But I was so put off by those controls that I soon stopped playing the beta. I tried a demo version of the game at Gamescom this summer, and it had me excited to a point where I went ahead and joined the Dota 2 beta upon my return. More complex interactions such as upgrading your abilities or buildings are dealt with just as swiftly, and it's impressive how painless the experience is. You move using the left stick and aim with the right one, launch standard attacks with one of the triggers, and activate special abilities with the face buttons on the controller. Where you click on positions and enemies to command your character in other MOBA games, you assume direct control over them in Guardians of Middle-Earth. The main difference lies with the controls. Guardians of Middle-Earth is more streamlined than its competition, and therefore also more accessible. This forced Monolith to rethink the concept from the ground up, and in doing so they came to break some of the established conventions of the genre.
The original Defence of the Ancients (Dota) had its roots in Warcraft III, and it controls like a classic RTS with a combination of mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts - something that simply don't translates well to controllers. In many ways the limitations of the platforms seems to have been of benefit to the developers. Each lane also contains a defensive tower that needs to be destroyed before you can attack the base proper. You earn experience points (XP) by killing enemies, and as your level rises you gain access to new or improved abilities. Computer controlled drones (creeps) flow at a steady pace towards the opposing base, and it's up to the players to defend your own troops, fight enemy troops and kill opposing players. The level you play is divided into three "lanes", or tracks if you will. If you're unfamiliar with the MOBA genre here's a short summary: Two teams with five players each face off and try and take out the opposing team's base. Guardians of Middle-Earth is a pure joy to play, and it turns out you can play this kind of game with a controller in your hands. They set out to create a MOBA for console, no matter what it took, and somehow they managed to pull it off. It's a good thing that Monolith thought differently. It's a deep and complex experience, and naturally feels like a genre that can only really be successfully experienced on a PC with mouse and keyboard.
The roots of the genre are with the RTS genre and Warcraft III, and games like Dota 2 and Heroes of Newerth also populate this space.
0 kommentar(er)
