Smite, a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), is a game where you pick a God from multiple different mythical pantheons from Legend and Lore to fight against lanes of minions and, of course, other gods. It’s fast, intense, and requires great teamwork when playing against people who know the game through and through. It has grown popular on the PC platform and just keeps growing in terms of content and players.
Smite for Xbox One has been available for anyone with a code for some time now. Recently, it has moved into it’s Closed Beta state, meaning that most of the features of the game are implemented, just requiring some changes, and the Store is up and working. There’s a lot here now, and all but one of the major game modes are available to play in PVP, while Co-Op and customs can play all of the regular five game modes of Assault, Arena, Siege, Conquest and Joust.
We’re still around a month behind on the PC content, with the most recently released gods, Ah Puch and Ratatoskr not currently being available for play, but in terms of other content, it’s all there. The latest update brought us the store, the Founder’s Pack and more detailed stats about our profiles. The best implementation so far is the VGS system, which allows players to communicate quickly via a few button inputs, just in case one or more players on the team isn’t using a mic.
It’s all pretty high level stuff, but it works very well on the Xbox One. It feels natural, and although there are a couple of things that are a tad clunky, there’s still plenty of times to receive feedback and improve upon these features. The game itself works fantastically, there’s nothing to complain about here, and there’s plenty out there explaining how well it plays on a console because of the third person perspective and focus on spells and abilities that take some skill to aim and execute.
I’ve been playing Smite most nights with a friend, and I honestly don’t see myself stopping for a while. We have bad games and good games, but never feel demoralized. We try out all the gods we are interested in and just keep going, eagerly awaiting any new information about the next content update, so we can know the changes made to control schemes, additions to features or tweaks to others. Hi-Rez Studios, the minds behind the game, have been great at keeping the community up to date and responding to any feedback they are sent. It feels like Smite is a driving force behind the Xbox One’s already fantastic Free-to-Play market of games, and I personally feel that it’s going to be super popular when it’s out.
Each and every god is completely unique, and takes some time to learn. While the matchmaking system does seem to work well, the amount of new players of late has somewhat confused it. Sometimes games will be filled with people who have been playing from the beginning, experts from PC or even brand new players. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does mean that players who are completely new to the genre may need a little bit more help than others. Though this will be rectified in the near future when the ranked League play is in place, and players have more time to familiarize themselves with the game.
Players also seem to be very helpful. Toxicity in this game isn’t high and there’s a lot of opportunities to discuss how to play specific gods or tactics over the voice chat, as those with mics are more than happy to talk strategy and help each other out. It’s great to see that the community is so peaceful, as it will really help a new one grow and flourish as more players enter the fray.
There’s a few ways to gain access at the moment. Signing up on their site would be the simplest, perhaps not the fastest. You can, however, buy the Founder’s Pack from Xbox Live. This pack includes some exclusive skins for the Xbox as well as some gems to spend in the store. More importantly, it unlocks all current and future gods to play, so you don’t have to worry about unlocking anything other than cosmetic skins in the game. This will grant you immediate access to the closed Beta, and much like the rest of the time available in Smite so far, nothing is lost. Everything will carry over and you will not lose access to the game unless the servers are undergoing maintenance.
Overall, the current state is impressive, and it doesn’t take long to find a new game to fight it out against other gods. The selection is fantastic, and the amount of customization in terms of skins, play icons and voice packs just means that there’s a lot going on for someone to sink their teeth into. I, personally, will be playing Smite for a long time, especially once it’s finally released.
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