League of Muffins

Ok, first off, it doesn't really matter what your opinions, views, or legal codes say about digital property rights; what matters is that the entertainment industry today is vastly different than it was fifteen, ten, or even five years ago.  And this, is one sad fact that most, nay, nearly all, major digital entertainment companies seems to be putting every effort into ignoring.  However, not all companies have stuck their heads in the sand in the hopes that the existence of a post-scarcity entertainment industry will go unnoticed by the masses.  And that brings us to Riot Games.  The fine boys and girls who have enriched our lives by bringing us League of Legends.  

Now, onto what League of Legends is, and why you should care.  

Well, first off, this is what the gameplay kinda looks like.

League of Legends is, technically, a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena)- a genre both created, defined and popularized by the Warcraft III mod that you're probably sick of hearing about by now: DotA.  What I might more correctly classify LoL as is this: a stay at home sport.  Why?  Because it plays more like an actual sports match than a typical videogame.  Now, I've also slightly sabotaged my definition by saying "typical videogame" because the obvious response is to simply say that the "stay at home sport" thing is complete bollocks and that it is, simply, an a-typical videogame.  Well, you could reason that way if you want, but honestly, both the gameplay and the meta-game of LoL more closely resemble a hockey season than any other online/multiplayer videogame that exists, except StarCraft but that only counts if you're Korean (ok, and all those other games that are "just-like" LoL, but for sake of argument and the earlier reference to a post-scarcity entertainment industry, I'll ignore them because LoL works better as an example).  

Yes, that is a real LoL champion
and No, sadly it's not actually Articuno.
But hey, that's never stopped me from yelling at it to use ICE BEAM attack in a fight
and it shouldn't stop you either.

As far as gameplay is concerned, league of legends controls similarly to your typical RTS game, except for the part where you control a single unit.  The difference between LoL and an RTS is how you use that unit.  In LoL your unit is a "Hero", or "Champion", or "More-Important-Than-That-Other-Guy" type and you must level them up, make them more powerful, buy items for them, and use their levels, powers and items to pwn the "Heroes" on the other team.   Sounds simple, yes?  Well, if you think so, go play a game (I mean, for fucks's sake, it's free, you should actually go play a game).  Ok, now that you've been raped, called a noob, blamed for single-handedly ruining your entire team's game and for creepily inappropriate relations with the mothers of people you don't know, you'll see how inapplicable "simple" is for describing this game.  What really defines LoL is that every champion plays differently, both in subtle ways and in drastic you-feel-like-you-don't-know-how-to-play-the-game-anymore ways.  And that every champion can be played in more than one "right" way, even if you're called a noob for trying the other ways.  Now this brings about the second level of complexity in LoL's gameplay: because every champion plays differently, every champion has a different role in the TEAM.  Oh, yes, now you're starting to see.  Every player has a different role in furthering the TEAM's goals, and not the INDIVIDUAL's goals.  MUCH LIKE A REAL SPORT.  And, might I add, exactly unlike games such as, oh, I don't know, *cough*halo*cough*.  So now, you not only have multiple champions and playstyles to master, but different roles that you may end up needing to fill.  Oh hey, it's like it's a game that you need to legitimately master to be good at and not some instant-gratification headshot based shooter.  Now isn't that a novelty?

But, gameplay aside, LoL is also doing something else that the 'mainstream' game industry really, really, needs to adopt, particularly on the console level.  

And that thing is FREE.

But yes, you can play as the creepy little girl
that summons a giant ass demon-teddy-bear from hell to tear her enemy's faces off.
So, Articuno: No, Demon-Teddy: Yes
And that was your daily lesson in compromise.

Now, before you start yelling about how online piracy is/is-not stealing or is/is-not related to the flying spaghetti monster, lets get back to that idea of a post-scarcity entertainment industry i mentioned a while ago.  A simple way of explaining what that means is that, if I were to, hypotherically give you a laptop, theoretically unlimited storage and massive internet bandwidth and challenge you to download all of "X" in a year, do you know how much "X" you could download?  If you answered with anything other than ALL OF THE "X".  You're wrong.  And the reason is simple, all you need for getting all of the "whatever the hell you were after that I probably don't want to know about considering that this IS the internet after all" is effectively copy/paste.  Another example is this.  I have music on my computer, imagine that.  Now, as far as digital property rights go, I think I'm technically only supposed to have one copy of an album on here at a time that I legitimately bought (although, even that's debateable as the IRAA has sued people over ripping music off of CD's they've bought onto their computers for their personal use, but, legal insanity and corporate mind-fuxored ass-clowns aside), BUT, what happens if I do copy/paste of the album?  I can haz over 9,000 albums?  YIS!  I CANZ!  But... what did that really gain me?  Jack-shit.  That's what..  Why?  because ANYONE can do that.  Would it make sense?  No.  But point is, digital media costs effectively nothing to reproduce.  There's no manufacturing costs, no personnel involved, just copy/paste.  And this is what's killing the mainstream digital entertainment industry: people have realized this.  And more importantly, people have realized that paying a massive one-time lump sum of money for something that costs effectively nothing to make and can be acquired for free, is kinda stupid.  UNLESS, that money is buying you, not the costs-less-than-a-cheap-whore to produce ones and zeroes, BUT A SERVICE to accompany those ones and zeroes.  Like, lets just go back a few paragraphs: LoL.  It costs nothing to play, you could play for all eternity and give Riot Games precisely $0.00.  BUT, they also provide a service: the matchmaking.  And, they offer, completely unnecessary stuff for minimal fees, but, it's stuff that appeals to people on a personal level (custom skins for champions, quicker unlocks on stuff, etc.  Nothing necessary for playing the game, but stuff that's either personally appealing or simply convenient), and it's stuff that requires their service to use, therefore, they must pay the fee.  

