The Mew Post: DOTA 2 Review

A couple of years since its initial release in 2010, DOTA 2 has come out of its beta stage and is finally fully released out there. Free-to-play on Steam, is DOTA 2 worth your downloading time, if not your money?

First and foremost, DOTA 2 is a MOBA game which stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. It's a genre that's been in gaming for quite some time but there have been far too little games made for it and even fewer that have achieved any form of success aside from League of Legends perhaps.

For those unacquainted with MOBAs, how it works is basically like an RTS but instead of controlling and micromanaging an army, you control one hero unit instead. Each unit has a set number of skills which is usually four skills (while some have five or six or sometimes even more).

There are active and passive skills whereby active skills are abilities that can be casted to deal damage, heal allies, stun enemies or help escape sticky situations, depending on the hero you pick. Passive skills on the other hand serve as buffs that are perennially active once you choose to level them up.

Skills are leveled up through experience points which can be gained through killing creeps (cannon fodder NPCs) or enemy heroes and once a hero levels up, he can choose to funnel the skills points he or she learned into his own skill tree.

In spite of saying skill tree, the way a hero skills and levels up in DOTA 2 is incredibly simple and accessible although knowing which skills to max out first is crucial to winning the game. There are also items to be bought in the game and each character can carry up to six items in his or her inventory. The only way to earn gold for buying these items are basically last hitting creeps, meaning delivering the killing blow to the enemy creeps while they have almost no health left.

There are creeps on both sides coming out in waves to constantly attack one another, creeps can also be killed by heroes of the same team to deny enemies of gold and experience which goes a long way to building a strong hero. Denying wasn't introduced in League but is a welcome feature in DOTA 2 as it makes the game more tactical and challenging at the same time.

All that explanation in itself was just basically the first 20% of what DOTA 2 is and with that said, newcomers who've never a MOBA will find that there's a very steep learning curve involved. Thankfully, there's also a training system in DOTA 2 to allow players to learn about last hitting creeps, buying items, using couriers, using their skills and etc to help new players acclimate themselves with the genre.

Now going to the map itself, this was something I found puzzling and a bit saddening at first when I first started MOBAs but in this genre, there's only one map and it remains unchanged as it is perfectly balanced for both sides.

In the top right and bottom left corner of the map are the bases for each side. One is the Radiant, populated by beautiful green meadows and lush trees and the other is for the Dire which resembles a plain scorched by a volcanic erruption. In each base is an Ancient which is where DOTA's name comes from.

The main objective of each side is to eradicate the enemy team's ancient by farming and pushing their way towards the enemy's base while at the same time defending yours from incoming enemy attacks. Hence the title, Defense of the Ancients or DOTA.

In the middle of all this convoluted explaining is actually quite a fun game.

In DOTA 2, there's a wide array of characters for you to choose from which is very well done up. Ranging from your DPS heroes, then your Tanky ones and Casters, Disablers and so forth, each character is very well rendered. New characters are also introduced every once in awhile and while old ones are occasionally remodeled to look newer and better if they started to look out of date.

Each character also has his or her own personal origin story to explain their powers and where they come from and how they got into DOTA but story has never really been a big point of MOBA games. I wish Valve could have done something more about this but given the nature of competition in MOBA games and the amount of abuse, praise or tactics that would be hurdled in the game, I guess it's forgivable that the characters keep their lore to themselves.

Aside from that, I also really appreciate the effort that's done for the design of the characters. Female characters firstly are treated with decent respect where they're not just tits in a petite body walking around in a bikini like League and the other more monster like heroes appear well crafted without looking too gaudy. There are cosmetic items to change the look of certain heroes which can either be bought through Steam or earned by random drops after each game but thankfully they do nothing to affect the overall balance of the game.

With that being said, due to the nature of MOBA games, players can be downright offensive and abusive which makes the community look pretty awful. If you're new, expect to be slammed repeatedly and even reported for action against for doing badly in a game. This, in spite of a very fun game that's out there for everyone, can turn many people away from MOBAs like DOTA 2.

So thus therefore, when it comes down to it, DOTA 2 is a pretty awesome game and given that its free to play, everyone should give a try at least once to see if it's their cup of tea. The many hero characters available to pick is vast, ensuring there's a type or role suited for each type of player.

It plays well and I've seen several modern laptops play the game smoothly so the game's pretty well optimized. Many people will get turned off by DOTA 2, either by it's complexities or by the barbarism of it's community. However, for the more hardcore gamers seeking a bigger challenge, there is little games that are more rewarding and punishing at the same time.