Francis reviews 2 DotA based games.
Because of the hype that HoN and LoL are receiving, I checked them both out; by that I meant playing each of the two for a whole day continuously, cycling through different heroes, examining the maps and environment, the items, and the gameplay overall.
My conclusion? I like HoN better. Here are my points:
The Graphics
I like HoN's graphics over LoL simply because it has that awesome gorey Savage feel. LoL is too... comical. Cartoonish. HoN features really nice terrain textures, specifically on the Legion side (Sentinel on DotA), where the green landscape, the trees, the grass, and the craggy grounds project into your eyes as one beautiful picture. LoL, again, looks cartoonish on the terrains. The heroes also look awesome on HoN, I like how the DotA characters were remade. Skills are awesome... and the exploding bloody death of creeps tops it all up. The tower attacks and the buildings themselves are visually pleasing as well. And, the ending scenes where the main buildings are destroyed, HoN wins by far.
The Sound
I have no qualms regarding the voice characterization, although there's another thing where HoN wins over LoL -- the voice over. LoL's voice over is characterized by a soft female voice (pretty bad for such a high-action game), whereas HoN is characterized by a techno male voice, much like that on Mortal Kombat (FATALITY!!!). Again, HoN wins.
The Gameplay
A lot of people dislike HoN because the gameplay, the heroes, the items, and almost everything is directly ripped from DotA. I believe otherwise. The 'DotA rip' is what exactly makes me like HoN. See, I won't have to adapt to a different kind of gameplay. For the heroes, I just find the equivalent of my fave DotA ones. For the items, pretty much the same. There's not huge difference in gameplay, and it's very enjoyable. There's the deny system, the item drop, and the stash -- things I didn't find in LoL.
The Game
Let me talk about the download. The LoL installer weighs around 500MB, whereas HoN weighs only around 275MB. Plus, LoL takes another 500MB to update, whereas HoN only takes 16MB! A huge difference in bandwidth consumption and time. From this alone, my heart goes to HoN.
Points I didn't like about HoN:
- The game connection system. There are a lot of instances where I can't connect to a game without any provided reason, and with a good ping. LoL automatically does a matchmaking service where I am automatically teamed with people who are predictable on my same gaming level.
- There are spells that lag up. Maybe they're too graphics heavy, since take for example Slither's ultimate (Venomancer in DotA) -- it reduces by FPS by about 5-10 upon cast. I dunno why. It does that even with texture filtering off.
More on the Heroes of Newerth vs League of Legends DBG genre rivalry:
Gameplay:
I read on LoL's website that it's supposed to be an active, fast-paced game. This means that creeps are easy to kill, cooldowns are less, and manapools are higher. Still, I like HoN better, because it has the total WarCrarft+DotA feel. Like you said, LoL has a unique gameplay and graphics style, but that uniqueness is still (imho) topped by the HoN's graphics.
Laggy spells:
I double checked, and saw that I was on Anisotropic Filtering x2, and my resolution was on 1600x900 (yes, I'm on a 20'' widescreen). All I did was lower the texture filtering to Bilenear, and boom! FPS runs as smooth as ever.
HoN Game Connections:
I've re-read HoN's website and wow, I never realized that HoN was on a client-to-server netcode, but I think LoL is on a client-to-client setup. This means that the entire game won't lag with all the players when one of them is on a poor connection.
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