inGame footage of various games. In the future I hope to add reviews. ^_^

Heroes of Newerth:


(That's an older youtube vid I found. I'm not allowed to publish new material from the beta.)


A beta-leak video review of HoN (German). Shows you much of the lobby interface and other features.

 

League of Legends:


Gametrailers preview of LoL.

 


An official trailer for LoL.


A video review of LoL (english). Not sure if leaked or sanctioned.

 

DotA (Defense of the Ancients)

 


Some DotA video. I honestly couldn't find ANY good gameplay video for Dota. Most vids are simply my-dick-is-BIG demonstrations accompanied by some shitty trash metal soundtrack or something bombastic (like, US-marine corp recruitment orchestrals or Carmina Burana). Sorry. If you can recommend a good DotA video I'll put it up.

 

 

Demigod:


Demigod showcase video featuring Lord Erebus.

Demigod showcase video featuring Queen of Thorns. Probably not office safe.

 

For those that don't know what HoN or LoL are: Both are DotA clones. If you don't know what DotA is then google it.

First HoN impressions:

  • Graphics
    Looks like Warcraft 3 (i.e. old, cheap, candy colored comic look). Seems much smoother, though. Less jerky scrolling. Any comparison to Demigod would be unfair. It's like comparing Superman to Batman - both are great in their environment but if you'd match them up against each other Superman would wipe the floor with Batmans ass from two cities away.
    Has a limited zoom (i.e. you can zoom in a bit and back, but not out) and a functional minimap.
  • Interface
    Just like DotA, i'd say. Bottom quarter of the screen is occupied by artwork, skills, hero stats and the minimap. I'd call it functional but totally ripped of from Warcraft (which isn't necessarily bad). Very small icons and text. Hard to read and the tooltips have much text. Demigod is downright minimalistic in comparison.
  • Heroes
    A large selection of heroes ... too many to grasp the gist of them in the short time I played it. Not all heroes were implemented yet but it looks like they planned for a 60 heroes cast. Each hero seems to have four different skills you can improve as you gain levels, plus the ability to simply improve your attributes. The skills are either passive or active and have a cooldown timer similar to DG. But since some heroes can have several passive skills out of a set of four, that can mean that you are left with a meager single one active skill, like the tosser I picked (Magebane or something). Kinda like Oooze UB without foul grasp.
    However the skills some heroes have do things that are not seen in Demigod. Some manipulate the map (by planting obstacles(walls) and some move the enemy against their will. Some passive skills trigger a damage effect everytime you use an active skill.
  • Maps
    Think Warcraft again. Mazes with trees and rocks marking the boundary. Or think Demigod maps with boring graphics. They ain't really that different from the DG mazes ... just more "realistic" and much larger.
  • Players
    Lot's of open games in the lobby. Some fairly large ones, too (I think 5v5 is max). If you've played DotA before then you'll have no problems finding friends. If you only played Demigod before, then you'll think the HoN community is a bag of arseholes because you'll likely be taking your first stumbling steps with dota veterant that are not exactly renowned for their forgiving attitude towards noobs. Luckily there's a fuck-filter in the chat.
  • Economy
    Killing stuff earns you XP and gold. You can buy equipment in shops. No base building, but your base starts with several buildings that don't offer any interaction, though. Creeps spawn in certain buildings and run on lanes to the enemy base, which should sound familiar.
  • Death & Dying
    You get automatically resurrected after some time. You can, however, shorten the wait time by paying a moderate amount of gold, which is actually an interesting feature. Similar to DG, there's a Healing Crystal equivalent, something that had to be pointed out to me in the Demigod forum (thanks, dude).
  • Gameplay
    Weeeeeeeeell .... I sucked in my first game and got promptly verbaly punished for being a noob. This doesn't help endear you to the game, so my perceptions may be flawed. But my first impression was: I can't zoom out (I swear, after playing Demigod I think it's impossible to enjoy RTS games without a God-Eye-Zoom)!
    In addition to the fixed camera height you have a considerably larger map and a faster movement speed than experienced in Demigod and you can't help feeling confused and disoriented. The creeps are stronger in comparison to DG creeps (but then those puny heroes are no half-gods). There is no health crystal. I think the only way to heal up is to buy potions. At least you can buy more than three per slot.
    The game is fast paced but not so fast that you'll experience instant death right from the start. You'll have plenty of time to decide that a battle is a lost cause and run for the towers.
    And your job? Easy, kill and destroy. No flags, no warscore (although there are other gamemodes that might have something similar). The only thing you can do is find creeps or heroes and kill them. And find enemy buildings and destroy them. That's it.
  • Game Modes
    There are only custom games. No skirmish or pantheon. No single player mode and (currently) no bots to solo against. Many possible options to setup a custom game. And the features the lobby offers are something to be seen. Feels like a database browser (i.e. comfortable and powerful).
  • Replays
    They work. Take that, Demigod!
  • Community
    It's a new game so you'd expect the community to be new also. But it's not. It's mostly DotA veterans that got a bit frustrated with the aged Warcraft 3 engine and wanted something, er, newish. Someone in the HoN forums summed it up pretty much: "I'm actually pretty surprised by this community. So far it's been very hard to find nice people. Most players - particularly those with Dota experience are incredibly rude to all players."
    The Demigod community certainly has it's share of unfriendlies, but as a whole it's quite amiable. Maybe this will change with the rise of competetive play.

