League of Legends Re-Review
League of Legends ReviewNew Review 2012 Publisher: Riot Games Genre: MOBA |
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League of Legends is one of the first wave of games that took the MOBA genre mainstream. After years of the DotA mod taking names and breaking hearts, LoL (as it’s affectionately known) was an attempt at making the genre standalone and it was a complete success, becoming a staple of online PC gaming (of course, you’ve read our history of the genre and know all this, right?). Since then there has become a constant influx of new games to the genre, but Legends has remained important, well-populated and relevant. Does it still measure up to what the genre has become? We took a look to find out. This is our second review of League of Legends and first in 2012.
League of Legends Review - Video Review of LoL
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Cel-shaded Graphics – League of Legends might not have the graphical power behind it to compete with new games in the genre (including the stunning looking DotA 2 from Valve) but it does have one thing going for it – a unique, stunning looking cel-shaded graphical style that suits it perfectly and is a joy to look at.
Plenty to Do – There’s always plenty to do in a MOBA game – part of the fun is unlocking new things and experimenting with different methods of playing. League of Legends embraces that entirely, with a huge variety of options and things to do. If you want to unlock everything, you’ll probably need to bring your wallet, but for the most dedicated LoL players, you won’t find yourself finished for a long, long time.
Gameplay adjustments for fair competition - Riot Games is doing a great job with League of Legends gameplay updates to keep the competition at a fair level. They keep releasing gameplay adjustments. They follow the community and when there is a clear problem with a champion, which causes an imbalance between champions or cause significant advantage or disadvantage to a particular champion, they release another update to address the issue. From what we have seen so far, they have been able to keep the competitive balance between most champions in League of Legends.
Where are the Heroes? – It’s difficult to get too excited about a game in this genre that withholds characters from free-only players. It was an issue in Heroes of Newerth and they fixed it. You can unlock characters through hard work if you choose, but by the time you’ve earned enough you’ll probably have decided which characters you like and are decent enough with them that you probably won’t want to explore other avenues too much.
Narration – I’ve recently decided that the narrator for these games is one of the worst things about the genre. It’s a necessary evil, a way to know what’s going on while at the same time a way to be annoyed out of your skin. Repetition, repetition, repetition – oh boy does the ice wear thin, but I can’t think of a better way of delivering the news and I can’t imagine what the game would be like without it. It’s the very definition of our neutral point.
League of Legends Interfacing – Having played Heroes of Newerth and DotA 2 religiously over the last few weeks, coming to League of Legends definitely feels like a step back in terms of actually doing things. Almost everything you’ll come across in a game (or out of it) will feel like it’s been improved upon elsewhere, and, considering this is part of a genre designed to streamline something more complicated, it feels overly stuffy in its interface.
League of Legends Balancing – It might just be the luck of the draw here, but playing League of Legends sometimes makes me wonder about the balancing of the heroes. Some games have champions that seem so overpowered from the get go that there’s no way you can fight them. The downside is I suspect the better characters are of the paid-for variety, butI’d need to look into it a bit more before deciding if that was the case.
League of Legends Community – It’s the traditional MOBA complaint and it’s a perfectly valid one. Anonymity means that the people you play with can be and will be utterly terrible. It’s a problem that’s been solved by a decent report system (and the reminder of such a system) in DotA 2, but if you play League of Legends at any level expect to be insulted if you at all differ from their idea of how you should be playing. Somebody really needs to teach the LoL community how to converse with others. For now though, avoid if you’re not thick skinned.
Conclusion
Despite this being one of the original stand-alone MOBA games and perhaps the one that really kick-started the genres popularity, it feels tired now. I know there are thousands of fans that would disagree with me, but playing it makes me feel that League of Legends 2 is long overdue and would breath a bit of fresh air into a game that desperately needs something of a spring clean. Of course, given that the genre is what it is and that there are so many similar games out there, it seems useless to suggest a sequel and there’ll come a point (probably as DotA 2 is officially released and polished up) that a game like this will become yesterday’s news.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game though and it’s still well worth your time and effort. Just not your money. There are other options I’d rather try first.
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