SMITE

SMITE is a MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) between Gods from different religious backgrounds, from the developers at Hi-Rez Studios. SMITE is free to play, all you have to do is sign up and download the game, but you can purchase gems which I will talk more about later or the God Pack for $30, which gives you all of the Gods already released in the game and any future Gods coming out before the game is finally released. Right now, SMITE is still in it's beta stage however in the later stage and is approaching release fairly quickly, but there is no set release date just yet. Unfortunately for those Mac users out there, SMITE is only for PC. You have a third person camera view instead of other MOBA's where you click on the map for your character to move to, you control the movement of your God using the WASD keys.



Below is one of the trailers for SMITE (smitegame).

Abilities.
Players can chose from 33 different Gods, each with their very own abilities, passive abilities, and ultimate abilities. Each God has 3 different regular attack abilities as well as a primary attack. The primary attack may be something such as firing a bow, using a sword, or throwing lightning bolts for instance. The other abilities can be moves that deal tons of damage, heal the player or even players in a given area, stun enemy players, or even put up a wall to keep enemies or if you're that guy, you can even keep teammates in or out of certain fights for a few seconds. Passive abilities are also unique to each God and require nothing to activate them except to be playing that specific God. The ultimate ability is even more unique, focusing on the God's background and lore, Hi-Rez has managed to come up with amazing graphics and ideas for each God's ultimate ability. These ultimate abilities can make you immune to damage, or make you do massive amounts of damage, however it comes at a price. A God's ultimate ability, just like it's other 3 abilities or attacks will cost X amount of mana to cast and preform the action, all with different mana consumption variations. Not only do they come at a price of mana, they also have a cool-down time, which is a period where the ability is inactive and cannot be used until the timer is up, provided you have enough mana.

Favor.
All players will start out with the same 32 Gods. When players level up outside of game modes they will gain experience, or Favor. Favor will be used to purchase Gods later on in the game when players save up enough favor. The maximum level for a player's account to reach outside of a game is 30, while inside the game the players God will reach a maximum level of 20. Favor is granted to players after they finish playing a match and is determined on if their team wins or loses, and how many kills, deaths, and assists that player has. It will cost a player 11,000 Favor to purchase a newly released God, or 5,500 for an older one.
  
Game types.
There are four different game modes as of now, Arena, Domination, Conquest and Joust. Arena is like a Team Death Match game type but each team has 200 points and the first team's counter to reach 0 loses, both teams consisting of 5 players. Domination is like any other game's Domination, there are 3 points available for capture and your team must hold 2 or more points to win, just like the Arena game type there is a counter with 200 points and the first to reach 0 loses, both teams consisting of 5 players each.Conquest is the original game type and used to be the only one back in the earlier days of the beta. In this game mode there are two teams, both with 5 players each. The objective of this game is to defeat the other team's Minotaur, but it's not that simple. Teamwork must be used in order to take down at a minimum two of six towers, and one of three phoenix's standing before the minotaur, all while fighting other players trying to do the same to your minotaur. Joust is just a 1 versus 1, but is like Conquest where you have to defeat the other players Minotaur after passing one tower and one phoenix to win.

Gems.
Once a player has made their account they can either purchase gems from within the game or at Hi-Rez's website. They have 3500 gems for $50, 1500 gems for $25, 800 gems for $15, and 400 gems for $8. Now I know you're wondering what's so special about gems and why would someone pay real money for something in-game. A player can receive gems from purchasing them like I mentioned above, they can recommend a friend to play smite and when that person reaches a certain level, the person who recommended the friend will receive a small amount of gems, or you can get gems through giveaways in the SMITE community. Gems can be used in SMITE to purchase Gods to unlock them to play, costing 200 gems per God. If you rather purchase Gods using favor it'll take longer but it'll definitely save your wallet from getting thinner, but then what's the other purpose of gems. Gems can also be used to buy skins for the God(s) a player has unlocked. Each god has at least one skin, however the majority of the skins right now are just re-colors, which is how the God original looks with just a different color scheme. Skins can range from 200 or 400 Gems, normally the re-colored skins are 200 and the better looking skins go for 400.


Gods.
As of today, there are 33 playable Gods currently in SMITE. Below is a list of all the gods and their background. Also found at the SMITE website here with more information on about the Gods.(God List)
Agni - Hindu
Anhur - Egyptian
Anubis - Egyptian
Ao Kuang - Chinese
Aphrodite - Greek
Apollo - Greek
Arachne - Greek
Ares - Greek
Artemis - Greek
Bacchus - Roman
Bakasura - Hindu
Bastet - Egyptian
Cupid - Roman
Freya - Norse
Guan Yu - Chinese
Hades - Greek
He Bo - Chinese
Hel - Norse
Hercules - Roman
*Kali - Hindu
Loki - Norse
Neith - Egpytian
Odin - Norse
Poseidon - Greek
Ra - Egyptian
Sobek - Egyptian
Sun Wukong - Chinese
Thor - Norse
Vamana - Hindu
Vulcan - Roman
Xbalanque - Mayan
Ymir - Norse
Zues - Greek


*The Hindu Gods, mainly Kali caused quite a controversy for Hi-Rez back in the early stages of beta. Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism requested removal of these Hindu Gods as he believes having players control deities "trivializes" them. I have also heard of other storys saying that Kali looks like "a porn star." Todd Harris from Hi-Rez responded with the Hindu faith is one of the most ancient and diverse religions providing a good base for inspiration for characters in SMITE (Schaffnit).

 









Sources:
Schaffnit, Mike. "SMITE Creators Address Controversy Over The Inclusion Of Hindu Gods."
 www.gamebreaker.tv web. 10 April 2013. <http://www.gamebreaker.tv/pc-games/playing-god/>.

smitegame. "Smite - Battleground of the Gods - MANOWAR - The Sons of Odin." www.youtube.com web. 10 April 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CA4XFHfpmRQ&list=PLqMnSYeIWk0aRO03A26vq04oXayTeXoaJ>.

"Gods." www.hirezstudios.com web. 10 April 2013. <https://account.hirezstudios.com/smitegame/gods.aspx>.