DoTA: The Bastard Child of Warcraft III and Diablo II

I haven't been quite bored enough this summer to make a post, but I guess I can use more money from uh.. something completely unrelated to ad clicks... selling nuclear robot ninja pirates. Yeah, that sounds cool. Anyways, this is the review of DoTA I wrote in my utter boredom months ago but never bothered to post. My opinion of the "game" may have become more negative now then it was before (now that I have had the time to play some real games), but eh. I don't want to go through the effort of rewriting this.

Gameplay: 7.5/10
The guys who made DoTA weren’t the same guys who made WCIII so I find it hard to give them credit for good controls and interface. But overall, the map plays pretty well. It’s surprisingly deep for a custom scenario and had thought put into its balancing (at least SOME thought anyways). The three-lane system takes away some of the “war” feeling to it, but it works. There are a crapload of heroes (which is a good thing in my books) and an obscene number of item combos that obviously take some time to get used to. My only real complaint is the fact that you can’t play as Scourge on the Sentinel side and vice versa. I suppose that is the point of having two different teams, but I would have liked to use some of the other heroes on the other side when forced to side with particular team for balancing. Overall, DoTA makes good use of WCIII’s excessive character models and makes for a pretty entertaining, albeit slow, map. Oh right, the games TAKE TOO LONG. The standard 40 mins – 1 hour rounds really pushes the limits of my patience. Even if you are really good at the game, it would still take a good amount of time to become powerful enough to make it past the base defences. The addition of a builder unit or two to each side would be nice too; being able to build certain towers would really add to the strategy of the game.
Graphics: ?/10
Being a WCIII MAP, DoTA really can’t take any credit for graphics. Besides, WCIII didn’t really look great for its time.

Storyline: 3/10
Every character has some pointless backstory that gives no hint to why they’re all sitting in taverns stuck in the middle of a forest with an infinitely spawning hostile army a couple hundred metres away. The stupid and pointless backstories also really get in the way of reading the stats of the individual heroes, which seems rather necessary since you’re stuck with the one you chose for at least another 40 minutes (and choosing a hero you’re clueless about can result in major ass-rapage). The taverns don’t really make any sense either. If there are so many legendary heroes all sitting in one place, why does only one go out to defend the city when it is under attack?
Sound: 1/10
The Unreal Tournament announcer in the background is annoying and feels really out of place. And what is the deal with the retarded kill messages? “JoeFrizzle just pwned Zoolad’s head!” Who the hell talks like that?! All the other sounds in game are from WCIII and not DoTA so they won’t get credit for them.

Longevity: 6/10
Even if you’ve played Warcraft III before, this game has a slight learning curve. I suppose there is some replay value thanks to its massive (addicted) multiplayer community, though I don’t see myself playing this in the near future. I find the map gets pretty repetitive after a while, but I’m sure things are better if you don’t die at every other encounter and are playing with friends.

Overall (not an average): 7/10
I’ve been told that this game is a lot better when played with people you actually know, but seeing as this map is regarded as the god-king of all possible custom scenarios, it really shouldn’t require certain types of people in-game to be amazing. Sure, a bad team can really spoil any online game, but even when people are not being retarded, I didn’t feel particularly swept off my feet when playing the map. It doesn’t have the lasting character development process of an RPG or the frantic army battles/base management of an RTS. It just combines a couple elements of both (incompatible) genres into an addicting, but ultimately mediocre map.

Although I didn't ask, thanks for letting me use your picture Joan. :)