I've been playing DOTA a lot for past few years, but I took a year off so I didn't know what was going on in DOTA world at the moment. Anyway, my friend sent me this link and said "dude, you gotta watch this, it's awesomeness in it's purest form", so I was like "whatever, it's some of those shitty links he is always sending me". Then I got a little bored so I checked it out. It was a live stream of DOTA 2 International tournament... It kept me nailed to the screen all week, I literally watched every game and enjoyed it very much.
At first the new graphic engine by Valve was a bit weird, but then I got used to it and I actually think it's awesome. Well, it took some time to memorise all those new avatars and item pics. The gameplay is unchanged, still one of the best online arena RPG based games.
The International tournament that took place August 17th -21st at gamescom in Cologne, Germany was amazing. 16 teams in a fierce battle for winnig prize of 1 million dollars (!!!), 1.6 million prize money in total divided among the best 8. I was hoping for some great performance by SGC, because these guys are actually from my country. That didn't end well, but I have to admit there were much better teams. The finalist were EHOME (China) and Na'vi (Ukraine), I don't want to spoil you the experience, so I won't tell you who won. But you can watch all the replays
here. You'll witness some amazing DOTA action with excellent commentary by Slesh and Tobi Wan, big props to those guys! You can also sign for beta or wait till the game is out later this year.
After "living DOTA" for a week I decided to resume playing it and I really enjoy it now. I'm really looking forward to playing this amazing game, so what's your opinion? Do you play it? Do you like the new graphics? Did you enjoy the International as much as I did?