So for a while now I’ve been hearing about a game called League of Legends.  It’s based off a very popular Warcraft III mod called DotA, and, above all, is free to play (not including random optional micro-transaction things).  So a few days ago I decided to download it and see what all the fuss was about.

To begin, I made the mistake of downloading it on my current computer (which is pretty much from the dinosaur times and can only run WoW and Starcraft).  It didn’t work.  Luckily, my wonderful brother let me use his computer until my new one arrives.  So yesterday, at 10:30 p.m. (stupid maintenance), I fired it up and played a few rounds.  I took a bio break and realized it was midnight.

“Wow!” I said to myself (waking my little brother up), “That game is addicting!  Just a few more games and I’ll go to bed…”

Long story short, I played until I took another bio break, and at that point I discovered it was 4:30.  Moral of the story – always game with a clock next to your rig.

First of all, as I’ve been playing more, some aspects of the UI have been bugging me more as well.  The first thing that’s been getting on my nerves lately is the medal change.

You see, in game, it’s all normal.  You do something cool (double kill, head shot, flag cap, whatever) you get a little medal icon on your screen.  In previous halo games, after the game you could go back and see how many of each medal you got.  It wasn’t super important or anything, but it was fun to be able to show your friends you get like 12 double kills in one game.

You can’t do that anymore.  You can go check which medals you got in a game, but not how many.  It’s a small gripe, but it’s been bugging the shit out of me.

Another small thing is that Bungie has yet to finish the reticule UI art, which is fine since it’s a Beta, but it makes it somewhat difficult to keep track of how wide your weapon spread is, as the UI is too unobtrusive right now.

There’s one more technical that’s been really bugging me – probably this more than anything else.  When you cloak (now a built-in armor ability) all sound except for what you cause is silenced.  When you’re just playing by yourself online, this is a really cool effect.  However, if you’re playing split-screen online with a buddy, it silences all sound for both players.  This is super disorienting (for me at least.  Is anyone else having so much trouble with this) and makes me well at Ryan whenever he chooses a stalker class.

Next up are three gametypes I have yet to mention.  First is Stockpile.  Stockpile is fun.  In fact, it’s rapidly become one of my favorite game types.

It begins as a normal 4v4 gametype.  When the game starts, there are five flags scattered across the map.  Each team has a territory, and every minute (on the dot) it pulses, “capturing” all flags that are in it.  When a flag is captured, the team whose territory it was hanging out in gets a point, and it goes and respawns in a new, random area.  First team to ten points wins.  I’ve really been enjoying this one, as there’s a lot of strategy that goes on in it.  This is party because at any one point there are four things you could be doing:

1. Getting neutral flags that are just sort of hanging out around the map.
2. Defending your territory, making sure the enemy doesn’t steal flags from it.
3. Attacking the opposing teams territory, stealing flags from them (Even if you don’t run them all the way to your territory, you’re depriving them of points).
4. Running support, either defending your flag runners or f—ing with the other teams’.

All of this combined adds up to a fairly hectic but very strategy heavy gametype that Ryan (my brother) and I have been having a blast with.

Another fun “new” gametype is Covy Slayer.  This is like normal team slayer, except all players are elites.  This is special because Elites now have much better stats than Spartans, so this changes up the normal game considerably – it’s much more fast paced and action-packed.  Good stuff.

Well, I still have more to say, but my blogging muscles are getting sore, so I think I’ll be cutting this one short.  Look for more Reach info soon.

Mid-day headaches f–ing suck.

Especially when you have to continue staring at a monitor for another 1/2 hour.

Thinking about finally going out for my A+ certification – a computer thing that will let me work IT for most companies.

The one drawback is a lot of the test is a bunch of random, useless questions like “How many pins are there on a VGA cable?”

Studying is boredom.