SMITE, the third person MOBA made by Hi-Rez Studios, has been a hit on computer and more recently on Xbox One. The game came to Xbox One in alpha early last year and it seems like they are repeating this with PlayStation 4 starting early this year. This will be the first MOBA to be on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. The third person MOBA puts a new spin on the genre by putting you closer to the combat with a different perspective as opposed to the fixed isometric view that you find in some other games of the genre. Instead of using heroes or champions in SMITE you get to choose from over 70 mythological gods from various different pantheons across the world. Greek, Roman, Hindu, Mayan, Chinese, Japanese, and Norse mythology are all included in the game as well as the lore for the different gods that you can choose.
SMITE recently had their world championship and it was the first game to have one on computer and on console. The following for the game is large enough for Hi-Rez to offer the second highest tournament payout for a game behind DOTA2. SMITE is a free to play game and gives you 5 gods, one from each class, for free and has a weekly rotation of 5 other free gods to choose from. You can unlock more gods to play by spending favor (earned by winning games) or gems (in-game currency that you can purchase with real money). Alternatively you can purchase the founder’s pack for $30 which will unlock all present and future gods in the game for you which is probably the best bang for your buck if you’re planning on playing the game a lot.
The in-game purchases for SMITE are all cosmetic and do not give anyone an advantage. With gems you can get different skins for the gods, voice packs, or emotes that you can use during the game. Most of the skins in the game are awesome and have great voice packs to go along with them. One of my favorites is Ra’s skin Ra’merica (released for 4th of July two years ago) where Ra is a bald eagle holding a bottle rocket for a staff. All his abilities are red, white, and blue and instead of saying “woohoo” in the game he chants “USA! USA! USA!” There are a lot of other good skins in the game too based on Aliens, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Metal Gear Solid, Knight Rider, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Frankenstein, and more.
It seems like MOBAs are becoming increasingly popular on consoles since SMITE first landed on Xbox last year. Gigantic has since come out on Xbox and Paragon is also set to come out on PlayStation later this year. All of those are from the third person perspective which probably makes it a little easier to control on consoles.
If you want to get in on some of the early action for SMITE on PlayStation 4, which I would highly recommend, you can head over to http://www.smitegame.com/ps4-beta/ to sign up for the closed beta.
