Hi everyone. So today we're taking a look at a new moba game,
that's a multiplayer online battle arena for those of you that like to know what
acronyms stand for,
and essentially this is very much like League of Legends like DOTA 2
and many other moba style games we've got. However with Strife there's something
slightly different going on here -
a game that is accessible to all. I'll let that sink in for a minute -
a moba that anyone can actually get into without feeling dumb.
Genius. Now Strife
takes the standard affair we've really come to know and love
from games like LoL and DOTA2 you have a set of
hero characters, you have lanes, you have creeps,
and you ultimately have to destroy the base at the other end.
Now where Strife kind of differs is in its approach to
how it lays everything out. The game tries to augment wherever it can, any
of those really niggly points
that would stop gamers from being able to quickly pick up and play
Strife. So for instance instead of having to
try and work out which order to level up your various powers
available to your character you can set the system to just do it automatically for
you based on templates.
You can create your own templates or take templates from other locations.
ie from the community. This means that you can have optimised builds for
particular situations and you don't have to waste time in the middle of a battle
oh, I need to quickly level up and get that power on which one was it I was going to get
next? Ah
no. Set it, forget it, concentrate on the battlefield.
Also everybody gets a courier. You don't have to buy your courier in game
if you need to actually have an item delivered to you simply
buy the item, hit the courier button and your own personal courier will bring the item to you.
No more courier sharing or courier disagreements as tends to happen in
DOTA2. Everything is much more accessible and that also includes the way that the
weaponry
works as well. Those in-game perks that you buy during a match
which make you more powerful, including better damage, mana regeneration, more health
and attack power and speed. A crafting component allows you to craft your own
weapons exactly the way you want to play your character
giving you the stat bonuses you need. You can craft
those before you go into a match and they're available to buy in the game
match itself. This opens up a huge world of possibility as well as variation
for the characters allowing you to play the game the way you want to actually
play
not necessarily having to follow a very rigid set
path as it were around the weapon upgrading etcetera. DOTA2
unfortunately is a game where if you find that you aren't buying exactly the right
weapon at exactly the right time to power-up your character you fall behind.
Here we have something that's going to add a bit more chaos into the mix in my opinion.
Strife is a very accessible game. I found that
having obviously quite a bit of experience with moba style gamesI was able to just pick
up and play.
The first match, bit of a disaster, trying to get used to the characters etcetera and
how things kind of work,
but actually once you get into it a couple of matches later
you're flying through it at a phenomenal rate and a lot of the friction is gone.
Because that friction is gone the aggravation is gone
and so in the chat you don't have people screaming at each other
ooh you're a nube, you don't know what you doing, stop playing, blah blah blah blah blah!
It tends to feel a lot more like a group of gamers trying to help each other
to play and win. Now one of the things that I really found
a nice twist on the standard affair that we've come to expect from these games
is kind of what I would call the deadlock breaker. On the map
are two special NPC characters. Once they've been killed by your team and it
will require more
than one of you to take them out, you will then be granted
well a giant gorilla basically! This giant ape
is going to tear its way down whichever lane your team decides to place him into,
destroying everything in his path. Now he does take damage
and so the opposing team is going to have to defend hard to try and slow him
down
to destroy him before he can, well, wipe out the lane basically.
This deadlock breaker works fantastically well
but it can also be a swing as well. If your team happens to be falling behind, maybe
a player has dropped out,
if you make a concerted effort to grab that gorilla
you can use it to turn the battle in your favour.
I've seen games where I was part of a team of only three people having had two drop out,
we were able to defeat a team of five, purely because we focused on getting the win
from that giant ape. Strife is going to be one of those games which so far
hasn't caught fire with the communities yet but the quality
is exceptional, it really is very well done,
from the sound design to the graphics and the character modelling, it feels modern
and it feels
up-to-date and it brings a set of features which are approachable
for everybody from the moba hardcore crew that have been doing this game
style since Warcraft 3 right the way up to
brand new players who just want to get a feel for what moba-style gameplay is
all about. Strife looks like it may be a
knock out hit and I would urge you to at least go and check out what they're
offering here because it's fresh. It's fairly unique
in the way it's approaching this particular type of game
and it does it with a style and grace which is rarely seen from
games developers today. Strife is one to watch and
I think it could very well be the next big moba. Thanks for watching,
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