Awesomenauts was released back in August of 2012 and I first saw it while interviewing game developers at the Eurogamer Expo of that year. It is a MOBA (at the time I had no idea what that meant, and the developer was looking at me with a little distain), but it stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. Since the advent of Twitch for streaming games, there is big money now in these games like League of Legends, and this is loosely based on this premise but is a 2D version and much more cartoony in its graphics.
I bought this game on the 360 as soon as it was released after playing it at the Expo. It took up a lot of my play time, and it is one of those games where, if you don't understand what is going on. You will lose. Guess what, I didn't have a clue!
This type of game is fantastic and works well if you have a proper team of players like League of Legends has. You play a different character in the team as each team member has a role to play in the
battle.
Your mission is to break through the automated defence tower/s (there is usually one high and one low) to get through to the oppositions energy core. Destroy that and you win.
There are a range of versions now in terms of characters, the PC version has more characters than the Xbox version and depending on the kickstarter projects you may have invested on buy now as DLC there are two add-ons in Starstorm and overdrive, each adding a handful of other playable characters.
So why is it so hard? Learning the controls and playing the basic missions to get you familiar with the game are super easy, they have designed it so well in this respect but for this game is the epitome of easy to learn hard to master. It has a very strong focus on team that if you don't know how the characters work together or who does what role in the team you can get destroyed very quickly.
This is my defining experience of this game. It is 3 vs 3 with automatically spawned bots that are more crucial than I first realised. These little guys inflict damage on anyone who gets in their way and most of the time a new player sort of just ignores them, and that can be a problem. They got me on more than one occasion! They also serve to be the reason you can attack the turrets, they are the focus of the heavily armoured towers and you need them to try to attach the tower, as without them you will die!
Once upon a gaming life I played Call of Duty MW2 on a very regular basis and would almost call us a clan. We had great players, and me. It was for fun, but we had competitive matches and we all knew our role. I was a canon fodder player, I would distract an enemy giving the better players time to attack and get the kill streaks. We used the Xbox Live chat and it worked. With Awesomenauts I never had this with anyone. I never had a community so playing it was always with random others, some good, others bad and while I think the game is phenomenal, the user experience can wildly vary according to who you play with as a team. If you get placed with a host of randoms who are as bad as you are, it can demoralise you and could tarnish your experience of what is a great game.
Awesomenauts is a great game to try and while I have written above about how playing online can be a frustrating mix of players, actually don't let that put you off. You can play a local game and it is designed to be a 3 player split screen for that experience. So next time a group of mates is over and you don't want to dig out Mario Kart (because lets face it that is a bit of a go to party game for everyone, that and Super Bomberman) you can do a fantastic game of Awesomenauts with them all. It will get over the not knowing who you are playing with as you are all together and to learn you can play against fully AI bots. You could take it online as well, if you fancy your chances against the great unknown of the gaming communities.
It is a beautifully designed game and one that for the price is great to have just as a rainy day game. You may not play it with any real regularity (although there is a massive community of players) but I think it is one of the games you have to own. I go through phases of really wanting to play it and I sit and try to improve myself, trying to learn how the classes work for each character and how to a good player, realise I am never going to be good and move on again to something else for a play through. I then come back to it six months later, ready and invigorated to try it again.
The major downside of online games in the console world is the need to have Xbox Live Gold, or PS+ for the Playstation Network. I used to have these by default but no longer have them as my online gaming has slipped down the priority order of expenses. Apparently I need to feed my children, who knew that was a thing (do I need to put a disclaimer in here....surely not!)
I have not gone into each character that you can play and what they can do. If you are interested you can see them all in this wiki. What I will say is I seem to gravitate to playing as Clunk every time. He is the tank character. The big, slow but exceptionally powerful character than can take a lot of damage and dish out as much to the towers and other players. I think however I am a bad player (as mentioned) as he should be alive for large amounts of time, I seem to die much quicker than expected. There is a real skill to this game despite being so easy to pick up, appreciating how this type of game works and what is required of you for the whole team effort. If you are a League of Legends player, this would be like the popcorn version of that game, something light hearted in between heavy sessions of LoL. However that could just be a poor perception on my part, especially from the real hardcore Awesomenauts fans.
What drew me in first of all was the spectacular and beautiful 2D graphics and platform aesthetic, what kept me playing was the addictive game. What lost me was how I never seemed to learn how to improve as a player of the game. As with a lot of the reviews on the site, they are built around my ability to afford and buy games and films that I would be buying anyway, so there was always going to be a bias to enjoyment. I would still suggest you try this game out. It is fun, quirky and addictive and if you don't find you enjoy it, then you won't have spent too much on the game as you can buy it quite cheaply on Steam or the old gen consoles.
Ronimo Games deserves a pat on the back for their work on Awesomenauts and their continued developments through the Kickstarter investment projects. It's another fantastic indie game that is taking on main stream releases and while it will never be as big as COD or the Drake series, it has a strong following of players, of which you could very easily become one.
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