Man I am getting lazy putting my reviews out, This working adult thing kinda sucks. You could tell back in that second Rage Quitter omniderp I did that although I played DOTA 2, I really had an incredibly loose understanding of MOBAs in general. I played them a bit longer and while I got marginally better, it never really clicked for me as a genre. However, I am a somewhat active consumer of "Let's Plays" on the ole YouTube.
I had seen this game before and it looked pretty average to me at a first glance, but when a specific production company I frequently mention held and inter-office tournament of this game, it gave myself and a friend motivation to download it and give it a try. This was a mistake because now I have been playing it for months and it's very hard to stop.
SMITE
Smite is a MOBA, so there really isn't much in the way of a story. I guess if I wanted to make one up from their game types, we can say that this is Ragnarok and the gods are warring to mark the end of times, or during a drunken god party an argument broke out to see who's mythology is the best which ultimately erupted into violence. Or even better, all of the gods across the span of their mythos have all gotten into a dispute of who gets to be my best friend, and fighting is the only way to settle it (Come onnnnn Freya and Aphrodite!). There, good enough?
At first glance, Smite appears to be just another MOBA in the vein of League of Legends or Dota 2. You assemble of team of 5 players online, you are placed on a large conquest map with 2 bases, 3 lanes, jungles to dash and hide through, NPC monsters for buffs and experience, and the goal is to use your minions (creeps) to push forward and take down the opposing teams defense towers and eventually storm their base for the win.
But really, that's where the game's similarities stop. Unlike most of the MOBAs that I have seen, Smite's biggest difference comes into the fact that its not a traditional top down map view like most games of this genre are. Instead, this game swings the camera directly behind the hero into a rear 3rd person, and instead of the tradition point and click movement commands that have often plagued me in Dota 2 we now go to a more PC standard WASD controls.
So how does this change the combat? Significantly. With the controls now in line with a standard PC play system, attacks are no long point and click, which means they are more precise with their control. For example, when you click one of your character abilities with the 1-4 keys if it doesn't have an effect immediately, you will be given a transparent gold circle, aim reticle, beam, or arc to show you the trajectory of the attack, and where the affected area will hit. You follow it up with a mouse click to activate it.
What this effectively does is it takes away the auto attacks that I remember from DOTA2 and requires a bit more skill and dexterity to actually connect with your attacks. Which in my case, means I miss a whole fuck'n lot more. However, I have to say that I ended up liking this system better, because it feels way more satisfying when I actually get a kill, and when I do so its because I was good enough to do it. I'm not belittling those who enjoy the top-down style better, I just think this is way more conducive to my play style. It reminds me of the Neverwinter MMO I played for a while, the one MMO I actually kinda liked.
At first glance, Smite appears to be just another MOBA in the vein of League of Legends or Dota 2. You assemble of team of 5 players online, you are placed on a large conquest map with 2 bases, 3 lanes, jungles to dash and hide through, NPC monsters for buffs and experience, and the goal is to use your minions (creeps) to push forward and take down the opposing teams defense towers and eventually storm their base for the win.
But really, that's where the game's similarities stop. Unlike most of the MOBAs that I have seen, Smite's biggest difference comes into the fact that its not a traditional top down map view like most games of this genre are. Instead, this game swings the camera directly behind the hero into a rear 3rd person, and instead of the tradition point and click movement commands that have often plagued me in Dota 2 we now go to a more PC standard WASD controls.
So how does this change the combat? Significantly. With the controls now in line with a standard PC play system, attacks are no long point and click, which means they are more precise with their control. For example, when you click one of your character abilities with the 1-4 keys if it doesn't have an effect immediately, you will be given a transparent gold circle, aim reticle, beam, or arc to show you the trajectory of the attack, and where the affected area will hit. You follow it up with a mouse click to activate it.
