League of Legends

My boss at work actually suggested League of Legends last week.. I took no notice the first time he mentioned it because I thought he was talking about one of the many Facebook games he’s suggested in the past.  Then I saw a screenshot..

Back at i39, I played Heroes of Newerth.. under beta, which is why it didn’t appear in the blog despite the many, many hours played following lan.  At a first glance, I thought LoL looked very like HoN.

Like HoN, there are two opposing teams headed by up to five player-controlled champions, bases at opposite sides of the map, and paths linking the two bases.  Minions for each team are spawned at intervals, and spend their lives pushing their way towards the enemy base, fighting the enemy minions and destroying turrets along the way.
At the end of each lane there is an inhibitor; if your minions destroy the enemy inhibitor, you get super minions..

Unlike HoN, the inhibitors respawn after a little while, which means you can still make a comeback..
Of course, the game’s all over if you destroy the enemy Nexus 🙂

Another difference is that you can choose any Champion regardless of team.. with HoN, you were restricted to Legion or Hellbourne heroes, though there were a lot more to choose from.  Different Champions are available for free each week, though you can unlock more with Riot Points, which you buy with real money, or Influence Points, earned simply through playing.. we dubbed these ‘Internet Points’. 🙂

The Champion I’ve been using for these last few games is the assassin Akali.  I really like her abilities, and tend to use second ability Twilight Shroud, which slows any enemies within it, then Crescent Slash to damage anyone within range, then Shadow Dance to jump straight on an enemy Champion, escpecially if they’re trying to run away.

I’m finding the range of items in-game a bit easier than I did with HoN, though whether it’s down to it being simpler or just because I’ve learned a lot more about stats from playing WoW, I’m not sure.

League of Legends is free to play.. go and try it out! 😉

i-39!

Sleeping outdoors at the beginning of April isn’t normally something I’d recommend.  However, sleeping outdoors because you’re attending a Multiplay i-series LAN party is fine – and exactly what we were doing this last weekend.

We arrived around 1pm on Thursday, to find ourselves amongst the first there.  Happily this meant we were able to register in just 10 minutes, including the time it took for the database to be rebooted.. a huge improvement on i-37, where we waited for over two hours in the queue!
We then set up our tents in a nice spot by the old grandstand, finishing just in time for it to start throwing it down!

After that it was a matter of waiting for our friends to arrive, set up their tents, and find our way to the pub for a bit before the event was properly opened up.

There were also some nice new hoodies for members of CantFitMyN, with names on the back and smaller logos with initials on the front.  This resulted in a game of “spell rude words with our initials for the camera”, pictures of which I won’t be adding here 😉

Along with the rest of the clan, we took over one end of the first floor of the Grandstand, and it was clean, undisturbed and fairly quiet, until Sunday night’s chatroulette antics from the row behind us, at which point we couldn’t hear ourselves speak for the screams coming from this group..  Otherwise, a damn good spot, worth trying to bag again for i-40!

So, normally there are a few new games which grab my interest at lan.  This time it was Heroes of Newerth (beta), which I’m told is virtually a clone of Warcraft III’s DoTA mod.  I’ve not tried that mod so I’m not going to make any comparisons, but I have to say I loved playing this game despite the kickings I’ve had this far. 🙂

The weekend was wrapped up with a massive battle on TF2, with CantFitMyN managing to win their first game against Crazy / inv .. though possibly due to having a few more players on the team!