I'm sure that, like snowflakes or explanations for the finale of Lost, no two DOTA games are alike. But when a non-DOTA player like me sees a pair of group shots of DOTA games, I can't help but wonder about the range of visual variation in one of gaming's hottest genres.

These shots show, clockwise, Warcraft III DOTA, Heroes of Newerth, alleged DOTA 2 screenshots, and League of Legends. They were cobbled together by a DOTA fan named Illien on a DOTA message board.

Illien obviously knows his or her stuff. Me? I'm just now learning that every DOTA game has got to have that map where the river runs diagonal near the grass. If you do enlarge the images, though, you begin to see some differences. If the bottom-right game really is Valve's DOTA 2, for example, then their game has a softer look than the competition.

Fans of the genre, do you actually see the variety in these games that you want? Do I just sound like one of those cranky know-nothings who belches that every first-person shooter is the same because they all have iron sights and the color gray?

DOTA2 ingame photos (DB/SF/VS/Rosh+Hero list!) [PlayDota.com Forums]