Bandango
08-22-2010, 05:00 PM
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=4512
Know what game is great? Starcraft 2 is great. I’ve been playing it for weeks and I played the hell out of the beta weeks before that. I’ve finished the single player. I’ve played the multiplayer… quite a bit of it in fact. I prefer Protoss. I tech straight to warp gates and mass stalkers and zealots, put a pylon outside of my opponents base, and research blink and charge if the game lasts long enough. But recently my losses started to outweigh my wins, so I began nosing around custom matches looking for something a little different. Tower defense, Nexus Wars, Starship Troopers: intrepid mod makers have already unleashed an onslaught of interesting new gametypes. Then I tried a DOTA variant. And it was good.
For those of you who don’t know, DOTA stands for Defense of the Ancients, a mod originally released for Warcraft 3. A twist on tower defense games, players take control of a single hero unit with special skills and abilities that are governed by mana and cool down timers. These heroes gain levels and gold through kills; gold is spent on stat-boosting equipment and XP is spent on new skills. It’s your job to lead these units against waves of enemy NPCs and opposing heroes. Slowly, if all goes well, you and your teammates destroy the turrets that defend the enemy’s base. Once the turrets are destroyed, their base is at your mercy. Destroying enemy structures spawns more powerful allied NPCs to aid in your attack, and soon, with any luck, the enemy's base will lie in ruins and victory will be yours. If you play recklessly, prepare for defeat. This fledgling genre was not new to me--I’ve heard of DOTA and Heroes of Newerth and Demigod--but this was my first taste. I haven’t touched Stracraft 2’s multiplayer since. But, soon, even SC2's DOTA wasn't enough to sate me. I needed more.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=4510
I prefer the champion Heimerdinger, layer-downer of pesky turrets.
So, being a gamer of limited means, the natural choice for me was to download League of Legends, a free-to-play microtransaction DOTA title that was designed with the help of the creator of the original DOTA mod for Warcraft 3. Ryan Scott’s (http://www.geekbox.net) constant praise for this game has tempted me to try it in the past, but I never bit. I’m so glad that I finally did. I’m hooked. It follows the DOTA model that I described in the previous paragraph, but unlike the SC2 mod, it’s built from the ground up to be DOTA. The niggling little bugs and eccentricities associated with mods are absent, and everything that I wanted to see fleshed out is. A massive array of items is at your disposal. What you buy dramatically changes the way you play any given hero, and sometimes prudent purchasing can mean the difference between winning a match and losing. You choose your hero from a roster of 10, which may not sound like too many, but each week that roster changes, offering 10 random new heroes from a pool of almost 60. Even if you resist the temptation to bust out your credit card, there’s plenty to keep you occupied for a very long time.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=4508
This happens often.
If you're the type of person who likes to have everything, you can purchase heroes with real money, either by bulk in character packs or one at a time. You can also purchase a wide variety of cosmetic skins for your characters, if you're so inclined. Thankfully, Riot, the studio behind League of Legends, saw fit to give cheap gamers like me the chance to do the same, except with fake money. As this is a column about free games, I just want to say that League of Legends is very accommodating to players who choose to play for free. Anything that can be purchased with real money can be bought with in-game money (except cosmetic skins), and any items that have in-game effects can only be purchased with in-game money. The only catch is that it takes quite a while to accrue that in-game cash. I've been playing steadily for about a week and I'm still short of what it costs to buy a half-priced hero.
Matches also reward your summoner profile--basically your account--with XP. As you gain XP, your profile gains levels. Each level unlocks a new special ability that can be used to save your butt in game, abilities like heal, mana recharge, etc. Their cooldown times are prohibitively long, so they're best reserved for emergencies. Between matches you can also assign points to a talent tree that is strikingly similar to WoW’s, and, from what I understand, runes can be purchased with in-game cash that can be equipped for further buffs. I haven't messed around too much with all that, but I’m only level 8. We’ll see what happens. At this point, I'm still too low leveled to join ranked matches, but, barring some major tragedy like a job or homework, it won't be too long until I can. Uh oh.
League of Legends is...
addictive.
worthy of a full priced release.
open to cheapskates and compulsive shoppers alike.
