Awesomenauts Review

Awesomenauts is a quirky take on one of the most popular genres in on PC at the minute. It takes everything you love about MOBA – the tactics, the crazy heroes, the way each match has the same rules but is always different – and puts it onto a 2D platform. Think Super Mario merged with League of Legends. It’s a big hit on consoles and something I’ve played an awful lot of in recent months, but I’ve often thought the PC version might be superfluous.

What’s the point in an easy, watered down MOBA experience when there are so many full-featured games out there, and for free? Does it work on PC? Is it worth your money?

Awesomenauts Gameplay Video

Positives - Awesomenauts

Flat DOTA – Awesomenauts is exactly the MOBA you’ve always played, only on a 2D plane. Small droids will make their way across the map, fighting enemies and turrets that they come across. Heroes of all shapes and sizes will battle it out with larger-than-life powers and, in the end, the victor will have blown their way through a bevy of defences and destroyed the enemy tower. The only difference is that it’s a 2D platformer, and that makes all the difference. It works really well. The developers have superbly managed to blend two genres that perhaps aren’t obviously compatible.

Full of Personality – I like games that give you characters to remember, and Awesomenauts offers just that. While your average MOBA title has dozens of beautiful women (often of various colours), huge anthropomorphic animals and muscular men with big weapons (often swords), most of the characters are usually instantly forgettable, especially if you don’t use them very often. Awesomenauts fixes this with cartoon-style humour, memorable catchphrases and fantastic abilities.

Easy Mode – Although against talented players, I strongly believe Awesomenauts could be as complicated as any other MOBA on the market, I think the community in this game is significantly easier to beat than in other games of the genre. Put that down to more accessible nature of the graphics or its availability through Steam perhaps. Either way, I think it’s a good thing. If you just want a casual game, Awesomenauts will treat you better than League of Legends, and if you want a harder game, there’s the option to play with friends as well.

Stylized – Although it’d be hard to say Awesomenauts tops any league when it comes to graphics, the art style is absolutely gorgeous and that goes doubly on PC. At 1080p, at 60FPS, the colours positively shine. My favourite thing was seeing my character’s reflection in the water at the bottom of the map. It was a great reminder that graphics don’t need to be computer-breaking to offer something spectacular, developers just need to offer an art style that’s easy on the eyes and memorable.

It’s Unique – How many people spend their downtime on the internet complaining that the gaming industry never offers anything new? How many of these people bothered to buy Awesomenauts when it came out? Awesomenauts is quite literally one-of-a-kind, offering something entirely unlike other games on the market. Let the internet trolls stew in their sweat and bitter tears, here’s a game that breaks the mould.

Connection Issues – I was slightly upset to see that connection issues I’d experiences on consoles had remained for the PC version of a game. If somebody is about to leave or is having connection issues of their own, it’ll not only affect your immediate surroundings, but your frame rate as well. More than once I found myself cursing some departing player for my unfair death. This far on, it seems this is going to be a permanent problem.

Fewer Characters – While I don’t really see this as a bad thing, the fact that there are few characters in this game than in your average MOBA, and that you’ll need to put some effort into unlocking them (they’re usually rewards for levelling up) might be off-putting to the more ADHD, need-constant-change crowd.

Silent Hero – In all the time I’ve played Awesomenauts – albeit mainly on consoles – I’ve never actually communicated with another human being. On consoles this is to be expected, and that’s true of both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, but on PC I expected something more. Alas, the other players are still dead to the world. Still, they say actions are louder than words, and each game is chock full of deadly, amusing action. Make a friend, attack them with dynamite.

Conclusion : Awesomenauts Review

Awesomenauts on PC manages to live up to its name, without feeling too much heat from the competition. On consoles, this is a game that gives a taste of a genre hardly ever experienced. On PC, it’s fantastic fun and delivers an experience like no other on the market. Is it any wonder that it has such a dedicated community all these months on? Of course, the PC version also seems to offer a graphical boost, as well as (generally) better performance.

"If you’re a fan of the MOBA genre and want something completely but with the potential to match the pressure of full-fledged MOBA games, Awesomenauts is for you."