What this effectively does is it takes away the auto attacks that I remember from DOTA2 and requires a bit more skill and dexterity to actually connect with your attacks. Which in my case, means I miss a whole fuck'n lot more. However, I have to say that I ended up liking this system better, because it feels way more satisfying when I actually get a kill, and when I do so its because I was good enough to do it. I'm not belittling those who enjoy the top-down style better, I just think this is way more conducive to my play style. It reminds me of the Neverwinter MMO I played for a while, the one MMO I actually kinda liked.
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| The recently added Medusa makes me very happy. Hi-Rez Studios has been really pushing out the characters releases on this roster. |
Allow me to share a secret with you: I am a stupid. I know, its a hard thing to believe after the 4+ years of completely flawless game journalism that I provide here but its true. I'm not as smart as a I lead on to be. The reason I mention this is because I'm probably not the best person to explain why the character selection is more intricate than in other MOBAs. I know some of the basic terminology used in the right context when playing something like Dota 2, but its never affected my decision making. I know I like Carry style players, and don't generally like support roles.
While discussing this game with a friend, he was explaining to me while watching the Smite World Championships that the game has a surprising level of detail to the roles and job classes and their respective functions when playing a traditional conquest game. Between the Mid-laners (which I suck at but always end up doing for some reason), Solos, Hunters, Junglers, and Support characters the bevvy of skill sets for the games roster ends up pretty diverse, it also mixes things up as well by having a good mix of melee and ranged users over physical and magical skill sets.
ON TOP OF THAT nonsense, all of the characters also have various job classes like Assassin, Mage, Guardian, Warrior and Hunter. So naturally because there are so many different character variants, the game itself supports a pretty beefy roster around 62 different characters over various mythologies, each with their own skill sets, abilities, and weaknesses, it's enough to make my head spin. So as you might expect, especially if you have never played a MOBA before, there is a bit of learning curve involved.
My personal biggest problem of the game, is one of the biggest problems of the MOBA scene in general. The trash talking shit suckers that plague these styles of games is a constant problem. People constantly running their mouth and shitting on their own team. Doing everything in their power to absolutely ruin the experience for you so you will never play it again. It got me to quit after one game of League of Legends, and has relegated me to nearly strictly offline play of Dota 2. It is such a problem that devs like Riot are constantly purging LoL players to try to curtail the issue to some small degree.
Smite however, and thankfully, actually doesn't have as big of a problem with this (yet). For the most part, You don't hear a whole lot of chatter coming from the text box, probably because you have to give up movement to do it. You will occasionally get one guy who will try to fight everyone else, then shit talk the team for not doing his commands that he never gave. Or you will get the asshat who will want to metagame your teams roster, trying to push you to play someone you've never used before for a role. It might be helpful to the team, but no amount of strategy will make me a better Ymir player.
But usually, if you are honest right from the gate, there will usually be someone willing to give instructions. Any time I wind up in a conquest game, I say straight off "I am not great at this, where do you want me?" and which I'll usually be directed to what lane I should be in or who I should follow and from there I can hold my own. Conquest is where you will usually find the most active, vocal players, because this is where the competitive gaming really takes place.
Thankfully, Smite also provides a sampling of different game types. They are all generally the same thing, but the subtle differences give the games different feel and strategies, which I definitely preferred over the single map of Dota 2. Arena mode is one big open map where you can wail on the opposing team. Assault is one single lane where you can't return to base until you've been killed, Joust is basically Conquest Lite with only one lane and 2 jungle lanes and is 3v3. They also do a special game type that changes daily with different rule types, most of them are crazy fun too.
So as I mentioned, this game has an incredibly beefy roster of characters spanning over 7 different mythological pantheons. What I really like about them is how interesting and diverse they all look, many of them somewhat portraying what you would expect them to be. Zeus is white haired in his toga, Thor is heavily armored with flowing blonde hair. I will say that as they always end up being in fantasy, the ladies have the short end of the stick. While many of their designs are very stylish, an incredibly large number of them fall to the scantily clad warrior women you expect of fantasy art. I think Artemis, Nox, and now Bellona are like the only one's who appear fully clothed.
