies in order to get to the end
goal, from developing your hero, choosing your abilities as you level up from
fighting enemies, choosing the right items that enhance your hero. Knowing when
to run or fight. And combining your abilities with your allied heroes
synergyzing in a fantastic cocktail of epic fights. Of course, that sounds
great, how can you lose when you got a spell set that blows off all the hp of
an enemy within 3 seconds or when you can immobilize an entire squad of enemies
with a single hero, just bear in mind that the enemy squad probably can do
those things as well maybe even more.
Graphics wise the game is pretty good. The game is played as
an overview of your main hero the detail of the map is great and design of
heroes is well made, plus you can customize the look of your heroes. Overall
design is great. To put it mildly, if you played in first person perspective of
your hero the game still wouldn’t be an eye sore.
Gameplay is top notch. The fact that you can choose one from
several dozen heroes. The path you choose in the game when you either go for
the kill instead of farming and leveling up your hero, maximizing the power of
one skill powerful skill instead of having the entire weaker set of skill,
choosing that ever so powered item but having nothing in mobility, it’s a game of
choices really and if you don’t make the right choice you’re gonna lose.
Sound wise there are a
lot of details in the game. Your hero periodically says a random catch phrase. Heroes
actually say thank you when you heal them. There’s good detail in sound effects
and notifications however when you’re focusing on the fight you really can’t
hear anything but a bunch of static J. When you
hear that theme song when you’re booting up Dota 2, you know you’re in for some
fun.
I know what you’re thinking all well and great but it’s still just a MOBA game and you’ll get bored eventual, well recently they’ve implemented an arcade mode featuring many custom maps that range from td to arena fighting and even playing football, all those great maps that you had in Wacraft 3. So basically Dota 2 can satisfy al you MICRO managing needs J .
Time for the scoring:
Fun Factor: 8 It’s great developing your hero and fighting
the enemy team. But when playing alone in matchmaking quality of matches is random as you never know if you get a noob in your team or you just made some bad calls and the whole team is yelling at you.
Control and Gameplay: 8.6 Managing your hero and making
choices in the game can get very satisfying. The core idea is simple but the
outcome is overwhelming The only bad thing is when you start a moba game you
have to black out all your relatives who are asking you to take out the trash
or go to the store
Graphics: 8.8 It’s not the most visual stunning game however
the fact that you customize the look of youre hero with a large number of set
items really gives it a feel of its own.
Sound: 8 Sound effects when fighting and using abilities are
believable. There’s nothing fantastic about the soundtrack but hey being a moba
game they really don’t have to try.
Replayability: 9 I’ve
put in hundreds of hours in Dota 2 and I still get a crave once in while to
play game. It just has so many options that you want to explore or sometimes
you just wanna play your best build and blast through the enemy. And as a plus
the arcade game mode features tons of fun maps. I know what you’re thinking,
how could I not grade it 10, well not all games are fun, some wins aren’t
satisfying or sometimes you get frustrated because you’re losing or someone is
feeding.
If you have a team of 4 friends who like the game and you are
playing on a line of 5 computers standing next to each other it’s the perfect
game. Dota 2 is the pinnacle of evolution in gaming and not playing at all
would be a miss in a gamers life.
Overall score: 8.48
