Time for another game review, this time I will be covering League of Legends, a very popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, or MOBA for short. A MOBA is a genre of video games in which players are pitted against each other or AI in a small arena setting. League was officially released in 2009 and I played it for the first time sometime in the Summer of 2013. I have been playing League on and off since then and I have seen the game grow, change, and progress to what it now is today. Anyway, League of Legends delivers a fun, fast, and simple gaming experience that allows for newcomers to get acclimated with its intricacies at a good pace. The game boasts a large roster of characters to choose from, which has its ups and its downs. Having so many characters in the game means a larger variety of different team compositions. However, by having so many characters, it can overwhelm new players by giving them so many characters to choose from, and balancing the characters to make them have an even playing field can become a challenge. League's solution to the overwhelming amount of characters is to lock them behind paywalls accessible through paid or in-game currencies and by making about 10 or so characters free to play each week. This gives new players a chance to try a handful of characters each week in order to see whether or not they enjoy them or not before purchasing them. Compared to Dota 2, in which they let the player pick from all 100+ characters, I feel as if League's system for characters is superior even though players wont be able to play all the characters in the game immediately. While we are on the topic of comparing League with Dota 2, the gameplay for the two games is drastically different. Dota 2 games tend to last longer than League games, the items in Dota 2 give players more buttons to press since most items in the game have active effects that can make the character invisible or teleport them a short distance whereas League tends to have more stat based items that have passive effects to make it simpler, and Dota 2 has various extra mechanics that increase the learning curve and make it difficult for newer players to get hooked on the game since they will most likely run around with their head chopped off for the first 100-200 games they play. Although Dota 2 can appeal to the crowd of gamers who seek a larger challenge, it can't compete with the simpler game experience that League has that makes it a quick and enjoyable experience instead of a massive headache. In the end, I prefer League of Legends and I would easily recommend this game to anyone who is new to the MOBA genre and wants to dive in and check it out.
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Since I have been mainly posting about my project over the past 2-3 months, I would like to talk about some of the stuff that I have been making outside of that project. I have been mainly working on learning to draw in Illustrator using just my mouse since I don't have the money for a drawing tablet lying around. My main focus is weapons since I have always had a fascination with them ever since I played games like Final Fantasy in which the weapons were very intricate and beautiful. I'm not that much of a fan of guns since they always looked the same to me, however, sci-fi guns are another story since they also appeal to that amazement that I feel when I look at impressive weapons. Along side those weapons, I have been look towards some of the games that I have enjoyed, such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, in order to find something that would be interesting to recreate using Illustrator. Overall, I think I have gotten a lot better at getting over the handicap of using only the mouse when it comes to using Illustrator, I just have to improve my detail and coloring in order to make my digital work look amazing.
This blog post is a bit late only because there is a break for Thanksgiving starting tomorrow that would make my blog post for this week pretty much void of any amount of work, so the post for last week is moved to today. Anyway, I was able to complete some environment assets for my game as well as start on some of the buildings for my game. I didn't get the opportunity to put my knight unit into my game since I was out sick last week with a sinus infection for three days, which really messed up my plans for the week. I plan on working over Thanksgiving break in order to catch up on all of the work I should've done, which will end with me having a moving character with various animations. When I get back from break, I plan on replacing the prototype terrain I made two weeks ago with the new assets and start working on the rest of the buildings. The picture I am posting below is the low poly tree I made. It is low poly to keep the computer I am working on from crashing since trees are a major resource in my game and I am going to place a lot of them.
Plan for Next Week:
Once again, this week in school is a shorter one, hence why I am posting today rather than on Friday, since it is Veteran's Day tomorrow. Regardless of this shorter week, I was able to get a general idea of what my game level is going to look like by looking at Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 maps as references since I plan on making a similar RTS game. The image I posted below is the basic look of the map within Unity using the terrain tool. Just to be clear, the bottom half of the map will be mirrored on the other half to make it fair for both players. This map will have two players starting on either side of the middle island and the only way to attack the player is through the middle island. The island will also be a space for the players to set up a base except that it will have better mineral resources in order to give the players an incentive to go to the middle island sooner and to control it for themselves. Next week, I plan on finishing the basics for the terrain and animating my knight along with creating some buildings/environment assets to make the terrain more interesting.
Plan for Next Week:
Although this week was a shorter one due to a teacher work day on Monday, I was able to get a good amount of work done. I was able to successfully rig and create the idle animation for my knight character. I will say that it took some work to animate the knight the way I wanted since I haven't had to animate a rigged model in about a year. I had to go back and relearn how to use the curve editor to make the animation look more natural and less wonky and uneven. I plan on being able to create the death, move, hurt, and attack animations next week if I have the time to do so next week since it will also be a short week due to Veteran's Day being on Friday. Any extra time will be given to creating an environment in Unity to place my knight and code his movement. (By the way, I still need to render the animation to put on this blog post, it will be uploaded later today if I remember to do so, otherwise this weekend).
Plan for Next Week:
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AuthorMy name is Timothy Czerniejewski and this is my blog for my Game Art Design interests. Archives
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