Smite

Welcome to the world of competitive video gaming, also known as eSport.

You might not have known this, but it's actually a pretty big thing, obviously nowhere near things like American Football or real football. To give you guys a bit of insight into just how massive these eSport competitions can be, in August 2017, The International 2017, Dota 2 tournament, was held and broke records by having the largest prize pool to date for an eSports tournament, amounting to over $24 million US dollars. That was just the prize money for one tournament, and it's only going to get bigger and bigger each year. Smite would probably rank in the top five of competitive games and in January 2016, the Smite World Championship was held in Atlanta, with the total prize of $1 million awarded.

This industry has actually gotten so big that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in October 2017 acknowledged the growing popularity of eSports. They concluded that eSports could soon be considered as a sporting activity, and the players involved trained almost similar to those of traditional sports, but they would need to iron out the logistics. Maybe we shouldn't be too hard on kids spending too much time on the computer, there's a chance they could make a career from playing games.

If you would like you read more about sport in gaming, I recommend you guys read the latest ADSactly Sports post by Hive account@broncofan99 who takes an indepth look at this topic. Also let me know which are you best sports games, so i can look into those.

When it comes to the story in Smite, it unfortunately it does not follow the normal structure most games do.

This would actually be more in line with a fighting game or a sports game like Fifa or something like NBA Basketball, each one of the many characters does have a very in depth back story though. The premise of Smite is basically that all the different gods from every known historical society and culture team up and fight against each other.

In Smite players get to choose between one of 96 gods from eleven different pantheons, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, Japanese, Mayan, Norse, Roman, Slavic and Voodoo. Each one of the different god's is classified as one of the following classes, Assassin, Guardian, Hunter, Mage, and Warrior. Two players on the same team unfortunately cannot choose the same god, but the opposing team can pick the same gods the other team has. So for example, two opposing team might have the exact same gods on both sides.

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Let's get into the gameplay for those of you not so familiar with this game style.

Smite features many different game modes, with the most popular being Conquest, where players are formed into two teams, with five players to each team. The two teams begin at opposite sides of the map, at their team's fountain, which is basically where player spawn from and re-spawn when they die. Just before the game starts, players are granted an amount of gold to buy starting items. These items gives each of the gods special bonuses or abilities that enhance their character. How and which abilities to buy is almost a mathematical equation and you can find an endless resource of different builds on the web, and each character is different you will need to learn pretty much everything.

There are three lanes running from one side of the map to the other. Each lane is defended by a 'Phoenix' which is accompanied by a pair of extra defensive towers. The goal of the game is to destroy the opposing team's Phoenixes and the Titan, a giant warrior protecting the fountain, who must be defeated in order to win the game. The players are accompanied by minions, no not those little yellow ones who talk funny, these are soldiers with a weak attack that spawn at the Phoenixes every thirty seconds and run along their lane until they meet any opposition which they attack immediately. Minions will attack not only players and other minions but also towers, Phoenixes and eventually the Titan, if they are able to reach it. There is also a surrender feature in each game for when your team is getting oblitirated, they can decide to surrender after at least 10 minutes, though this requires a majority vote from the team.

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"Ah-thena, the goddess of wisdom, from across the water. I will teach you some things you don't know!" - Athena

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Smite in my humble opinion is one of the better MOBA games when you compare it to Dota and League of Legends.

The developer spent a lot of time in researching each and very character and I feel they made sure the lore and back story paid homage to those legends. I have been playing the game on and off for about 3 years now and very few months there is a new character that you can unlock and or buy. The best part about this game is that it is a free to play game, so yes there is loads of thing you are able to buy inside the game, but unlike some game developers like EA, you can actually earn point within the game to spend on buying those items.

This is an all round very polished game from the animation to the stunning maps, it will provide you with hours of fun. I would recommend that you go watch a few Smite tutorial videos first before taking on a group battle, because there are people out there who take this maybe a little way too serious, and I had may share of horrible messages, mentioning my mom. Remember the is a group multiplayer, so start with the three versus three first before you take on bigger maps with more people. When in a group fight, you're only as strong as your weakest link.

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Smite, and this is going to be a mouth full, is a free-to-play, third-person multiplayer online battle arena game developed and published by Hi-Rez Studios.

Don't worry I have also never heard of these guys before, they developed a few other games which I'm not all too familiar with. Smite is available on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, unfortunately it is not compatible across the different platforms, which would have been an amazing feature. The game was officially release in 2014, then the following year it came to Xbox One and finally in 2016 it found PlayStation 4.
The best part, this game is free everywhere, hopefully I meet you online.