Smite fans, rejoice, if you had trouble getting a code you don’t have to wait any longer. As of today, the 8th of July, Smite is now in Open Beta, meaning anyone can download it and play completely free.
For those who aren’t in the loop, Smite is a MOBA, or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, similar to League of Legends and DOTA. These games play with a standard map of three lanes, each side has towers to protect each lane and AI minions that crawl down the lane and fight. Each team of 5 fight to destroy the other players base before the other. The differences in Smite comes from the fact that it’s set in third person rather than top down, much like the RTS games of it’s roots, and also brings it’s champions from pantheons of religion such as Chinese, Mayan, Egyptian, Greek and Norse. Currently, there’s access to around 66 of these different gods, and all of them play differently. It’s easy to find a few gods that draw you in terms of playstyle and general aesthetics.
Smite has been in Alpha and Beta for a few months now, and has been getting regular updates to tweak the way it works so that it fits nicely on the Xbox One, which it does. It’s completely free to play and the UI has been redesigned for your console needs. It’s completely free to play, with free gods rotating every week and the ability to use Favour collected with games to unlock all of the gods and some of the skins for those gods. If you want to put money down, there’s a few ways to do it. The best deal is the ‘God Pack’. This gives you access to all current and future gods for one set price. You can also buy boosts to increase XP, Favour and Worshipper (basically levelling up specific gods for bragging rights). There’s also specific skins, profile pictures and skins for your wards, which reveal areas of the map. These specific items are all purchased using Gems, and some are even in Treasure Chests that you can open for a random chance at something good, but you always receive something of value or more valuable for the chance of getting something rare.
It’s a great model, and it’s a great game to try without feeling the need to put money down just so that you can get a leg up. It may take a lot of learning, but stick at it and it’s an extremely fulfilling and competitive game. It’s free, it’s worth a shot.
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