In which I talk about how League of Legends is played.
Imagine taking your guy from a Diablo style game, and plopping him down on in the middle of an RTS map where two people are currently playing against each other. Your job is to take your one guy, and together with the might of an army that you can't control, but whose actions you can use to your advantage, and help one side win. Yours is a hero unit capable of slaying mass numbers of the ordinary units of either side, and you act as the tie-breaker in this struggle, taking out defensive turrets and clearing the way for your side's army to infiltrate and destroy the enemy base. Your hero has several active abilities and can purchase equipment at a shop with gold found on felled enemy units, a lot like they might in a Diablo style game, and together with your team of other action-RPG refugees, you are a force to be reckoned with. The other side of the conflict also has such a team.
...and that's League of Legends (and DOTA, Demigod, and Heroes of Newerth). It's pretty cool.
I polished off FFT: TWotL last night. I've started games of it a few times since finishing it for the first time on the PSX, but had never actually followed all the way through to the end again until this time. I have to admit that I trucked it through the last quarter of the game in order to finish before an imminent release, but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. It was so great to read through a not only competent, but extremely well done localization of what is without a doubt the best story to ever carry the Final Fantasy name. It also happens to be the game in the series with the gameplay that best holds up a number of years on. Maybe that is due to being in a small and sparsely populated genre, but a few niggling things aside (really, no option to quit to the main menu from a battle gone awry?), this is all the game and more that first graced us over a decade ago. And to throw one more wrench in the works, I noticed something in the final scene which I didn't back in 1998, and has redefined the entire ending for me. Mind blown. Do yourself a favor and play this game if you own a PSP and have not yet. If I might offer some advice: keep your army as small as possible, and cross train them in as many jobs as possible. I tried to have one guy in every job slot, and not only was it impossible to keep everyone leveled up, it was a major pain trying to outfit everyone with good gear, too.
The imminent release I mentioned just now is of course, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I have beside me now, and which I will begin tonight. I don't think I've been this excited for a new release since Mass Effect 2. Here's hoping we've finally gotten the Castlevania we've all been waiting for!
2 comments:
Why is it that half of us will never see Chapter 8 of Castlevania? Is it hard or are you assuming many of us just won't pick up the title?
That's my jab at the game's detractors in the gaming community at large.
Not because it's hard (though it is pretty hard on Knight), but because I don't think most people will stick with the game long enough to get to the good parts.
The consensus seems to be (and I agree), that the first couple of chapters don't put the game's best foot forward, so I can understand people being underwhelmed for the first 2-3 hours of the game, until you really start to have to dig in to the combat system and the levels start to get a lot cooler. Even worse, the demo (as I understand it) is just the first couple of levels of the game, which hardly show off anything worth talking about, and are bogged down in tutorial type stuff, to boot.
These issues are definitely the fault of the developers--not the players or media, and it's really a shame, because there are great things in this game that many people won't see, and word won't get out because people aren't hooked right off the bat.
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