Now, since this is essentially a freemium game, not all of the characters are unlocked from the word go. Typically there are five base characters that are permanently available from the moment you download the game, and then there is a rolling 5 that are alternated to allow you to try different characters. As you play through the game you unlock favor, which allows you to purchase new gods. Or if you are impatient (like me) you can shill the 30 bucks, and it unlocks all of the gods available, and that are released in the future. For the amount I played the game, it was a really good deal.
You can also purchase gems for the various costume skins that are available for your characters, a lot of them are pretty cool looking, and they don't have stat adjustments so they don't break the games balancing, (some of the characters do a good enough job of that on their own).
So what didn't I like about Smite? Well, I would say its chief offender in the eyes of the heavy PC gamers is that its not really the most visually stunning game. Make no mistake, this isn't a Triple-A title. The maps have some cool back set pieces and the character designs are all distinct and different, but there is a kind of.... Roughness I guess I would say, to the art style that makes this seem like its a game older than it really is. It's not bad by any means, but I guess when you zoom in closer on models that were typically viewed from high above a map, you notice a lot of little things.
Musically, there isn't all that much. Basically the same song if you can call it that plays over every single game type you play, with an increasing variant of the song when one team starts to push their way to a final victory. It can get somewhat repetitive. I also noted that they added voice chat to the game it appears, or at least the little speaker icon I see in the leader board when I play seems to indicated that. If this ends up being the case, I certainly hope there is an option to mute all voice, because the last thing I want when I am forced to play a multiplayer game is hearing people shit talk me while I play.
And I suppose probably the biggest flaw as is with most multiplayer games, is that it loses a bit of steam when you are playing it single player. I am never having more fun with this game when I am playing it with a group of my friends. The fact that I was able to get almost 5 of them to play was stunning to me as it was. The games where there is at least three of us are just that much better because I know I am playing with people I enjoy instead of random trolls. When I play by myself, I more often find myself willing to forfeit a match because someone on my team is an asshole.
Lag sometimes can absolutely ruin the experience for you too. The worst offenders for me is when I am marching after an enemy and then my character jumps like 20 feet away from where I was supposed to be. Or more recently, some of my inputs would just stop working right. Like I could click and attack with my mouse, but moving the mouse wouldn't shift my camera like I need it to. Or I would use my WASD controls to try to move, but it'd only go forward or backwards. Which is no help to me in the slightest.
I have also heard a lot of complaints about balancing issues in the game as well. Naturally with MOBA's there are tier lists of strong characters and weak characters. But ultimately I think it boils down to the skill of the player that really determines how good a character is. Prime example, a scorpion lady from Egyptian mythology called Serqet is roundly considered to be an S+ to A rank character, yet whenever I play her or even in the Smite World Championships she was practically a non-factor in the matches despite how broken she is considered to be.
But then you have characters like Artemis from Greek mythology, and she has been on tier lists from S rank to low C. Yet when I play her, I end performing fantastically on the team and seems way to strong for a C ranking. So the validity of the fan produced tier ranks is really something that is constantly up for debate. I just try to find characters that I am naturally good with and roll with those instead of how the team should be built. (which is probably why my teammates always hate me.)
The last big complaint I have I've already covered a million times. Online gamers are assholes. Despite the fact that here is less of it on Smite than other MOBAs, I still hate fighting with them and I hate the toxic attitude. I just wanna play the game. If you have a problem with how someone plays on the team, tell them before or tell them how to fix it. Don't fucking run off into the enemy by yourself, get killed, then fucking bitch about how bad we suck because nobody was there to support you, and then try to report us for it. People like you ruin video games.
I really like Smite. When I write a review, I try to be as unbiased as possible, trying to go over what makes the game good, and what makes it bad. But typically when I go through the bads, that will determine what makes or breaks a game for me. With Smite that appears to be less of the case. It's a fresh way of playing a MOBA that moves quickly, has intuitive controls, and a lot less of the toxic nature that is such a problem in games like these.
It feels like by its design it might transfer over to the Xbox One fairly easily so I am interested to see how that is going to play out. Hopefully, it might transfer over to PS4 as well. Of the various MOBAs I have played, Smite was easily the one I enjoyed the most. Its not too taxing on the computer and is free to play, so if you are looking for something a little different in your MOBA, I'd say give Smite a shot.
