FBGR is back again! Welcome, welcome! In case this is your first time here, I'm NoCashReq, the humble host of your weekly peek into the crazy mixed-up world of Free-To-Play (FTP) online multiplayer games. This week I’ll be taking a look at:
That's right, we're diving into the world of MOBAs with the League! MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, and for strategy enthusiasts, this is one of the many game styles that will appeal to you. Players are broken into teams that compete for specific goals that win you the match. League of Legends (LOL) was developed and published by Riot Games in 2009, and is currently played in several e-sports leagues competitively around the world.
WARNING: I feel I must admit that this review is not entirely without bias. Not that I work for, or in any way profit from, Riot Games. Rather, I have played LOL for close to a year, so I can't really approach it with absolute objectivity. I love it, and I play it more than any other game. And so, you must take everything I am about to say with a grain of salt.
There.
You were warned.
Now onto the review!
BLUF:
This is a complex and surprisingly diverse game with a style to please virtually any gamer, especially those who love strategy. This is a somewhat difficult game to learn initially, but well worth the work to unlock the variety of available champions, runes, and masteries. Addictive, challenging, and guaranteed to never be the same match twice, LOL is only hampered by its occasional lags and glitches, which the company constantly works to correct.
SCORES:
- Playability: 4/5 This is not the easiest game to pick up and play. Remember way back when I talked about how if my wife could learn it, it would get a 5? Well, she tried. Just for me, she tried to learn. And she couldn't get it. For someone who has played a lot of games, you’ll pick up the controls fairly quickly, but if you've only ever played Solitaire on your computer, you will have to work to understand all the controls. The game does allow for a complete overhaul of the keysettings, and also has an option to use “smartcasting” that works well with several champions and simplifies playing.
- Atmospherics: 5/5 The look of this game is a unique blend of fantasy and steampunk, with a lot of variety. Each of the champions has at least three skins available, and the maps are great without being too distracting. The music is low key, and the announcer, text messages, and player interface are good without being too distracting. The only thing to complain about that I could find was that the skins are only available for cash, which is hardly worth complaining about because even the basic skins are good.
- Community: 3/5 There are just as many great players on this game as there are players that you want to leap through your modem into their living room and strangle them with their own mouse cable. Riot's “Tribunal” does help to curb some people's foul language and insulting habits, but don't be surprised if you need to “mute” someone's text comments to make it through the game with your temper in check.
- Learning Curve: 5/5 Part of the reason that the game is difficult to learn is that there is so much available to you strategy-wise that it's like drinking from a fire hose. There are (at the time of writing this) 92 champions to choose from, each with different abilities and play-styles, and more always on the way. You will not have trouble challenging yourself to continuously improve.
- Cash Value: 6/5 All of the things sold by Riot in the game store that affect gameplay are available without any cash investment. All of them. In addition, the experience and Influence Points (IP) boosts available are well priced for their value. And all of the champions and their skins eventually hit the rotating discounts, though the base costs are pretty reasonable.
- Support: 4/5 LOL regularly has issues with lag, glitches, abilities that don't interact right, and various other problems that will frustrate you at some point. The good thing is that Riot works to correct every problem brought to them, the glitches do get ironed out eventually, and constant tweaks to the game ensure that the playing field stays relatively even.
OVERALL: 27/30 Definitely worth trying out, the only gamers I can see that wouldn't like this game are the ones that only like to go it alone, as there is no real single player mode. This game will not let you get bored easily, and will likely continue to grow and develop. Try it. You'll like it.
BACKSTORY
The most amusing way to learn the backstory to this game is this 60 second video:
For those of you averse to videos, people talking really fast, or if your connection is acting up, here’s my stab at explaining the history behind the game.
