Genre: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
Website: http://blog.dota2.com/
Lee:
- Platform: PC
- Hours logged: 2.5
- Playthroughs: --
- Rating: --/10
- Platform: PC
- Hours logged: 10.0
- Playthroughs: --
- Rating: 6/10
- Shane (3/5/2014): CONTENT. SO MUCH CONTENT.
I wanted to love this game, and I started to as I worked my way through the intro lessons. I had played two sessions of the Warcraft 3 mod that started this game a number of years ago and I loved it. I was TERRIBLE at it, but I loved it. When Lee and I were looking for another game to play together (That is the key word here. We get some good out of co-op play with each other from time to time. Community doesn't have to have physical proximity any more to be valuable.) we tried this one out.
A couple thoughts to start:
Yay! It is free!
Hmm... micro-transactions... doesn't bode well... Oh wait! They are just for cosmetic stuff! It isn't pay-to-win!
I like all of the heroes! I can take this dude and kill a lot of enemies!
My dude keeps ending up dead.
Reading some of the guides people have posted...
Oh... Getting good at this game is a job. I don't need another job right now.
That is where it fell apart for me. I learned how to play the game. What I expected when I started DOTA 2 was a Diablo style game, where you take your big dude out and smash a lot of little dudes until you can smash bigger dudes then you win. I tried to play it that way. I would wade into the lanes, fighting enemy creeps and pushing the battle over to the towers. The towers would kick the shit out of me and I would end up respawning back a the base. Rinse and repeat. Each time I died I would lose what little money I was able to collect that run AND I would lose the time running back into the fray.
It turns out winning DOTA 2 is all about the small movements. "Last hitting" enemies will get you more XP and money, which make you stronger. Once you are tough enough, your ENTIRE team will make a cooperative effort on pushing the battle to the enemy. If you don't play the little "last hit" game, you lose. If you don't work together, you lose.
I had a number of important realizations while I was working through this game. I found out that I am not in a place in my life where I can dish out this much effort on something that I don't NEED to be good at. I learned that being fascinated by the premise of a game isn't enough to overcome the disappointment of play not feeling "heroic" enough. I learned that I don't need for playing a game to feel like a job.
I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to people who need to master systems. I, however, need to be a casual right now. If my life continues on it's current trajectory, I will not be going back to this one.
- Lee (3/5/2014): I don't have a lot to say about this game, since I only spent a few hours on it, but the word that comes to mind when I think about the gameplay experience is: OVERWHELMED. At first, it was fun to select a hero, then click around and kill shit. Then came the dying. And respawning. And more dying. Frustrating! (Keep in mind that I suck at most video games...especially ones that involve a lot of fast decision making. I love, love, love StarCraft...but, oh, do I ever suck at playing it. Give me a good FPS or RPG, and I'll be good to go.)
Due to some time constraints in my life that week, Shane was able to put a lot more time into this game than I did. When he decided to drop this game and move on to something else (Starbound!!), I opted to follow suit. Maybe I'll come back to this game and give it some more of my time, but it is a pretty low priority for me.
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