Seriously, Fuck Loki.
While discussing this game with a friend, he was explaining to me while watching the Smite World Championships that the game has a surprising level of detail to the roles and job classes and their respective functions when playing a traditional conquest game. Between the Mid-laners (which I suck at but always end up doing for some reason), Solos, Hunters, Junglers, and Support characters the bevvy of skill sets for the games roster ends up pretty diverse, it also mixes things up as well by having a good mix of melee and ranged users over physical and magical skill sets.
 |
| I love the arena mode. No lanes, no jungles, no needing to know my complex job based on what character I stumbled on. Just go in and raise some fucking hell. |
ON TOP OF THAT nonsense, all of the characters also have various job classes like Assassin, Mage, Guardian, Warrior and Hunter. So naturally because there are so many different character variants, the game itself supports a pretty beefy roster around 62 different characters over various mythologies, each with their own skill sets, abilities, and weaknesses, it's enough to make my head spin. So as you might expect, especially if you have never played a MOBA before, there is a bit of learning curve involved.
My personal biggest problem of the game, is one of the biggest problems of the MOBA scene in general. The trash talking shit suckers that plague these styles of games is a constant problem. People constantly running their mouth and shitting on their own team. Doing everything in their power to absolutely ruin the experience for you so you will never play it again. It got me to quit after one game of League of Legends, and has relegated me to nearly strictly offline play of Dota 2. It is such a problem that devs like Riot are constantly purging LoL players to try to curtail the issue to some small degree.
 |
| I find Assault to be one of the hardest to win. One lane, no Jungles. It's challenge comes in because its random draw. So its a good way to try new characters, but it can be rough. |
Smite however, and thankfully, actually doesn't have as big of a problem with this (yet). For the most part, You don't hear a whole lot of chatter coming from the text box, probably because you have to give up movement to do it. You will occasionally get one guy who will try to fight everyone else, then shit talk the team for not doing his commands that he never gave. Or you will get the asshat who will want to metagame your teams roster, trying to push you to play someone you've never used before for a role. It might be helpful to the team, but no amount of strategy will make me a better Ymir player.
But usually, if you are honest right from the gate, there will usually be someone willing to give instructions. Any time I wind up in a conquest game, I say straight off "I am not great at this, where do you want me?" and which I'll usually be directed to what lane I should be in or who I should follow and from there I can hold my own. Conquest is where you will usually find the most active, vocal players, because this is where the competitive gaming really takes place.
Thankfully, Smite also provides a sampling of different game types. They are all generally the same thing, but the subtle differences give the games different feel and strategies, which I definitely preferred over the single map of Dota 2. Arena mode is one big open map where you can wail on the opposing team. Assault is one single lane where you can't return to base until you've been killed, Joust is basically Conquest Lite with only one lane and 2 jungle lanes and is 3v3. They also do a special game type that changes daily with different rule types, most of them are crazy fun too.
So as I mentioned, this game has an incredibly beefy roster of characters spanning over 7 different mythological pantheons. What I really like about them is how interesting and diverse they all look, many of them somewhat portraying what you would expect them to be. Zeus is white haired in his toga, Thor is heavily armored with flowing blonde hair. I will say that as they always end up being in fantasy, the ladies have the short end of the stick. While many of their designs are very stylish, an incredibly large number of them fall to the scantily clad warrior women you expect of fantasy art. I think Artemis, Nox, and now Bellona are like the only one's who appear fully clothed.
 |
| Thanks Smite, because Caramelldansen wasn't hard enough to get out my head as it is. |
Now, since this is essentially a freemium game, not all of the characters are unlocked from the word go. Typically there are five base characters that are permanently available from the moment you download the game, and then there is a rolling 5 that are alternated to allow you to try different characters. As you play through the game you unlock favor, which allows you to purchase new gods. Or if you are impatient (like me) you can shill the 30 bucks, and it unlocks all of the gods available, and that are released in the future. For the amount I played the game, it was a really good deal.