AND THAT IS THE DIRECTION THE GAMING INDUSTRY NEEDS TO GO.

Because they can only sell us on one-time-massive-fee games that they don't even let us resell for so long when the need to buy the disc is rapidly disappearing and comparable gameplay value can be had for FREE.  Now, this hasn't even touched on the need to buy entire games (i.e. why should I buy ALL of Gears of War 3 if all I want is the campaign and not multiplayer) or (is piracy REALLY stealing-- but please, for the love of all things not-Canadia, DO NOT FUCKING START THAT SHIT HERE)

And on that note, I'm done ranting for the day, and my recommendations are thus:

Play League of Legends, at least give it a shot.

And be mindful of when you're paying money for nothing and doing so for bullshit reasons.  

Oh, and one more thing:

Why?  Because Pikachu does not approve of you and whatever stupid opinion you
were about to post into the comments section.
And no, sadly there isn't a Pikachu champion in Lol....
....YET.

StarCraft 2: Muffins of Liberty

Here it is! I've beaten the campaign on StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and I have a few things to say. First off, I still hold a large grudge against Blizzard for taking away LAN play, so I remain bitter. Secondly, battle.net integrated a game client into the mix this time with a cross-game chat that works quite well so far. I like this, so I'm not as bitter. Moving on, the game itself mixed together many things that I find new in the game that, when I went back and played the first one again, I wish they had then too.

Just to note a few of the basic changes, they added a progress bar for all building assignments. Whether it be constructing a unit, or fashioning a building, or even researching an upgrade, there's a gray bar above the respective sites showing the progress. This made keeping track of buildings and upgrades so much easier, and allowed better tactics to be employed with proper timing.

Another thing they added was a better campaign mode, though this is but the first of the trilogy. You have multiple missions to choose from most of the time, and you can upgrade units and research new things to use in battles in the garage and laboratory respectively. The research opportunities are only made available when you collect enough research points in the missions themselves. This made for a challenging and fun bonus objective systems within the missions that livened things up when you didn't need them livened up. But it was welcome all the same.

Continuing with the madness, you have new units out the wazoo for the Terrans, with new units for each of the other three races as well. Terrans are beefed up with the Thors, giant mech land walkers that can flatten about anything in their tracks whether it's in the air or on land, facing up against the Protoss Mothership, the ultimate in land and air assault craft, with the new Ultralisk from the Zerg throwing it's tusks into the fray. Now there are some units you can't use in the game, like the Protoss Purifier, a beefed up mothership, and the Zerg Omegalisk, which is unbelievably difficult to destroy with anything short of a platoon of air vehicles. Then there's the hybrid, but he's just an ass.

Throughout the campaign, you have (I believe) three occasions where you have to choose between two options. Each option will give you a different mission and different perks. Maybe an upgraded unit, or an advantage in a later mission, or just a different mission to stem from where you thought the plot was going. Either way, they don't really have an effect on the story to a large extent, but it is refreshing to see here and there.

Yet another addition to the game exclusively for the campaign are the hero units. Yes, before you had units like Jim Raynor and Kerrigan and Duke, but never more than one per mission. But there's a mission that you get FOUR of them. That's all you start out with in the mission, and each of them has a special ability that is quite equally awesome.

I didn't have a chance to play any online vs. because of my current situation for internet, but I've talked with some people who have and they say it's pretty damn spiffy. I'd like to get a chance to do a 2v2 match, because the idea of dismantling a pair of foes with a buddy is incredibly enticing. This said, for the most part I'll probably be sticking to 1v1 for the time being until I can find a reliable partner who doesn't show me up too bad.

After all of this, I have to say that as much as I'm still bitter towards Blizzard about this, I love the game. I'm stoked for the next installments of the series to come out and I'll almost guaranteed purchase all of them legally just to show my support. For those of you who have the game, I hope to face you in battle one day!

>Ryft