Heroes of Newerth both is and isn’t just like DotA. In many ways, it’s the same. You choose one of many heroes, start in your base, buy items, go our creeping in one of three lanes, get experience and gold, last-hit and deny, go into the jungle for neutral creeps, buy items at the home base or in the secret shop or the outpost, kill enemy heroes, harass, gank, nuke towers, push mid, miss bot, 2 mia at top, wtf blue stop feeding them!, lol killsteal, etc, etc, etc.
But in some aspects it’s different. It’s smoother, looks gorgeous, has beautiful animations, unique-looking heroes, loads of convenience factors, different and better interface, more settings and customization, more than one map, new heroes, revamped old ones, a robust rating system, and much more.
Accompanying this article is a couple of screenshots, showing you the basics, but you need to see it in full high-resolution, in movement on your own computer screen to really judge for yourself how it looks. Obviously it looks miles better than the aged WarCraft III engine, but just how impressive the graphics are is up to you and your expectations.
I’ll just go over a few details to introduce you to the game. As you start up Heroes of Newerth, you have the standard options players are all used to, online play, LAN games, options, replays. You can set your account information to automatically log in every time you log on, which is handy, if possibly a bit unsecure just in case your little brother logs on and messes around on your account (*glares at Raistlin*.)
If you want to create a game you have tons of options, like map (So far, Forests of Cadavar is the most popular of the three maps in the beta, which is not very surprising, since it’s the one most identical to DotA,) team size, all pick/single draft/random draft/etc, easy mode on/off, and more advanced options like banning all strength/agility/intelligence heroes, get rid of runes, allow more than one of each hero, and so on. Otherwise you just join one of many games in the list. Take your pick between “5v5 APEM NO NOOBS” and “SDEM NO DEVOURER JERKS” and “Noobs only! :)” (made by a 1700+ player, of course.) If you want to play with friends, you set your game as private, and give them invites via the Community Panel (F6) by rightclicking their names and sending an invite. They will get a popup asking them to join, and if they click yes, they will automatically join without having to type in any game-name or password. Similarly, if any of your friends are in a game, you can just right-click them and choose “Join Game” and you will, provided the game isn’t private or already started, or full.
Once in a game, you get to choose color and what team you’re on, and the game host has an option to lock you in that color and team so you can’t move around, even with the “autobalance” feature, which automatically balances the teams as good as possible, so both teams have as close to a 50/50 shot at winning. This is possible thanks to people’s rating. Your rating will go up as you win, and down as you lose, of course. The lower the odds of you winning, the more you’ll gain and the less you’ll lose.
As previously mentioned, the gameplay is just like DotA. You will feel right at home. The big difference is the interface. Your skills are in the middle of the screen, with default hotkeys Q, W, E and R. The small circular buttons above the big square buttons indicate what level the skills are, and that’s also where you click to increase the skill level when you level up. The little plus is attribute bonus, of course. Gold and items to the right, stats and experience to the left. You also have the pseudo-Unreal Tournament voice guy shouting SAVAGE SICK, BLOODLUST, DENIED, SERIAL KILLER, HAT TRICK, etc. If you’re really on a roll he’ll even shout CHAMPION OF NEWERTH!
At the end of each game, you’ll have all the proper statistics, including things like experience per minute, hero kills, creep kills, when you got which skills, and your final inventory.
The shop is accessed by pressing B (every hotkey is customizable if you want) at any time, and you can buy whatever items you want, putting them in your stash or straight on your hero if you’re close to the shop. By default there’s hotkeys for all of them, but I removed that after buying one too many Hyperstones by mashing A to attack-move when I was at a shop :(.
Every item is pretty much the same as in DotA, with new icons and names, really. The combined items are very convenient to buy and plan ahead, as the interface unfolds to show you the different parts of the recipe, and even shows you what future items the end result is used in. There’s even a “buy all item components” button.
And finally, the most interesting parts, the heroes. Find all of the details and videos on the official site (http://heroesofnewerth.com/heroes.php) but you can imagine seeing many of your favorites return, with a twist or two, along with some new ones. For example, Hammerstorm, the hero in the screenshots here, is Sven the Rogue Knight with Devotion Aura instead of Warcry (although the official website still has his old Warcry ability listed when this article is being written), while Swiftblade is Yurnero the Juggernaut with a Counterattack skill instead of Healing Wards. Currently, I’m having loads of fun with the Scout (Gondar the Bounty Hunter), Chronos (Darkterror the Faceless Void) and Defiler (Kroebelus the Death Prophet), with a Nymphora (new hero) to team up with. They all have their own new unique voices (that can be turned off if you think they’re annoying) and looks of course.
What is all comes down to, I guess, is if people are going to start playing this instead of DotA. There have been other standalone DotA games (Demigod), and none have succeeded anywhere near like DotA did, and there’s more upcoming (League of Legends). If Heroes of Newerth remains supported, is patched regularly to fix imbalances and add new heroes/features, if the ratings system is robust, then it just might. S2Games seems determined to make it so. Every DotA fan I’ve played this with loves it, and most people who never played DotA at all loves it too. If that means this is going to be a huge success like DotA, and Heroes of Newerth will be played among StarCraft, WarCraft, Counterstrike and other popular e-sport games, who knows? I think it has a good shot. It’s DotA with tons of nice new features and better graphics. What else could you want? See you when the game releases.
