The MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre has become increasingly popular in the last 5-10 years with more and more people either playing or watching others play games such as League of Legends and Dota 2 on PC, with teams and prize money for the best players in the world in doesn’t look to be a genre of gaming that is going to fizzle out any time soon. In fact, it is likely here to stay for the long haul. The being said, it is on PC that people mostly play, and it has yet to find a real home on console. Smite was the first ‘traditional MOBA’ to give it a good go in 2015, and while it has its core of fans, it hasn’t brought attention to consoles as a viable alternative to playing on PC. However it was way back in 2012 that console gamers got its first real look at what MOBA gaming was all about, with Awesomenauts.
Flash forward to 2016, and we have Awesomenauts: Assemble on Xbox One to remind us just how good this little game is. And while it doesn’t have the same exposure and player base as the big games on PC, Awesomenauts has always done a good job of stripping back a MOBA to its basics, putting an attractive art style on top, and making the genre accessible to many others away from the hardcore fans. And Assemble continues that with its recent release.
At first glance, Awesomenauts looks like a colourful 2D platformer. It is definitely colourful and 2D, a platformer though it is not. Though they have incorporated a simple control scheme to help with the pickup and playability of the game. Firstly, visually the bright crisp levels and characters at great to look at. Along with that, the animations, characters and environment movements work seamlessly to add to a fantastic looking game. Each level has the same generic layout, as is expected with a MOBA. Two bases, a number of different turrets to destroy and a few lanes to access each base. But each is styled differently enough to keep them all feeling fresh.
While the fun cartoony look of the game can immediately draw you in, there is plenty here to keep it challenging. There is a whole host of different characters to master, each with a different set of moves and ranging in difficulty to use well. It’ll take a while before you know them all, and it gives you the option to focus your efforts on being really good with one, or spreading the load and getting to know which is best for you. When it comes down to team work (teams of 3 are in play here), if you’re playing with regular people maybe mastering a character or two each would be a good idea, when playing with random people, maybe having a knowledge of a number of them would work out more advantageous.
Happily, there is an offline mode to help you hone your skills against bots, so that you don’t need to go online and be subject to people who may well have a better grip of the genre than yourself. It also lets you test and trial different character until you find the one that suits you best, and gives you time to be able to get to grips with tactics and how to actually play the game. Because while this is certainly a good entry point to a very competitive genre of gaming, there is definitely still a challenge here when coming up against more talented gamers online.
If there is a negative here, it would be how much stuff is stuck behind a paywall. Yep, micro transactions are in place here for new characters, levels and character skins, and while I can appreciate that there is still enough content here to justify the £7.99 cost of the game, it would have been nice to see not quite so many items locked behind more money, you could be paying an up to an additional £40 for everything available. But I guess it’s really down to how much time you start to invest into the game as to whether it is worth that investment for you.
Awesomenauts Assemble is definitely worth a look if MOBA’s are a genre you have an interest in, and at the entry price point, it may even be worth trying even if you really aren’t. It is not a genre for me, but the ease of the control, the art style and the variety of different characters allowed me to find some enjoyment here, and I would recommend others to give it a go now….even if it was released a long while ago on a rival console :)
**Thank you to XCN for the review copy of this game**