I don’t understand MOBA’s. I mean, I sort of get them – I’ve watched Dota 2 surge in popularity and bleed through different odds and ends of the Internet over the last three years and don’t fault anyone’s interest in it or the burgeoning genre – but it seems like a proposition too massive and unwieldy for my particular tastes. The ceiling seems too high and a proper entry-point is too far away to be attainable for, let’s say, a person who reviews fifty videogames a year and buys and plays through twice as many. Sure, I can devote an insane amount of time to Dark Souls or Don’t Starve, but the buy-in to Dota 2 wasn’t as compelling. I played it for about five hours before deciding it wasn’t for me. League of Legends and Guardians of Middle Earth included, the genre and I can’t seem to work it out.
Dead Island, though. I found Dead Island to be an interesting and worthwhile experience. I could have done without the game’s final acts in the jungle and prison, but that opening area – that beautiful resort bathed in chaos and tragedy – held unique appeal. Structure and systems were lifted from Fallout 3 and Borderlands, but Dead Island’s mood and onset of menace, for a fleeting couple of hours, was totally unique. I could beat the living shit out of zombies amidst the cerulean waters of Banoi’s resort all day long. In that particular instance, context was king and I held onto it like a security blanket.
I never would have asked for a Dead Island MOBA. I doubt I would have ever wanted a Dead Island MOBA, and yet here we all are with a Dead Island MOBA. Context isn’t necessarily king, but it is a door of accessibility, the spoonful of sugar to make the MOBA go down a bit easier. I accepted the assignment of playing around with Dead Island: Epidemic based purely on wondering what in the hell it was and if, despite its egregious origins, it turned out to be any good. Epidemic could be a really cool and welcomed spin on MOBA’s. It could be a hasty cash-in for Dead Island publisher Deep Silver, desperate to leverage one of their properties in an exploding genre. It could be both of those and still be a decent game.
As it turns out, the modes included in the beta project Epidemic as something more than a MOBA. Yes, it boasts a cherry-picked variety of different classes, each with their own unique skills affixed to cool down timers, but it appropriates its rules across a couple different modes. The brief tutorial that took me straight across the bungalows of the Banoi-like island showcased its unique context. My starting melee weapon was a paddle, and it was soon joined by a shotgun. Later, in the proper game, I would use a character whose fists were jammed inside two huge propane tanks, thus enabling a brawler’s hand-to-hand combat skills. It sounds petty but, to me, things like this make more sense than seemingly arbitrary fantasy motifs or an affiliation with world from Warcraft that I never properly endeared myself to. Yes, Epidemic more or less lifts mechanics wholesale and re-skins them under its own banner, but it’s not without purpose; I understand beating the shit out of zombies with boat paddles more than I can grasp Lich issuing chain frost to do whatever it is that does.
And there I was, surprised to see a more traditional and literally named horde mode with a rich application of a MOBA’s mechanics. In practice, it unfolded like most traditional wave-based survival games. You make your way around a fairly linear map and defend capture points against the rush of increasingly hostile aggression. What separated Epidemic’s horde mode was its peculiar mechanics and MOBA-infused tendencies. Level-ups came fast and frequent, and my characters abilities begged for attention. Berg, a bruising hulk of a man, was privy to an area-of-effect log toss and a knock-back log sweep skill, both of which could receive numerous upgrades. Berg could also summon a leaf shield, and, with a proper investment into my skills, I eventually had access to a hugely powerful AOE log slam, which was extra handy against the inevitable boss rush. In the end horde played, well, like horde, with my team and me easily grasping victory in a twenty minute session.
Horde isn’t the meat of Epidemic, but rather a sideshow to explore its mechanics under a different light. Scavenger mode follows a more traditional MOBA format. Epidemic spins its rules around by forcing three different teams of four human-controlled players to compete against each other, and exchanges static bases for different supply points that must be captured. Zombies sort of function as creeps, effortlessly meandering about the map. Boss zombies show up as well, each sort of lifting ideas from either Left 4 Dead or Dead Island, complete with tank and sticky-tongued zombies requiring teamwork to take down. To be perfectly honest I didn’t get to spend enough time with this proper mode due to either my connection or the beta’s relative instability, but it seemed easy to get a basic understanding of it with minimal amount of investment.
I’m anxious to see how well Epidemic’s characters harmonize with one another. Whenever I played Epidemic it was always with other low-level characters, presumably new to the game as well. Mutated Amber (each class, a named character has a “mutated” and “armored” variant), was created with a melee and quick-attack specialty in mind, but, in practice, it didn’t feel like she played all the differently than her vanilla base. Likewise, Bryce’s place as a ranged-specialist didn’t seem particularly well defined as long as he was being cared for by his teammates. Epidemic is obviously in beta, meaning it exists exclusively to test its mechanics and systems in the real world. It’s going to have time to sort all of this stuff out.
Play control is another facet of Epidemic that bears mentioning. Coming from a life of consoles, the indirect nature of isometric, point-and-click games has always felt alien and abstract to my controller-friendly fingers. Either through a means of creating space or appealing to philistines like myself, Epidemic opts for a more direct means of control. You still use the mouse as a cursor to direct attacks, but movement is controlled entirely through WASD. It’s not that much different in the grand picture of control schemes, but it established a more palatable line of interaction than others in its genre. It’s not going to be a deal breaker either way, but it’s no worse for wear and certainly can’t hurt Epidemic’s chances of catching on.
Of course, all of this these impressions are culled from a limited amount of time with a beta. With the ease at which four low-level characters demolished horde mode with minimal teamwork, I expect the difficulty to be tweaked significantly before a retail release. Also under wraps is how, exactly, Epidemic is going to sell itself to players. It’s free-to-play, sure, but whether character classes, weapon items, or crafting materials remains a mystery. Above all else I’m pleased to report that, despite its necessity or lack thereof; I had a swell time tooling around with Dead Island: Epidemic. It’s not going to turn the MOBA world on its heels, but it also doesn’t have to. Maybe it’ll join Awesomenauts as a beloved, cultish alternative to the bigger guys. Maybe it’ll explode into something more. Either way we’ll see when it steps out of beta and into Steam-proper later in 2014.