You can also purchase gems for the various costume skins that are available for your characters, a lot of them are pretty cool looking, and they don't have stat adjustments so they don't break the games balancing, (some of the characters do a good enough job of that on their own).
So what didn't I like about Smite? Well, I would say its chief offender in the eyes of the heavy PC gamers is that its not really the most visually stunning game. Make no mistake, this isn't a Triple-A title. The maps have some cool back set pieces and the character designs are all distinct and different, but there is a kind of.... Roughness I guess I would say, to the art style that makes this seem like its a game older than it really is. It's not bad by any means, but I guess when you zoom in closer on models that were typically viewed from high above a map, you notice a lot of little things.
Musically, there isn't all that much. Basically the same song if you can call it that plays over every single game type you play, with an increasing variant of the song when one team starts to push their way to a final victory. It can get somewhat repetitive. I also noted that they added voice chat to the game it appears, or at least the little speaker icon I see in the leader board when I play seems to indicated that. If this ends up being the case, I certainly hope there is an option to mute all voice, because the last thing I want when I am forced to play a multiplayer game is hearing people shit talk me while I play.
And I suppose probably the biggest flaw as is with most multiplayer games, is that it loses a bit of steam when you are playing it single player. I am never having more fun with this game when I am playing it with a group of my friends. The fact that I was able to get almost 5 of them to play was stunning to me as it was. The games where there is at least three of us are just that much better because I know I am playing with people I enjoy instead of random trolls. When I play by myself, I more often find myself willing to forfeit a match because someone on my team is an asshole.
Lag sometimes can absolutely ruin the experience for you too. The worst offenders for me is when I am marching after an enemy and then my character jumps like 20 feet away from where I was supposed to be. Or more recently, some of my inputs would just stop working right. Like I could click and attack with my mouse, but moving the mouse wouldn't shift my camera like I need it to. Or I would use my WASD controls to try to move, but it'd only go forward or backwards. Which is no help to me in the slightest.
I have also heard a lot of complaints about balancing issues in the game as well. Naturally with MOBA's there are tier lists of strong characters and weak characters. But ultimately I think it boils down to the skill of the player that really determines how good a character is. Prime example, a scorpion lady from Egyptian mythology called Serqet is roundly considered to be an S+ to A rank character, yet whenever I play her or even in the Smite World Championships she was practically a non-factor in the matches despite how broken she is considered to be.
 |
| Man, if you can use Scylla well, you are be a thorn in a lot of players sides... |
But then you have characters like Artemis from Greek mythology, and she has been on tier lists from S rank to low C. Yet when I play her, I end performing fantastically on the team and seems way to strong for a C ranking. So the validity of the fan produced tier ranks is really something that is constantly up for debate. I just try to find characters that I am naturally good with and roll with those instead of how the team should be built. (which is probably why my teammates always hate me.)
The last big complaint I have I've already covered a million times. Online gamers are assholes. Despite the fact that here is less of it on Smite than other MOBAs, I still hate fighting with them and I hate the toxic attitude. I just wanna play the game. If you have a problem with how someone plays on the team, tell them before or tell them how to fix it. Don't fucking run off into the enemy by yourself, get killed, then fucking bitch about how bad we suck because nobody was there to support you, and then try to report us for it. People like you ruin video games.
I really like Smite. When I write a review, I try to be as unbiased as possible, trying to go over what makes the game good, and what makes it bad. But typically when I go through the bads, that will determine what makes or breaks a game for me. With Smite that appears to be less of the case. It's a fresh way of playing a MOBA that moves quickly, has intuitive controls, and a lot less of the toxic nature that is such a problem in games like these.
It feels like by its design it might transfer over to the Xbox One fairly easily so I am interested to see how that is going to play out. Hopefully, it might transfer over to PS4 as well. Of the various MOBAs I have played, Smite was easily the one I enjoyed the most. Its not too taxing on the computer and is free to play, so if you are looking for something a little different in your MOBA, I'd say give Smite a shot.
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