DOTA2 - The first impressions

So we finally got our first taster of DOTA2 today and I for one was certainly not disappointed. The game, by all standards, appears to be the classic DotA we are all familiar with. Icefrog and the valve team appear to have decided against changing the game mechanics in any way, which is probably for the best. All the favourite items appear to be transferred lovingly over. The heroes however were another story, only 46 of the 104 DotA heroes made it in to the beta build being played at Gamescom, causing some possible problems with traditional counters (such as silencer) being unpickable.  Many of the heroes are instantly identifiable, being very similar to their DotA counterpart, such as Puck, Leshrac and Enchantress. While a couple of the heroes have received rather major overhauls and it may take you a second to work out who they are. The spells for the most part also look the same, it really was a thing of beauty to see Enigma lay down a black hole, and Eartshaker land a fissure. Personally, I think the game looks beautiful, I love the art style they have applied. However, the looks of the game have been somewhat called in to debate. I don’t think anyone could argue the game doesn’t look great graphically, but many are not totally happy with the games aesthetics and style, which at times look a little bland. Really though, this is opinion as many people love the dark brooding Diablo3-esque style of the game.

While no changes appear to have been made to the heroes, the map does seem to have had some minor changes, with the Dire (Scourge) top left ramp in to jungle appearing to be much narrower than in DotA, as does the Roshan pit. The UI looks very slick, if a little un-functional from a spectator point of view. The recent additions to Heroes of Newerth’s spectator UI really do outshine those seen in DOTA2. Though whether this will receive some overhaul with time remains to be seen.

Animations, sounds, and effects are all what you would expect from a top games developer like Valve, leaving the game looking and sounding great.  Overall the game looks fantastic, and it has left me very excited to get stuck in to the beta which has been roughly announced for sometime in fall.

As for the actual action today, there was a bit of a bumpy start. Audio commentary from the games was very bad an audio quality and there was frequent problems with players lagging, causing it to be often paused. However, as the day progressed these problems appeared to be fixed, and the games continued. EHOME successfully dominated their group as did OK.Nirvana.int and Na’Vi. MYM however had a bit of a slip up losing out to Moscow 5, leaving both teams drawing their groups top spot. A wide variety of strats were employed throughout the day, with hard carries in the form of Anti-mage, Spectre and Sniper being used a lot, as well as push strats including Chen, Furion and Enigma.  Sadly not all of the 46 champions were picked, so there are still a lot left for us to see, hopefully we can see them all as the tournament continues.

It has been reported on the JoinDOTA facebook that there were 1.5 million viewers across all the streams with the Chinese one being the most popular, which is an incredible feat. Hopefully this will rise as we move in to the weekend for the final matches.  Also, I should note how impressed I was with the coverage from the dota2.com website. Match details were updated constantly on the website, with hero picks, items and other statistics available to be viewed as games are being played. The VODs from today’s matches have already been uploaded, albeit without commentary. They use DOTA2s inbuilt DOTATV feature which has an autocam to automatically follow the action. I highly recommend sitting down to watch a few, you won’t be disappointed.