GameSpy's Free Agent is your advance recon into the world of free-to-play games. His mission: jump into a free game every week and play to see how much fun can be had without spending a cent, then try out some paid items to see if they're worth the asking price. This week he fills the stompy, mythology-smeared boots of godly MOBA Smite.

No Money Down

You know what? It's really damned cool to open up a menu of available playable characters and see legendary names like Odin, Hades, and Thor (and also – inexplicably – Cupid) leap out at you. "Yeah, you get to be a god," Smite seems to tell you, almost flippantly. "No big deal." It's tough to find a battleground more epic than one dominated by deities, you see, with major gods from every pantheon you can name duking it out with mythologically-flavored skills in the quest for eternal rule.


What is it? Now in open beta, Smite is a third-person multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game starring mythological gods.

What makes it different? Action-oriented combat mechanics mean players have to actively aim and dodge attacks.

What do you get for free? Unlimited play with five gods who are permanently free. Five others are selected each week to be put in the free rotation. All gods can be unlocked through play.

Where can you find it? Register and Download Smite directly from Hi-Rez's website.


Imagine you're playing DotA – only you've been flung right into a third-person, close-up view of the action. It's part of what makes Smite feel like a welcoming, inviting entrant in the MOBA genre – as if various gods of war had invited me to a tea party with cream-filled sponge cakes, to be followed by some tussling and light-hearted duels to the death. You know, the typical godly Sunday-afternoon fare. The tutorial is gentle and well-explained, easing you into the highly skill-based gameplay, and you can enter solo practice maps as often as you like, offering you the benefit of being able to test out any god character you please. Additionally, there are auto-level and auto-purchase options for your inventory that can be toggled at any time, affording you some breathing room as you come to grips with your new godliness.



The game modes are familiar to anyone who's even only lightly dabbled in the MOBA genre.
The game modes are familiar to anyone who's even only lightly dabbled in the MOBA genre – it's team versus team, and you have your arenas, your control point-based challenges, and your multiple-lane, minion-breeding conquest maps. Additionally, there are some fun, ever-changing "match of the day" challenges. My favorite was titled "Cool Cats" – as a child of the feline-loving interwebs, an arena full of meowing, pouncing cat gods brought endless joy.

Matches start at regular intervals, and the wait is never excessive – the longest I was left idly finger-drumming on my desktop was about three minutes. Expect the bird-headed Egyptian sun god Ra (whose superpowers apparently include the ability to get around via levitation, while his legs dangle uselessly) to be immediately claimed during character selection, thanks to his distinction as the tutorial's god of choice, but worry not. Ra is one of the five free gods instantly unlocked for the new player, and an additional five are playable for free in a weekly rotation.

Do my bidding, minions!

And as for the in-game action? It's all tightly honed, brain-stimulating fun. It unfolds in sprawling, beautifully detailed maps that are also, unsurprisingly, based on mythological locations. The midst-of-the-action, third-person camera lends a slight MMO feel to the gameplay -- there's a lot of split-second, movement-based strategizing you'll have to do that's reminiscent of the sort of teamwork you'll have encountered in, say, WoW raids. Don't expect an MMO-style auto-target system to hold your hand, though -- your luck in Smite is purely skilled-based, so stay sharp and communicate with your teammates.

The community's still new enough that no player has become hardened enough yet to get uppity or elitist.
The gods' abilities, too, are perfectly matched to their stories (which you'll find detailed descriptions of in a special "Lore" menu); I know I raged a couple of times at the sneaky backstabbery of players using the trickster god Loki.

After tooling around in a couple of practice maps, I already felt comfortable enough with Smite to launch into a novice conquest game. Other players were polite and on the quiet side, and I didn't face any of the snark I half-expected for being a new player fumbling between numerous gods and their near-endless array of abilities – refreshingly, with Smite's recent release into the open-beta wilds, the community's still new enough that no player has become hardened enough yet to get uppity or elitist.

Time or Money?

"Favor," the in-game currency, is earned through simply playing; you'll get more of it if you win your matches, of course, and there's a "first win of the day" bonus as well. Favor is used to permanently unlock gods of your choosing, adding them to your heavenly, cloud-padded menagerie of death-dealers. Early in my Smite career I became fond of Freya's abilities, and my discovery the next day of her having been moved off the free-god rotation was a tragic tale worthy of a thousand celestial beings' tears.


What's the time investment compared to spending cash? Unlocking a god takes approximately three hours worth of matches. You can spend roughly $4 instead to unlock one immediately.

Any worthwhile deals? For $15, you receive 800 Gems, enough to unlock four gods and save yourself a buck.

Can you buy your way to victory? The available free gods offer balanced, differing play styles. Purchasing additional gods adds options, not more power.




Fortunately, in this modern, digitized age, you can now buy your happiness. All of Smite's gods are purchasable with either Favor or "Gems," the currency your cold, hard cash takes the form of upon Smite's receipt of your credit card details. Unlike League of Legends' roster, all of Smite's gods cost exactly the same price: 5500 Favor, or a mere 200 Gems. To see how long it'd take me to earn a god through actual play, I somewhat creepily set my sights on the acquisition of Freya (stopping short only of pinning her photograph to my bedroom wall).

Choose your weapon, er, GOD!

The path to 5500 Favor was not exactly what I'd call a grind, but it's no cakewalk, either.
The path to 5500 Favor was not exactly what I'd call a grind, but it's no cakewalk, either. I had to play a few hours' worth of matches – about a half-half mix of wins and losses, with a roughly equal amount of time spent in each game mode – before I'd earned enough to unlock Freya for myself permanently. This didn't feel like a slog thanks to the variety of other gods available to toy with, but it is a considerable amount of time, probably made more noticeable by the fact I'd set myself a specific goal.

The amount of real-life dollars Freya's unlock would have cost me, had I gone the route of Gems instead? Somewhere between $2.90 and $4, depending on the amount of Gems I would have bought. (The most reasonable-looking payment tier, to me, was $15 for 800 Gems, enough to unlock four gods in one fell swoop.)

Free or Flee?

Hi-Rez gets the free-to-play biz right, sticking to its pedigree of not wringing the player of his every last coin. There's nothing you can unlock with money here that you can't also work your way towards with solid, respectable, in-game time. But whether Smite makes your coin-free journey a challenge or a grind kind of depends on your own value of the gods. Working towards Freya took me a couple of afternoons, but I found the gameplay enjoyable enough that the time investment was neutralized somewhat. Still, I would have been just as happy plunking down those few dollars, too.

Hi-Rez does a nice job with Smite, but is the action combat enough to pull you away from Dota 2, League of Legends, or Heroes of Newerth? Personally, I appreciate the change-up in pace and perspective – not to mention I'm not called a "noob" every two minutes.