OddShot is not and doesn’t intend to be a news outlet for gaming. Nor do we see ourselves doing game reviews very often. However, OddShot wants to help you discover and curate new games and gaming content in a way no other service has before. This is my review of Vainglory, because finding Vainglory did for me what I hope OddShot will do for a lot of gamers out there.

Before Vainglory I had never played a MOBA game. Never once had I actually piloted a hero to crushing defeat or dominating victory. MOBA-style games looked boring to me. I’ve spent a good portion of my life playing games like World of Warcraft and Counter Strike and the click-to-move thing and the only-three-skills thing just sounded very one dimensional. Boy was I wrong.

I originally heard about Vainglory when I met one of Super Evil Mega Corp’s super evil employees in San Francisco. I saw some early footage of the game and it looked extremely good, considering it was made to be played mainly on iOS. I was looking at desktop level quality, but on an iPad! Last week I finally tried it out and the experience opened up an entirely new realm of possibility for me.

Vainglory is the best damn game I have ever played on a mobile device. It is stunningly well designed and engineered. The game mechanics prove that it is possible to make “proper games” for mobile devices. By proper I mean real time, multiplayer and intuitive games. Exactly what I’ve been waiting for.

Vainglory also opened up the world of MOBA to me. It opened my eyes to the fact that MOBA game mechanics are perfect for touch screen devices. Being able to just download the game from the app store and give it a whirl on the train or at the office with my colleagues is immensely addictive and makes it very approachable. It was the perfect soft landing into MOBA, for 3 guys to be able to download the game and head into battle with our heroes within a few minutes.

In Vainglory, in traditional MOBA style, you control a hero in 3v3 battle. Your mission is to crush the opposition in every way possible. The map is very well thought out and consists of a “lane” and a “jungle”. The lane is exactly that, a lane, that leads from your base to the enemy’s. Along the way our turrets that you must slowly destroy by pushing the enemy further and further back. The jungle is a scary place where enemies are hiding in bushes, while you need to try and control strategic locations.