Lord of Legends -- RTS Lite

Continuing my series on games that you'll love, but you wont want to play at a club, I've got to thank Bobby Canciello for introducing me to my newest addiction: League of Legends.  LoL is a free-to-play, pay-for-bonuses RTS-lite game based on the Warcraft series.  You play as a summoner -- ie -- a player.  It's relatively simple, and because of that simplicity, it's really fun to zone out playing for a while.

Dun dun duuuuuuunnnn......

Most RTS games (real time strategy, for any n00bs reading this) for me are too much.  If you mention Starcraft, I know about zerging but by the third level of the campaign, I'm just so flustered trying to micro-manage every aspect of the game that I lose horribly and feel like an idiot.  But in LoL, you only control one unit directly, so there's no getting overwhelmed.  The goal is to destroy your enemies' nexus, the central power hub for their forces, which spawns minions during the game.  The waves of minions are the majority of your force, and you generally use your champion to go in for the kill.

The game is deceptively simple, though.  As you trek across the map, you've got about 6 commands to worry about, and that's it.  You'll attack enemy minions, enemy champions, and turrets -- standard defense towers -- en route to the big kills.  Taking out one of three enemy inhibitors allows your nexus to spawn stronger minions, and taking out the nexus wins the game.  If your champion is injured, you can recall him to your base, heal up, buy a new item, and go back into battle.  If he's killed, you wait until he respawns at your base, which, of course, gets to be a longer and longer wait as the game goes on.

A group of minions led by Ashe assault a turret.

Defeating enemies earns your champion experience, which in turn makes him stronger.  That part is pretty standard.  But what amazes me is the variety of play styles in champions.  At any give time, there are a handful of free "loaner" champions (though you can permanently unlock champions for play by buying them with money or points you've accrued through game play), and each one is unique.  For instance, I can't play as Nunu the yeti-riding gnome to save my life.  He's big, dumb, and hits like a ton of bricks, but I just can't get him to do anything quick enough to stop him from just getting destroyed.  If I get my hands on Teemo, the scout, however, you're f*cked.  I'll zip around the map firing poison darts as needed, slaughtering every minion on your team, and picking off your champions with my dots (damage over time) before you realize what's going on.

And really, what makes the game particularly worthwhile is that it's 100% completely free if all you want to do is download and play.  And really, I can't argue with a price tag like that.  Even if you don't like fantasy, don't like real time games, and don't like Warcraft, you can still try it out, because there's no reason not to play the next time you've got nothing to do.

Oh, and add me.  My gamertag is Sheito.  So you can find out whether or not I'm all talk.  ;)

This is the face of your demise.  His name is Teemo.

PARTY NEWS

Check out Hardcore this Wednesday Night!  Video games, booze, and drag queens!

Hardcore!

and Going Viral with Misty Meaner

Vlada Lounge (51st St between 8th and 9th Aves)

10:00 pm

Since Misty has a viral theme, I thought we would, too.  So we're doing Left4Dead.  But I always have Smash Bros on hand, because Smash Bros is like condoms.  You never know when you're going to play, so you should always be prepared!  And continuing the viral theme, I'm going to have Pokemon with chlamydia on hand.  ... Super chlamydia.  Your Pokemon will recover, but in the meantime, it'll gain double EVs.  I'll be trading them over to anyone who wants one, and I'll even explain what Pokerus actually is. ... Though I prefer this interpretation.