The people of Runeterra have battled each other for ages, banding together in clans and countries and competing for land, resources, honor, and everything else imaginable. The primary form of combat was magical and the vast amounts of mystical energy being slung back and forth slowly began to tear the lands apart. Earthquakes and natural disasters became more and more prevalent until an alternative was suggested. Smaller battles in a controlled area, and limited to a handful of combatants, could be used to settle disputes, and limit the abuse to the the rest of the world. The Institute of War was created to house these battles, and thus the League of Legends was born. The countries of Demacia, Noxus, Ionia, separate city-states, and various other tribes and clans are regularly represented in the battles held there. Alliances between the factions are fluid, often changing from battle to battle. The only constant is that someone will win, and someone will lose.
TUTORIAL
The tutorial levels are designed to walk you through the basic concepts and controls used to play the game using one of the easier to understand champions, Ashe.
Ashe is an archer with cold based abilities, and is one of the recommended champs for new players. The standard keysettings place movement and basic attacks on the right button of your mouse, special abilities are triggered with Q, W, E, and R respectively, and if the ability is aimed, it is triggered with the left mouse button. Two “Summoner Spells” are also available, triggered on the D and F keys. These spells are available to all players, regardless of the champion you use, from a list of 14 spells (two of which are available only in standard matches, and one is only for the Capture-and-hold mode). The “announcer” for the regular matches instructs you during the tutorial and highlights the information it is trying to show you in a step-by-step method until it has covered the basic concepts, then it lets you find your own way to finish the levels. It introduces you to the minions (small bots that are periodically spawned, travel down the lanes on the map, and auto-attack the first enemy it runs into), turrets (stationary bots that have high health, a ranged attack, and will attack your champion if you are the only target in range or if you attack the enemy champion while in range), the inhibitors (strategic points in your enemy’s base that, if destroyed, cause your base to start spawning super minions), and the nexus (THE major strategic point, destroy this in a standard game and you win).
Once you’ve completed the tutorial, or if you want to skip it, there are two other modes that the game recommends for you to learn from before moving on to the PVP modes. Co-op vs AI will match you and four other players against an all bot team at either beginner or intermediate levels. Custom games also allow you to play against bots, however, you can use it to set up any number of variations, from 1v1 to a full 5v5, and with real players or bots filling any of the slots. For new players these two modes are fairly easy, allow for modest Experience and Influence Points (IP) earnings, and let you experiment with the free week champions against predictable enemies. The bots in Co-op are smarter than the custom games, with the intermediate bots being the most likely to act like a real player, but they generally stay to the lanes and will only chase you down past their minion wave to a certain point. One popular game style has developed in custom games, ARAM or All Random All Middle. All players are assigned one of their champions at random, and players adhere to an honor code of staying in only the center lane, and not retreating past their outermost functional turret.
PVP
The main part of the game is in the PVP matches. There are three maps available currently, and each has several options of set-up. Classic games can either be played 5v5 on the Summoner’s Rift map or 3v3 on the Twisted Treeline map. They can be played with normal champion selection, draft champion selection, or with ranked draft selection. 5v5 matches are used for several eSport tournaments around the world, and are usually what people consider a standard game.
The other available map is for Dominion games, called the Crystal Scar. Teams for Dominion are 5v5, and normal or draft selection are available. Unlike the other maps, Dominion is a capture-and-hold style, with five Nodes at the points of the pentagram shaped map. It’s a fast paced game, usually with lots of give and take, both in kills and node control. Holding more nodes erodes the points of the other team, and the more you have, the faster it goes.
Normal selection is probably the most common for all maps. Players on each team select at the same time, and don’t see the other team until the load screen. Both forms of draft are more competitive, as it allows each team to “ban” champions from use, and selection of both the bans and the champions to be used switches back and forth between teams. Also, only one of each champion is allowed in the game, so if the other team (or even one of your teammates) picks your favorite, you’d better have a backup. Teams are allowed to swap champions between two players who both have access to them, so early players picking for later teammates is possible.
Once past the set-up, there are a few major archetypes, but the overall progression is similar for all players. Champions start at level one (or three for Dominion) and with a small amount of gold. They gain experience and gold for killing minions, neutral monsters found in the jungle, turrets, inhibitors, and the enemy team. Each level they go up, they gain a skill point to activate or improve one of their four abilities. Gold is spent at the marketplace next to the spawn point to buy items that improve their stats and provide special abilities or effects. Many of the items are used to build better items, so early investments are converted to better gear as the game progresses. Winning in a Classic game is accomplished by destroying the enemy team’s nexus, and in Dominion it is accomplished by depleting the enemy team’s starting score of 500 to zero.
