Review of Heroes of the Storm (beta)

okay guys, this review is the second highest requested review of the history of Disabled Gaming Reviews! only to my review of Mario Kart 8. And my first ever review of a game in it's beta stages.  And i'll review it again when the game releases!

this review has been requested by  Tom Starkey, Wallace  from Divinity Ayr, Alistair from the GAME Ayr staff, and finally Fraser McKenzie.

this game is Blizzard Entertainment's answer to League of Legends and Dota 2 you pick a hero from a roster from Blizzard Entertainment's biggest franchises- StarCaft WarCraft Diablo and Hearthstone.  Then battle it out in an array of maps inspired by Blizzard's biggest games. The accessibility scores are as follows.


Visibility 8
Blizzard takes accessibility in their games very seriously. In World of Warcraft you can tailor the colour schemes to suit your impairment thanks for the info Emma!). Heroes of the Storm  does have a colourblind mode,  but the life bars on top of other heroes and minions(or creeps if you play Dota) does not reflect this colour scheme! so  a little tweaking might be required in the game's design. to reflect the colourblind scheme.

Audibility 9

there's in-game subtitles but there 's no text based notifications to let you know that a fort has fallen, a team's core is under attack etc. so once again more tweaking required to cater for hearing impaired players.

Mobility 9

If you've played League of Legends or  Dota 2 you'll feel right at home.There's two ways to control your hero in a match. You can use the hotkeys or the mouse, similar to Dota 2. But there's certain hotkeys that cannot be customised or use the mouse to activate such as switching between on your hero's mount and on-foot.In summary the customizable hotkeys option should be expanded to cater for players with mobility impairments.

Gameplay 10
The majority of MOBA(Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games use the same ethos. In Heroes of the Storm the goal of the game is to push up one of the three lanes on the map (Dota 2 cliché *ding*) destring the forts and towers on the way(Dota 2   tower cliché *ding*) and destroy  the enemy core( Dota 2 ancient cliché *ding*).

But here's where it gets different. Heros of the Storm is more objective and team oriented. Instead of leveling up your hero individually. You team's heroes and level up together, also there's certain objectives that can be completed to gain the advantage over the opposition  such as collecting gold from chests to bribe the undead pirate captain(Capt. Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean cliché *ding*) to fire it's cannons against the opposing team's structures. the optional objective varies by map. These  changes keeps the core elements of the MOBA  genre while  keeping the gameplay experience fresh and new.

OVERALL SCORE
90%

not that bad a score, but we'll see what  changes  will be implemented when i review the final build when the game's released


 You can sign up for the beta at the Battle.net website, or purchased the founder's pack for instant beta access.