Genesis (PS4) Review

 

Genesis was a PS4 exclusive MOBA game, that shutdown on the 10th of April 2022. It had previously released in March 2019 and was one of the few classic MOBAs on console. Genesis was therefore one of the pioneers, that proved that games with the gameplay complexity of League of Legends or DOTA could be brought to a console and be played with a gamepad too. There were apparently also PC and XBOX versions of Genesis planed as well, but they at some point along the way got cancelled (probably due to unsatisfactory financial success).

The gameplay of Genesis is as mentioned indeed quite similar to those of LOL and DOTA. Every player takes on a hero, that he chooses before the match, and has to help his team conquer one of the three lanes on every map to reach the enemies capital and destroy their home base in order to win. Alternatively a side can also win in Genesis by killing 60 players of the other team (in case both teams neutralize each other during the match). Players can feed up Bots on the lanes or in the surrounding areas to level up, become stronger and purchase helpful items. The only real downside of the Genesis gameplay is the slow movement speed of the characters. It can sometimes look like they are running in slow motion. I know that most MOBAs don't have the highest movement speed, but Genesis seems even slower.

One of the other differences to classic PC MOBAs is also that Genesis requires far less buttons and actions. There are only 4 different abilities, which is noticeably less than in most other games. The controls therefore work fine with a gamepad and are not too complicated. Combinations of abilities and items also seem to be less important than in the most of the other competitive MOBAs. Genesis could generally be described as a bit simpler in its gameplay, but it seems to work fine nonetheless. The devs also enabled chats through voice pings to compensate the lack of a keyboard within console games, which generally makes chatting through non-verbal forms difficult, which is something quite common in PC MOBAs.

A standout feature and the reason why I got interested in the game was its Story Campaign. Players could complete different scenarios with any of the multiplayer heroes and there were even cutscenes tying the story together. That being said the campaign didn't look like it would have been good enough to sell it on its own. Missions objectives were rather simple, like defeat this boss or defend against x amount of enemy waves. Non-spoken dialogues were very difficult to read during combat, they could have definitely implemented that better. The campaign could also be played with an online friend in a coop-mode, which is nice. Overall it was nonetheless pretty cool and unique to see a PVE campaign in a MOBA, even though the quality left to be desired. 

Genesis featured 33 different heroes. In the last months of the game all heroes were available for free, but for a long time characters were locked behind a paywall. Some could be unlocked via ingame currency, like in League of Legends for example, but some could sadly only be accessed via money transfers. Such a system is obviously not optimal, if the game isn't 100% balanced. I couldn't fully judge the hero balance, because they game shutdown a short time after I started playing. I have however heard, that Genesis had severe Balancing issues. Some characters were simply OP in comparison to others. Perfect balance obviously can never be achieved, but that would have been a massive flaw.

Fun fact: There was gimmick hero called Mitch&Cuth in Genesis, that could only be played with 2 controllers. You required two humans to play him, which is very funny, but obviously also rather unpractical and more of a Meme/Joke. One player controlled the movement, the other the abilities. At least it was certainly unique.

The visuals of Genesis were generally quite good for a MOBA. I wouldn't call them amazing by any means, but they were probably better than those of some of the older more popular PC MOBAs. Movement and fighting animations also looked alright.

My biggest problems with Genesis were technical issues. At least a year before the final shutdown, US and EU servers were already turned down. All players therefore had to connect to Chinese servers, which made most multiplayer matches for me nearly unplayable. The Ping was so high, that I could barely move along the lanes. Many matches also simply refused to start and even needed to queue a couple of times to play campaign missions. These technical problems shouldn't have been the case.

 

Pro:

- Satisfactory implementation of a console MOBA

- Additional Story Campaign

- Good visuals

 

Contra:

- Balancing issues (Heroes + Paying for Unlocks)

- Too slow movement speed

- Technical Problems (Chinese servers etc.)

 

Result:

Genesis was a decent competitor to Smite, which so far has and still is dominating the console MOBA scene. Genesis proved, that you could also implement a classic MOBA on a Playstation and therefore already deserves a lot of respect. An additional PVE Campaign in a multiplayer focused game is also a real strong asset. The implementation however wasn't optimal and Balancing as well as Technical problems prevented the game from becoming a success. I am admittedly not a MOBA fan, but Genesis was nonetheless a fun game, that would have deserved a bit more recognition.

 

6.25/10