Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Relevantly, given the previous article, S2′s popular MOBA Heroes Of Newerth has been revamped for its 3.0 iteration, which overhauls numerous aspects of the game, including the UI. Importantly for the game’s ongoing survival the game also introduces a bunch more player-welcoming tools, such as walkthroughs for newbies, a series of hint videos in “the Learnatorium” and new bots to practice against before you brave the horrors of actual PvP. This looks like a pretty big step for the game, and also includes redesigned heroes and maps to refresh the whole experience. I’ve posted some of S2′s numerous dev diaries below, as well as their new concept-art montage lore trailer. It remains free to play, of course.
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Well, this is something of a nice surprise. Once upon a time, Heroes of Newerth – a pretty solid MOBA that can’t shout quite as loudly as genre giants like League of Legends – cast off its price tag and went free-to-play. Now, though, it’s taking things one rather large step further. Following in DOTA 2′s footsteps, HoN’s sending all of its Newerthian heroes into battle with no strings attached. In other words, starting today, every last one’s totally, completely free.

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Ah. This will likely annoy those folks in the League Of Legends thread who said they played Heroes Of Newerth because the entry fee kept out the rabble. Well, now the rabble is coming for you! Don’t worry too much, though, because you can always set up your games to filter those pesky free accounts, and keep to the “legacy” players. Legacy is what your account will called if you paid for HoN in the past, apparently. Which keeps it all nice and tidy.

Still, I’ve just had a read of the HoN forums. Oof.

From today until the 22nd, to be precise. It’s all to celebrate one year since the game’s launch. A bit like a birthday, only a for a game, which had a long beta. This means that you can pay the hero-based multi-player teamplay combat arena thinga-game (did we ever actually ever get past the “DOTA-clone” name for these? Was it a MOBA? I am so tired) for nil pennies! I know how excited that makes you, so don’t just sit there vibrating, go take a look at the website, where details of registration and downloads can be found, understood, and executed.

I played this a bunch last year. It was tough. I am a nood.

Is there a better genre name for these games than “a bit like Defense Of The Ancients”? I mean I was going to go with “Champion-based Tower Defence”, but that seems too wordy. Anyway, whatever the taxonomy of the game, it’s free to play Heroes Of Newerth for this week. I had a good old crack at this when it came out, and frankly struggled a bit with the arcane and unfriendly community, but it’s quite the game once you begin to master the rhythm of things, and figure out how to avoid getting insta-ganked when things go awry. Probably worth taking a look this week if you’re going to give it some time, that way you can be sure of full newbie servers. And I mean that in the kindest possible way. Even HoN’s newbie servers can be a little challenging for beginners.

S2 Games’ Heroes Of Newerth (fantasy multiplayer tactical combat in the vicinity of Defense Of The Ancients) is all set for release on Wednesday. I think that gives you close to two days to leap onto the open beta and see what all the fuss is about – the fuss being the IGF audience award earlier this year and a claim of two million people on the beta. Exciting illustrative video ‘neathwards.
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The multiplayer beasts-versus-muscle dudes combat game Savage 2 has lifted restrictions on its demo accounts all this week, which means anyone can download and play the full game for free. I rather enjoyed Savage 2 and its predecessor, but the weird FPS/RTS hybrid mechanic doesn’t sit quite right with me, especially when the fantasy world contains peculiar out-of-place techno-phalluses, such as automatic weaponry. Regardless, it’s worth having a go, especially when the servers are busy this week.

Their front page seems to have some live match commentary embedded it in, so listen out for the increasingly rambling man when you click through.