In 2014, Hi-Rez Studios released the third-person MOBA titled Smite. As everyone has grown used to MOBA’s such as League of Legends, DOTA 2 to name a few. I grew tired of the idea of a MOBA since it was always PC focused, which isn’t bad, but what about console players who wouldn’t mind one? Even though console owners have at least one MOBA on Xbox 360 there hasn’t been another since. While I’ve heard of many MOBA’s titles I’ve given some titles a chance. However, one that did catch my eye was Smite when it was first released, but with working and trying to get in some gaming I didn’t have the chance to really give it a go.
Now we fast forward to 2015 and as everyone knows Smite was announced to come to Xbox One not long ago. It’ll be the first game with this style of game-play to come to Xbox One. Plus, with the waves of Free-2-Play Xbox games coming I can’t help but think games with that pay style will be coming in more and more. I’m not saying this is bad, but seems more F2P games keep being brought up.
At PAX East 2015, I was able to sit down and finally play Smite, but this time it wasn’t on PC. This had me excited as the booth was quite enormous on its own and there was all out wars going on between many players at PAX East. If I had a picture of the lines you could tell that the game was a hit on the show floor. Now I can state this is the first time I’ve ever been excited for a MOBA title without really giving the game a chance on PC. While at the booth for my appointment, I was brought back to a room to sit down with Todd Harris COO of Hi-Rez Studios to talk about Smite and it’s coming to Xbox One. I think Todd noticed my excitement as soon as I sat down. Todd handed me the controller and gave me a lesson on the controls of the game as well as informing me of the type of characters I can play as. After informing him my style of character he informed me that Ra would be my best bet since being new to the game as well as my style of playing. My first choice was Ra, which for some reason I’ve stuck with during the Closed Alpha on my Xbox One as well.
After doing a quick glance at the controls for Smite it wasn’t hard to learn with what buttons do what within Smite. A, B, X, Y each have an ability linked to them. X being a wave style attack for some characters, A could be a stun, B could be something to heal or do decent damage, and lastly Y would be the all out attack that would deal the most damage. While playing you’ll level up your character as you kill troops and other players, but my advice when doing all this is to head to your home base often so you can purchase items to increase stats. My main issue while playing is that I’d often just buy whatever I could and run back into battle, which I’m learning now is NOT a smart thing to do.
Even for this being a game in alpha it looks pretty damn good to me. This conversation has come up lately with friends within the industry as well as friends on Xbox Live. If they were to release this and call it a finished game I wouldn’t notice that we’re still in a closed alpha. Just to think of all the improvements (UI, gameplay, new modes, etc…) they can do with the game from now until the official release whenever that may be. For the time being I’ll be playing this daily as I’ve already been doing so since I made it home from PAX East.
I do think Hi-Rez Studios has something going on for itself by bringing Smite to Xbox One. As someone at this time who has put in almost a day’s worth game-play if not more. I can’t help to think Hi-Rez is going to make many gamers who love MOBA’s happy on Xbox One. Once the game is officially released you’ll be sure to see a very detailed review from yours truly since I’ll be putting in a lot of time within this game throughout all the testing and the release.
Want to win a code for Smite (Early Access) Xbox One and 1 of 5 Smite skins from PAX East 2015?
Step 1: Simply comment below with what you’re looking forward to in this version of the game. If you already play the game on PC by all means go all out. Please include your Twitter username and if you don’t use Twitter check back at end of giveaway to see if you’ve won.
Step 2: For those of you with a Twitter you’ll need to as well (Click to tweet) 
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This giveaway will end on Monday (3/23/2015).
WINNERS:
Xbox One Code: @Weezsays
Skins Codes: @auroramilepoime @sirsmackey @TaUBeaViS @kenrumsey @treybeast059 @IsaiahToTurnt
To claim please tweet @H2OAcidic and I’ll be in touch shortly after. For those who won Skin codes the word is that in the future you can transfer your PC account to Console. So any skins you’ve unlocked will be brought over.
