#SMNC forever

[neovid]

So, about the new Valve game we're not allowed to record...

I noticed I'd received a surprise invite to a beta test a couple days ago. It turned out to be Deadlock, a game I'd vaguely heard of, but was finding myself interested in just because it's a new game from Valve and it reminded me of many games I'd enjoyed in the past. I spent a couple of hours playing as soon as I could download it, and you know, the game feels like a love letter to my all-time favorite MOBA/hero shooter, Super Monday Night Combat. Along with easily recognizable elements of a vast array of other games in those genres, from SMITE to Overwatch to Gigantic.

...So, it's the first Valve game I've ever tried that feels derivative. Yes, it's derivative of a bunch of games I freaking loved, but what we expect from Valve are games that feel like nothing we've ever seen before, not like a collection of things we've seen plenty of times. It's good and fun, but I can't imagine that this will have the impact of anything we got from the Orange Box.

Also, there's the fact that MOBA+Hero Shooter is a game idea that has always crashed and burned. I'll never forget what a friend I got into SMNC said after he dropped it despite being completely addicted for weeks: "There's no way I could ever play this enough to be good at it." Shooters and MOBAs are two of the most brutal genres, and combining the two makes for one of the most punishing game concepts possible. Most people don't have much fun doing badly at a game, with myself in SMNC being an exception. However, Valve was the first dev studio to realize that bad players need some way to compete with good players, or they won't stick around long enough to become good players. How they're going to apply that principle to Deadlock is a mystery to me, but they're the pros.