Heroes of the Storm, initially released June 2, 2015, is a perfect example of what Blizzard does best - they take a game made by someone else that everyone loves, and improve on it (and of course profit hugely from doing so). They did this with Dune and Ultima Online, producing the Warcraft and World of Warcraft games Blizzard is most known for. If you have ever played Defense of the Ancients (more commonly known as DotA) you will instantly recognise Heroes of the Storm for what it essentially is - the same game, but better.

The heroes you can choose to play are all characters from Blizzard games, both old and recent. All the characters are crowd favourites, including Illidan, Uther and Sylvanas from Warcraft and World of Warcraft, Nova, Kerrigan and Tychus from Starcraft 2, Tyrael, The Butcher and Diablo from (of course) the Diablo franchise, and the likes of the Lost Vikings from the slightly less well-remembered title Triple Trouble. You can choose to buy characters with gold or real-world money, or you can hoard your wealth and enjoy the variety forced upon you by the free-to-play cycle. Each week, several characters are available for anyone to play, totally free (something almost unheard of from Blizzard, but then again, this whole game is free so it seems someone threw the rule-book out the window a while ago and no one has bothered to leave the building to retrieve it).

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Warcraft meets Starcraft meets Diablo

One flaw with the game is that teams can be slapped together haphazardly, in an unbalanced manner.

There are a variety of maps on which the arena matches are held, which is one of the improvements I really love. No longer are you stuck running the same three lanes on the same map every single match - there are eight so far, including the Eternal Conflict map released with the latest patch - a suggestion that more will come in the future. They are somewhat similar in appearance, but don't be fooled - they each have their own mechanics that have the ability to change the course of the match entirely.

The tutorial when you first start the game is great. It takes you through the very basics of how to move, how to attack and the process of gaining new abilities through levelling. It's also presented in a way that's accessible to a wide population - it's simple to understand, straightforward to complete in short order and assumes no prior knowledge of the game style, which isn't something you see very often these days. The tutorial is also the first stepping stone in the progression path laid out before you. Once the tutorial is finished, you're placed in teams that play against Artificial Intelligence-controlled enemies. From there, you move into player vs player, which is split into three separate ability levels. I like this, because there's nothing more mind-numbingly tedious than grinding loss after loss against players far stronger and more experienced than you are until you've reached equal level.

There has been a lot of discussion around the store in Heroes of the Storm, with many calling it a pay-to-win feature, but I'm not convinced it is. While you can buy heroes so that they're available to you outside of the free-to-play cycle, you don't have to buy them, and you certainly don't lose any advantage in-game because of it. The heroes may not be entirely balanced yet, but there's always a good range available at any one time. It's also a fixable problem, so it may find balance in future patches. In the meantime, getting wrecked by one particular character in a match (I'm looking at you, Zeratul) just makes you want to try other characters out and be the one wrecking everyone else instead.

Heroes of the Storm is recently out of beta.

What the store also does is allow those players with particularly favourite characters to purchase cosmetic upgrades for them. There are a huge range of skins available for purchase that often remind you of that character's particular place in their universe's lore. You can buy a skin for Sylvanas that depicts her pre-Forsaken, or Raynor out of his armour suit. The slightly disappointing thing is that many of the best skins are only available for purchase with real-world money - there is no gold option available and it leaves me wondering what I'm actually supposed to be spending all this gold on.

The matchmaking system doesn't appear to be in proper working order yet, with teams often slapped together haphazardly with too many support characters and not enough damaging ones, or vice versa. This can be frustrating because it doesn't matter how well you play - if your team isn't well-balanced your life suddenly gets very difficult very quickly.

Heroes of the Storm isn't a perfect game - but it's not far off. The faults are minor and largely overshadowed by the many positive aspects. There really is very little risk in giving this game a go - it's free, the games are short and you don't have to take it completely seriously - and the payoff is well worth it, and more.

Rating: Excellent, 9.0/10

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Blizzard

Genre: Strategy

Players: Massively Multiplayer

Rating: M

Released: 3 June 2015

- Originally published on NZGamer.com