Now playing: Awesomenauts

I love this game. I've tried to make an article like this before, but just wound up stopping myself and playing the game until tired of it. Perhaps I'll actually finish this one and still get plenty of time in. Thing is though this game keeps reeling me in over and over again. I'll play it for like a week, or at least half, stop for maybe a month, and then return and each time I feel totally re-energized and immersed into this game. I love its theme music, its intro, the characters, the gameplay, the support for it, and how accessible it is. I can just boot up a match at any given time, and have a great time winning or losing against a team of bots while listening to a podcast in the background. Its just great.

So how does it play? Well for those that don't know, its basically summarized as a MOBA sidescroller for consoles (although with a twist the PC version is dominant after requests and bad publishing deals lead it there). You have all the MOBA basics in a 2D platforming format. You push on towers and work beyond creeps, play as a character that is earning RPG-esque abilities, and whichever team of 3 pushed into and destroys the base first wins. It was developed for consoles through its simpler control & ability system, and with help of trading the RTS perspective with a platformer type of course. Personally I'm not too big into the MOBA scene, but I very much see the appeal of it and can enjoy its type of gameplay from time to time. Awesomenauts is probably the most accessible and enjoyable one I've dabbled in.

A chaotic 2D MOBA style game

If I were to name just one complaint I have with the game, well aside from matchmaking and random bots, it would be how routine things can be because of the MOBA style. Every so often pushing the same turrets, fighting the same creeps, and playing on the same limited map range all gets a little dull. Then you get a new ability combo idea in your head for your 2nd favorite character and decide you've got to try that in another match! MOBA is essentially horde mode for me. It puts you on a basic loop that you'll be doing over and over again, but has depth in the right places to pull you out of a droning feeling and put you right into your comfort zone of hardcore gaming. There is a ridiculous amount of strategy, learning, and trail & error gameplay at hand with just the way the characters work under the routine layout. Sure after my 5th match of playing as Penny Fox and running down the same lanes I'll be feeling a little tired of the game, but every single match you're restricted to pick down to 3 abilities per row of your total power and its up to you to bring up a new pattern when an old one gets stale. The truth is despite how ridiculously routine this is, no match is ever really the same once you throw in the variables that every character is just like you in being able to command and re-arange power variables. Maybe one match you'll be a fast fox with regen health and fast claws fighting poison spewing rivals, the next round you'll be a fast fox with more health and a temporary range attack trade-off fighting a tank-like rocket robot with life sapping powers and that's two cases of re-using the same character.

However I can't help but list off the gimmicky charm of this game. Its not just that its a ridiculously fun game. If this was just another DOTA type game with generic fantasy elf blood knight I'd probably feel less inspired to stick with it. Instead here I am enthusiastically yelling at my screen "Who's ready for some awesomenuats!" before the theme song blasts with an animated short that could have come straight out of the 80's. The internet knows it as an 80's cartoon style, a dev said its kind of like Earthworm Jim meets Ratchet & clank, and the theme song just re-affirms that its just plain awesome and worthy of calling itself Awesomenauts. The characters are crazy, they're loaded with their own silly (sometimes homage-like) tunes, the battlefield are well colored with a great soundtrack playing, and plenty of characters have great lines and dialogue. Its also worth noting some internet celebrities from a podcast I listen to also voice act in the game, which is a nice novelty as well even if they were intentionally given ridiculous out of character voices to act on. Generally its an appealing asthetic and such a great style that I'm kind of disappointed its only some indie game and not its own Television show, merchandise line, or at least more to the story and characters within the game. Its just one of those games where you just want more of it in your life, and I'm not sure if any other indie game has been able to make me wish that (other than the fact that a 3D/FPS cortex command would be amazing). Its worth noting to that ironically in doing things like copying the gummi bears theme it somehow comes around to feel like

one of the most true and heart-felt games out there. Its just so full of fun, cheesy commercialism, and sillyness that its a great place to turn to for just some care-free enjoyment and a good break from the progressive "serious art" games. Sure a lot of it is really more in line with 80's toons, but its so fun in its homage to them that it kind of stands on its own.


Combine that with the fact that the game has been well supported for about 3 years and is still going with a community and its pretty great. There's actually a flash sale with the game being priced at about $2.50, the price of its own cosmetic DLC. I not only recommend it for that steal of a price, but I also say go ahead and grab the cheap character DLC, and come back for a costume or two once you think you've found your favorite character. Of course this is coming from a stingy guy who still needs to buy skree and sentry. If nothing else I personally recommend getting Penny Fox and Ted McPain, who are awesome characters (penny's my favorite out of the game, while ted is by far the funniest). I'm waiting on the eventually upcoming Nibbs DLC, and I'm excited to see what might be next. The only messed up part of the updates is how slow everything is to those outside of the PC community. You might as well wait an entire seasons at the very least if you're on PS4 (and I just found out xbox one still hasn't even had a release yet), so I'll be expecting to play Nibbs maybe around summer, or maybe even longer if they decide to release it bundled with an entirely different character (the characters seem to come in pairs on PSN).

I'm getting a tiny bit worn out right now (which sounds ironic for a "now playing" thing, but its not the first time I stopped shortly after publishing), but I bet I'll figure a way to refresh things. Worst case scenario, I'll just end up returning with Nibbs' release. I love this game and seem to return back to it a good bit, so its certainly not over for me. This is probably the best $10 I've put on the PS4, and alongside shadow fall its just one of those games I'm actively returning to and enjoying again and again. I'm not even playing it right and doing active online fights. I really should, but I usually just do bots. Regardless, its been a fantastic game, and its what's been currently played as of late. Keep being awesome, awesomenauts.

And give me more stuff like story while you're at it