That’s the simple side of it. The really complex part comes from the team dynamics and from the overall strategy and coordination that a team puts together. In a standard game, do you split your team into two players top and bottom lanes and one middle, or do you have someone who will use the jungle as a “fourth lane.” In 3v3, are you two champs in the bottom lane and one top, or does someone want to try jungling here? Dominion games are so fluid it’s almost impossible to have a preset strategy, so you have to constantly have to readjust your thinking and your route of attack. Who will be your major “carry” characters, the ones who will deal the major amounts of damage and win the team fights for your team? What balance between Ability Power (AP) and Attack Damage (AD) characters will you have? The possibilities are endless.
WHO WILL YOU CHOOSE?
Individual choices are just as important. Summoners start at level one, and increase to level 30. This level carries over games, and unlocks additional mastery and rune options. Masteries are completely free points that are assigned before a match in the mastery trees (offense, defense, and support) to improve stats. Runes are purchased in the in-game store using IP, and again, boost stats. These are the first two pieces of what most players refer to as a champion’s “build.” The third part to that build is the items bought in game, and there are usually two or more builds that maximize your potential in a certain archetype for that champion. The most widely recognized archetypes are: AP Carry, focusing on building powerful abilities; AD Carry, which develops the speed and damage output of your auto-attacks and can be either ranged or melee depending on the champ; Tank, usually the initiator of major team fights, these characters can absorb massive amounts of damage and have some type of crowd control; Junglers, those champions that specialize in using the “fourth lane” to gain gold, experience and “gank”, or surprise attacks; Support Champions have healing and mana recouping powers and are usually matched with one of the carries; and lastly, Solo Lane Champions with high survivability, and can dish out enough damage to defend their lane by themselves. Some champions only really have one type that they fit, most have one or two strong archetypes. How you build defines your game strategy to some degree, and affects the team strategy. The variety of builds, combined with the fact that there are almost 100 champions means that it is very seldom for you to find any two games alike. Added to that is an option to set your abilities on a “smartcast” setting, where the computer will fire off the ability towards the cursor’s current location without left clicking, or self-cast if your cursor is over an invalid target. This allows you to snap off spells faster, but doesn’t work with all champion abilities. For those that it does work for, it can be extremely useful.
CASH VALUE
The market for League of Legends has the champions, variant skins, Summoner experience point boosters, IP Boosters, bundle deals, Runes, extra rune pages, etc. But here’s where this game earns extra credit: anything that directly affects gameplay can or, for runes, must be bought with Influence Points (IP), which are earned by playing the game. Match wins earn more points than losses, and the first win in a 24 hour period earns bonus IP on top of that. Each week there is a rotation of free champions that allows you to play with those you don’t have unlocked, and champions can be unlocked for permanent access with either IP or cash. That means that although you will see people who shell out money for every new champion or to get the cool looks of a special skin, you won’t run into anyone who has “paid to win,” nor will you ever need to pay to fill your runes or get all the champions you like. EVER. In addition, if you do shell out some greenbacks, Riot regularly has champions and skins on sale, and older champions have been reduced in price, so if you watch for it, you can get some champs for a steal.
The EXP and IP boosts are also reasonably priced, and have two different options of depletion. You can either get boosts that have a time limit (# of days) or boosts that only apply when you win (# of wins). And if you buy both the timed and win boosts they stack on each other, so no matter how often you play or how good you are, the boosts are a good investment.
CONCLUSION
Go download this game; it is definitely worth your time. Hours, days, and even months of fun and addictive gameplay are in store for you.
Later this week, I’ll sum up the four games this month, let you know which game will be the long review for next month, and tune in next week when I review the chibi heavy Elsword.
Till then!
[NoCashReq has left the room.]
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