Written by Citizen Alpha Thursday, 08 April 2010 01:08

To be completely upfront and honest I was never much of a Blizzard fan beyond Warcraft 2 and the Diablo serious of “inventory manager” hack and slash games but for the sake of trying new things I downloaded and gave League of Legends a shot.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it is and despite sucking pretty bad at the game early on I find it really growing on me.  It’s not really an RTS game, it’s barely an RPG game, but it does a lot to capture this arcade like almost old school in depth game atmosphere that’s very well polished.  You can’t beat the free price tag either.

The game is the spiritual successor of the wildly popular Warcraft 3 scenario Defense of the Ancients (or DotA).  You start by creating an overall account with League of Legends that accrues experience as you play matches.  You have a Warcraft style skill tree that you can apply mastery points towards as you level up.  You also earn Influence Points (or IP) as you progress which can be used to buy runes, which act as passive power ups in game or champions.

Champions are you’re in game presence for that particular match.  The only thing you technically control.  When a match begins you choose from a list of available champions and each has their own set of abilities, strengths, and weaknesses causing a wide array of match ups and strategy.  The actual game play is a strange mash up of tower defense and hack and slash RPG.  Your champions level up and can quickly purchase passive inventory items as the match progresses but always start at level one and an empty pack each and every match with the attributes of your overall account applied.

Waves of minions sweep across the map on timed intervals creating a push and shove match between the opposing sides with the human champions on each side dictating the overall success of the battle.  It all sounds a little confusing at first and because of the wide variety of champions you can choose from the tactics you can employ are pretty vast and I’ve only scrapped the surface.  A couple friends and I from here on the CCN forums and the Narcotic Brotherhood played a few quick games last night and despite our lack of power gaming experience managed to win all our matches.

This was a nice change of pace for me because I’m used to these types of games rewarding those that power game away until casual gamers can’t compete or have fun anymore.  Coordinating our efforts over vent as to the whereabouts of the other teams champions, where to push, calling targets, and complimenting each others abilities was our key to victory.  If you’re interested in joining up with us check out our League of Legends thread here, friend us in game, and we’ll be more than happy to brawl with you.

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