S2 Games' Heroes of Newerth is a huge step forward for DotA while still preserving all that makes DotA great

Every now and then along comes a game that, by its very nature, becomes an instant classic; it's that rare moment when aesthetics, innovation, polish and some incredible timing come together to create an enduring legacy. Counter-Strike, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Diablo II, Tetris, the list goes on and on. The one unfortunate problem with being a "classic game," however, is really only a problem for competitors - the more entrenched a game is within its fan base, the tougher it is to advance the genre. Thinking of making a sequel to capitalize on the popularity of a game? Well, if that game is considered a classic… maybe you should think again! The cliché, "don't reinvent the wheel," comes strongly to mind here.

In fact, this is exactly what I was thinking when, almost half a year ago, I heard that some upstart company, S2 Games, was in the process of creating what many were calling a "DotA Clone." For those of you who don't know, DotA, otherwise known as Defense of the Ancients, is a simple Warcraft III map (that's right, DotA is played on a single map) that has hundreds of thousands playing daily across the world and its eSports popularity is rivaled only by Counter-Strike and Starcraft.

I could gush on to explain all the mechanics behind DotA and what makes it great, but there really is so much depth to this game that it would take me another two articles to get through it all. All you need to know is that DotA is often considered by gamers to be one of the staple competitive games at any legitimate eSports event. It's incredible when you consider that DotA is, literally, a single map on a seven year old game engine.

Of course, while there have been a few attempts to "re-create" the DotA experience (gaming marketers around the world are crying in their pillows over the fact that they can't monetize this game), nobody has been able to make a sequel that preserves the true depth of DotA. In fact, many gamers had given up on DotA ever really getting a real "sequel" until the release of Stracraft II, when (hopefully) IceFrog will magically port DotA over to the SC2 engine and continue this map's legacy.

Until now.

I'll admit here that I, like many other competitive gamers I know, was very skeptical of Heroes of Newerth. Touted as being the straight evolution of DotA, developer S2 Games went straight to IceFrog to ask for permission to create HoN, which he gave with his blessings. Thus, when I first booted up Heroes of Newerth a number of months back (it was in closed beta at that time), it was, literally, like playing DotA on an upgraded graphics engine. The heroes and items might have had different models and different names, but at the core, this was DotA!