Watch Blizzard play a couple of games of Heroes of the Storm

Blizzard's Dustin Browder teams up with shoutcaster, Husky, to bring us two entire games of Heroes of the Storm, played by the game's developers. Blizz's lane pusher, formerly Blizzard All-Stars, re-emerged at Blizzcon this year with new visuals and some ideas that should set it apart from Dota 2 and its ilk. There's no last-hitting, no denies, no items, and HotS will feature many different maps with their own rules. That's demonstrated nicely in the videos below, which show players gathering coins to pay off a ghost pirate, and gathering mystical symbols to curse the enemy team.

It looks like there's plenty of room for comebacks, but it's tricky to assess on a couple of games. The lack of items, economy (beyond magic pirate coins) and the shorter game length should make it a little friendlier to newcomers than its competitors, but you're still facing five heroes with five abilities that all look and behave completely differently, an upfront wall of complexity that's typical of the genre.

Heartheroes of the Swarmstorm is currently in alpha, but you can sign up for the upcoming beta on the official site .

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.