I haven’t played it in a while (due to performance issues,) but I remember parrying in Deadlock being really satisfying. The timing was so generous, and led to mind games, fakeouts, mixups and all kinds of shenanigans about when you parry, bait parry, hold parry so the enemy doesn’t know if you’ll parry, training the enemy to expect when you’ll parry before changing when you parry. And because melee isn’t the only focus in combat, it made it a nice skill expression without being a win button.

I personally think MOBA should be used to broadly describe a style of game rather than what’s done while playing it. I know that when Riot coined the term, they were referring to games like DotA, LoL, etc.; to me the whole approach to a match’s flow is echoed similarly enough throughout multiple games, that applying the term MOBA to other games is a logical extension.

To me a game is a MOBA if:

• The way to interact with it is primarily designed around playing with other players online (the M and O of MOBA.)
• The goals of the players are against the goals of other players — ie. it’s competitive rather than cooperative (the B of MOBA.)
• Any player at the beginning of a match has access to all the same options as any other player. This one is a little more vague, but as the A in MOBA stands for arena, I imagine it like a group of gladiators standing before a communal weapon rack that they’ll all pick from; no one has any options that the others don’t have access to.

Following these criteria, something like Overwatch is a MOBA, as is DotA, and ironically LoL isn’t as you have to unlock options meaning you don’t satisfy the arena condition. To differentiate games like DotA, Smite, Awesomenauts, Deadlock, etc., I prefer the term lane-pusher as that’s a lot more specific and understandable.

Does it really matter what it’s called? Not really. I mostly just do it so I can feel superior to Riot for coming up with a vague term that is applied, how I deem, incorrectly, while also excluding their own game from the term that they made to describe it.

I feel like I’m the only one who prefers the original, gamecube controls. Playing through the switch remake, I played with the new controls for, like, 10 minutes before switching to the original control scheme and playing the rest of the game with it.

Awesomenauts

It’s a 3v3 2D platformer lane-pusher with an art style reminiscent of a saturday-morning cartoon. The upgrade system is very simple compared to other lane-pushers, and the games tend to go a lot quicker (15-25 minutes.) It’s very intuitive to get into, but still has room for a lot of expression of skill.

Unfortunately Ronimo (the company who made it) went bankrupt in late August, so the matchmaking server went down in September; but recently Atari bought the rights to the IP, so it’s possible it will come back soon.