SMITE Beta Impressions

I can't believe I haven't wrote anything about SMITE yet in my blog, I feel a bit silly. I played SMITE for a bit a few months back, almost a year ago even. I enjoyed it quite a bit but eventually I went to play other games. After quite some time I decided to try out SMITE again and the difference between a few months ago and what it is right now is quite astounding.

First off, for those of you expecting SMITE to be just another MOBA with the same gameplay as DOTA, DOTA 2, HoN or LoL, you're mistaken. While the objective of the game is quite the same but the way you play it is completely different. What I meant is that in SMITE you're not playing from a birds eye view like your usual RTS but you play from a third person perspective.

The perspective change really creates a different gameplay experience. Most noticeable is the way you can gank people from behind without them noticing. Trying to flank your enemies are always a good choice in SMITE and you have to learn how to accurately use skillshots as the majority of skills in this game are skillshots.

Characters in SMITE are mythical beings taken from various myths, from Egyptian, Norse, Greek, Chinese and even Mayan. Choose your mythical being and battle with other gods/mythical being in one of five game types. Conquest Mode is your usual MOBA style game type while Arena puts two team of players to battle it out in a large circular arena. Domination lets two team battle to take control of three capture points in the map. Joust lets you do Conquest style match for two players(1 vs 1). The last game type is a match that will change daily. This is something like a challenge match where you need to use a certain god to finish it. Pretty interesting for those who wants to try something new.

SMITE have a few interesting features like the goodwill system where you gain bonuses to favor generation per match if you end a game in good standing(meaning you don't ragequit). This is good as it will reduce the number ragequitters. Another interesting feature is the practice matches where you can try out any character you want. This is a good place to try out different characters before deciding to unlock them.

The game also offer easily accessed tutorial videos, some made by the dev team and some are made by the community. No need to go to third party sites for guides on how to play a particular character as they're all readily available from inside the game. This feature is definitely pretty nice to have for new players. You can even watch livestreams of smite games from the game. Hi-Rez really love to support their community and this is really nice to see.

So far, I think SMITE could be an interesting alternative if you're looking for a different kind of MOBA. The different perspective, mythological characters and different game types offers quite a lot of fun. And all of this when the game is still in Closed Beta. Hi-Rez will of course add more interesting features as time goes on and it'd be interesting to see what the game will have to offer when it's officially released later.

For those who want to try out the game, check it out HERE