Bottom line: Graphically it's definetly a step down when compared to Demigod. But noticably better than DotA. It's really really running smooooooothly. If you consider the small DG roster Demigod's biggest drawback, then HoN might seem attractive. The complexity and detail of each hero is lower than that of any one Demigod. It's also extremely beginner unfriendly. And even though Demigod didn't have any kind of tutorial either, you grasp the gist of DG way faster than that of HoN. HoN is clearly aimed at DotA players. It looks so similar to DotA that fanboys might as well stay there.

It's still in beta so many things will change. The strongest point of HoN is it's large hero rooster. Apart from that I don't think the Demigod has much to fear.

But since it's an early test phase, I'll certainly give it another try. I can endure the "F*CKING _NOOB" for a time, hehehehe.

 


Comments (Page 12)
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on Aug 10, 2009

Primal Zed
What I'm not seeing in HoN is why anyone would play that instead of DotA. Is there any real difference other than a few ability tweaks?

The lower number of heroes makes it an easier game to step into, and to balance. But more importantly, it has some of the best matchmaking UI I've seen in any game, ever.

on Aug 10, 2009

I don't know melon, that old game "Spin the Bottle" had some awesome match making

 

Thanks folks, I'll be here all week!

on Aug 11, 2009

Having played HoN for a solid week now and being totally addicted i can safely say there's no going back to Demigod. It's actually laughable when you compare the mutliplayer lobby of HoN to Demigod. There's no way Demigod is ever going to get to the same standard, no matter what they promise.

on Aug 11, 2009

Alienware Arena is giving out beta keys. Just register for an account to get one

http://www.alienwarearena.com/event/hon-beta-giveaway

on Aug 11, 2009

I have 2 left as well.  Forum PM w/ email to get one.

I've played it a few times, but have run out of time on my gaming calendar - I don't want the keys to go to waste if someone else is really interested in this game.

 

[UPDATE: I have one friend's key invite left.  I check the forums daily, so depending upon when you PM, it may be up to a day before I add your email to the invite.  But I'll get to it usually sooner.]

on Aug 12, 2009

I honestly couldn't find ANY good gameplay video for Dota.

here is one from the best players in the world:

 

on Aug 12, 2009

Man, I forgot how bad that UI was. And how primitive those graphics really are.

on Aug 12, 2009

Well you can hardly blame an old game like that for it. I do however blame Blizzard for never offering us higher resolutions and accompanying field of view in a patch.

on Aug 12, 2009

HoN's lobby and ui owns demigod in every concievable way. In fact when you look at the multiplayer lobby of HoN then compare it to what's on offer in Demigod, it's literally an almost laughing matter.

on Aug 12, 2009

twifightDG
Well you can hardly blame an old game like that for it.

Oh, I'm not saying that it was always horrible, just seeing the game again shattered the rosebud coloured glasses of nostelgia.

on Aug 13, 2009

I've been playing the beta and so far, well, I quickly got tired of getting killed every 3 minutes.  This is a very competitive, pro game.  I think only experienced warcraft 3-based DotA players can really get into it at this point. The graphics are go for a classic/old blizzard games look, and that is what competitive gamers go for.  As it's been said before, this is not a game to be compared with Demigod.  They are in completely different leagues.  Demigod is more for the casual, make-your-own-computer, computer enthusiast who wants to max out the visuals in their games.  Heroes of Newerth is for the competitive LAN matches we all love and hate.

on Aug 14, 2009

I think only experienced warcraft 3-based DotA players can really get into it at this point.