Get it here:
http://www.leagueoflegends.com/
Know what game is great? Starcraft 2 is great. I’ve been playing it for weeks and I played the hell out of the beta weeks before that. I’ve finished the single player. I’ve played the multiplayer… quite a bit of it in fact. I prefer Protoss. I tech straight to warp gates and mass stalkers and zealots, put a pylon outside of my opponents base, and research blink and charge if the game lasts long enough. But recently my losses started to outweigh my wins, so I began nosing around custom matches looking for something a little different. Tower defense, Nexus Wars, Starship Troopers: intrepid mod makers have already unleashed an onslaught of interesting new gametypes. Then I tried a DOTA variant. And it was good.
For those of you who don’t know, DOTA stands for Defense of the Ancients, a mod originally released for Warcraft 3. A twist on tower defense games, players take control of a single hero unit with special skills and abilities that are governed by mana and cool down timers. These heroes gain levels and gold through kills; gold is spent on stat-boosting equipment and XP is spent on new skills. It’s your job to lead these units against waves of enemy NPCs and opposing heroes. Slowly, if all goes well, you and your teammates destroy the turrets that defend the enemy’s base. Once the turrets are destroyed, their base is at your mercy. Destroying enemy structures spawns more powerful allied NPCs to aid in your attack, and soon, with any luck, the enemy's base will lie in ruins and victory will be yours. If you play recklessly, prepare for defeat. This fledgling genre was not new to me--I’ve heard of DOTA and Heroes of Newerth and Demigod--but this was my first taste. I haven’t touched Stracraft 2’s multiplayer since. But, soon, even SC2's DOTA wasn't enough to sate me. I needed more.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=4510
I prefer the champion Heimerdinger, layer-downer of pesky turrets.
So, being a gamer of limited means, the natural choice for me was to download League of Legends, a free-to-play microtransaction DOTA title that was designed with the help of the creator of the original DOTA mod for Warcraft 3. Ryan Scott’s (http://www.geekbox.net) constant praise for this game has tempted me to try it in the past, but I never bit. I’m so glad that I finally did. I’m hooked. It follows the DOTA model that I described in the previous paragraph, but unlike the SC2 mod, it’s built from the ground up to be DOTA. The niggling little bugs and eccentricities associated with mods are absent, and everything that I wanted to see fleshed out is. A massive array of items is at your disposal. What you buy dramatically changes the way you play any given hero, and sometimes prudent purchasing can mean the difference between winning a match and losing. You choose your hero from a roster of 10, which may not sound like too many, but each week that roster changes, offering 10 random new heroes from a pool of almost 60. Even if you resist the temptation to bust out your credit card, there’s plenty to keep you occupied for a very long time.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=4508
This happens often.
If you're the type of person who likes to have everything, you can purchase heroes with real money, either by bulk in character packs or one at a time. You can also purchase a wide variety of cosmetic skins for your characters, if you're so inclined. Thankfully, Riot, the studio behind League of Legends, saw fit to give cheap gamers like me the chance to do the same, except with fake money. As this is a column about free games, I just want to say that League of Legends is very accommodating to players who choose to play for free. Anything that can be purchased with real money can be bought with in-game money (except cosmetic skins), and any items that have in-game effects can only be purchased with in-game money. The only catch is that it takes quite a while to accrue that in-game cash. I've been playing steadily for about a week and I'm still short of what it costs to buy a half-priced hero.
Matches also reward your summoner profile--basically your account--with XP. As you gain XP, your profile gains levels. Each level unlocks a new special ability that can be used to save your butt in game, abilities like heal, mana recharge, etc. Their cooldown times are prohibitively long, so they're best reserved for emergencies. Between matches you can also assign points to a talent tree that is strikingly similar to WoW’s, and, from what I understand, runes can be purchased with in-game cash that can be equipped for further buffs. I haven't messed around too much with all that, but I’m only level 8. We’ll see what happens. At this point, I'm still too low leveled to join ranked matches, but, barring some major tragedy like a job or homework, it won't be too long until I can. Uh oh.
League of Legends is...
addictive.
worthy of a full priced release.
open to cheapskates and compulsive shoppers alike.
Get it here:
http://www.leagueoflegends.com/