[PAX Prime 2012] Guardians of Middle Earth

[Lekon]

The online arena genre has been getting a lot of new contenders lately. DotA has been joined by League of Legends, and lately some other new contenders to the crown such as Smite have looked to take this fledgling genre in new directions. Enter Guardians of Middle Earth, a PSN and XBLA game looking to distill down the usual themes and mechanics of a DotA game into 5-10 minute battles. The results? Surprisingly good.

What Guardians does best is keep things simple to understand, instead leaving the player to focus more on skill, positioning and ganking at just the right time. Gone are shops that sell weapon upgrades and potions, instead your healing items/warp back to base spell is on a timer. Each level up has you pick from one of your three abilities (or your ultimate) to power up. Gold is only used to upgrade your armories back at base, allowing stronger creep spawns. As you level up you can spend gold to upgrade to Cavalry, Siege Units, or just heavier melee in general, giving a bit more reinforcement to your side.

Yes, you can play as the big guy

After picking characters (at PAX characters were assigned to different systems so there was no character select screen to speak of) the group was dropped right into the game. Anyone who's played League of Legends of DotA
knows exactly the setup. Three lanes, forest areas, towers that do immense damage if they target you, and five people on each team who want to do horrible, mean, evil things to each others faces. For both matches I played, I ended up as Gollum, who was recommended for those of us who go for stalkers, strikers and gankers. Turns out, the little guy is rather dangerous, if fragile. Some of the other characters shown at the show fit nicely into the usual archetypes, Sauron was about as tanky as could be, Legolas was a long range sniper, and Arathorn was all about stabbing people who got too close. According to the booth crew, the final release version will have twenty separate characters to choose from, with more coming when the Hobbit film is released.

Arathorn is about to show someone his sword's business end

Controls were a surprise for me in Guardians. The 360 controller was remarkably adapted for the game. Left stick moved, while the face buttons were set up for your four powers. Hit a button to prime the power and you'd see a ring or cone showing exactly where the power was aimed. Right stick aimed the power and all you had to do was hit the fire button and watch the carnage unfold. In Gollum's case, it was almost too easy to land his "jump on their head and smack 'em around" move. The targeting overlays (as seen in the pictures above and below) were clear, easy to aim, and left little doubt as to when a move would hit or miss an opponent. Attacking was as easy as holding a shoulder button when close, with your guardian attacking the enemy you were currently pointed at.

The camera says centered on your guardian, so there's less chance of losing track of where you are in the chaotic melee. A map screen stays handy by showing where the towers and known opponents are, much like in other games. Also as in other games, you'll not see people creeping through the side paths (Jungles) until they pop out, or unless you're in the jungle as well. While the game was a blast to play, it became pretty obvious who among the players was a fan of MOBAs and who was a new player. (Hint: those who kept getting killed in combat instead of hit and run)

Another hint: fighting someone near their healing spring is always a bad idea

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Guardians of Middle Earth. The game takes the standard MOBA/ARTS formula and condenses it into 5-10 minute matches, allowing for quick plays with friends who might not have the time for a DotA epic match. Despite it being shorter and lacking in item purchasing (at least in match) the game was still a serious challenge. The focus was shifted completely to skill shots, and knowing when to unleash each skill alongside your partners. PAX wasn't the best spot to try team building/team strategy, but even in the chaos of a PAX pickup group, Guardians of Middle Earth was a ton of fun. There should be a lot of carnage coming this fall, and I'd wager a lot of heated comments between CoG folk over who was supposed to cover middle, and who was supposed to be ganking later this fall when Guardians of Middle Earth Releases.

[Reverant]

Is "MOBA fucka" slang yet? As in, "That MOBA fucka says he's droppin LoL for GoME."

[Mashidar]

Will buy day one. I've enjoyed the video's so far and watched some of the pax events that were streamed for gameplay. Hoped for a beta of some sort but it should release soon.

[Ghostbear]

I had fun with this. I'm hoping for a PC version, but that's likely a pipe dream.