And yet, last night there were almost 14.000 people online and 250+ open games.  I think HoN is already one of the most massive online strategy games!

I remember the days when competative meant good - all the best multiplayer games of age were very unfriendly to noobs.  Quake, Unreal, Warcraft, Starcraft.  They even had "glitches" that were intentionaly beeing perfected by the devs to enable hard to do powerful moves (think bunny-hopping in Quake).  Seems we have gotten lazy and instead of bettering ourselves thru practice, we're asking the game devs to cover our incompetence.

Anyway, HoN has it's downfalls too - the limited view being the one that bothers me the most.  I just hate artificial limitations like that that are introduced to promote a skill at the game (map awareness).  Last hitting and denial can also be tedious sometimes, though I must say I'm still impartial about that mechanic - it does good as much as it does bad (LoL devs have commented that they also consider last hitting a tedium so they are looking into a median solution).

However, as was previously posted - HoN just works.  And it works perfectly well with a slew of online features (with Mac OS X version being a huge bonus for me too).  Compared to the frustrations of getting a decent game going in Demigod, I just can't make myself come back to it.  At the end, I like Demigod's gameplay and setting a bit better, but the online experience havily pulls me towards HoN.

 

on Aug 14, 2009

Yeah, I agree with you on that, but you know, back in those days, the game industry was much tinier than it is now.  Yeah, Quake, Unreal, Warcraft, and such were difficult to get into, and that common because there was less at stake than now. Nowadays, with a multi-million dollar industry, it's in gaming companies best financial motives to keep their games available to the biggest amount of the gaming population as possible.  Not just competitive gamers, but casuals too, the casual market just can't be ignored anymore, a side-effect of the rise in popularity of consoles too. Lack of zoom-out seems to be intentional to keep the old warcraft 3 style too.

Misfortune


However, as was previously posted - HoN just works.  And it works perfectly well with a slew of online features (with Mac OS X version being a huge bonus for me too).  Compared to the frustrations of getting a decent game going in Demigod, I just can't make myself come back to it.  At the end, I like Demigod's gameplay and setting a bit better, but the online experience havily pulls me towards HoN.
 

This highlights just the importance of easiness to play is for a game to be a success or failure.  It's as important if not more than the game itself, specially with a mostly online game.  Heroes of Newerth's match-making lobby system is just amazing.  That's the way to go, easiness to jump into, arranging a match and playing.  I'm glad this game is as populated as you say it is.  Might give it another try, hopefully more noobies like me are playing now.

on Aug 14, 2009

zndkwin
I'm glad this game is as populated as you say it is.  Might give it another try, hopefully more noobies like me are playing now.

Actually, it's mostly average players looking for a quick pubstomp on their new accounts. Sadly.

I remember the days when competative meant good - all the best multiplayer games of age were very unfriendly to noobs. Quake, Unreal, Warcraft, Starcraft. They even had "glitches" that were intentionaly beeing perfected by the devs to enable hard to do powerful moves (think bunny-hopping in Quake).

There's no reason to make a game "intentionally unfriendly to noobs" other than to frustrated pubbies. Being unfriendly was a side-effect of being complex, which in turn was a side-effect of being competitive. Games that are easy to pick up and play, but have huge possibilities for competitive gameplay (such as Super Smash Brothers Melee) are bound to be the most popular. But that's pretty obvious, one would think.

on Aug 14, 2009

I agree. Being hard to master and having a steep learning curve are not the same thing.

I don't really thing online shooters are comparable. They require only one thing: practice. Practice your aim and the map. On pubs (important addition) the people that played the longest usually were the best, there was no real skill required (only if you went pro). In games like Demigod however you need to learn the game; how do you counter each demigod the best? What do spell animations look like? What items will help me best in this situation, etc. It has a learning curve. Yes, practice still is important, but also knowledge and insight into the game. And this is where the learning curve comes in. There's a difference between knowing the game 1 month and sucking, knowing it 3 months and fair pretty well, and knowing it 6 months and being skilled, as opposed to knowing it 1 month and sucking, knowing it 3 months and sucking, knowing it 6 months and sucking and then finally fair well enough to play the pros.

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