I can’t say I have ever been a sports fan, in a traditional sense at least. While younger I would often get caught up in sports that were on the TV but I have to admit that I’m enjoying the e-sports element that League of Legends brings to the table.
The World series is currently running at the moment and I’m rather hooked, this year the matches are taking place in Seoul which means they broadcast around 8-9am my time. This has allowed me to watch more of the matches, compared to the last one that was mostly on in the early hours of the morning meaning I could only really watch the highlights, except for the final which I got up at 3am to watch.
I have to admit having my ChromeCast means I can stream the matches to my TV while gaming rather than tying up my monitor grants me a little freedom.
As part of Bragtoberfest we played Strife which brands itself as a NextGen Moba, a Moba two-point-oh if you rather. In fact we had a good time playing and despite that the games mechanics are designed to appeal to the more general player.
I have gone back and played Strife a few times since then and find the experience to be generally rewarding.
For me there are few key elements that made the game appealing,
- The items and power setup is more simplistic, yeap there are fewer but it works well in the context
- At the moment all the Heros/champions/characters are playable, which gives a much wider selection to choose and learn, this may change.
- The standard map is smaller than League or maybe the movement speed is faster, but it certainly feels faster paced.
- There is a giant white ape to lane push for you
- You don’t have to return to base to shop, as you have a gopher:// that will bring them to you
- Which is nice as health regen feels much higher than other mobas
So as a result of playing Strife I patched League of Legends and threw myself into some matches. I know, I know, I have recently waxed lyrically about how Mobas aren’t my cup of tea.
And in a way I still find the duration a little troublesome in my whole game/life balance, but with some forward planning I have been trailing some of the rotation heroes and have bought and been playing Jinx.
This is war
Meanwhile a facebook friends company has just rolled out a new Moba into beta and I have jumped onto that bandwagon too, although my reasons are not quite the same as Strife
Shards of War has a futuristic setting, which makes a nice change, also the game has a WASD control system rather than using the mouse, which is now only concerned with targeting.
The action keys are RightMouse, E, [Space] and R, so far I haven’t found it too confusing, the rotation of Sentinels is 5 but currently there are only 10 in total. Like Strife there is a crafting system for Items, but i’ve not fully got into that side of things yet.
The final nice point to playing this is that The matches last about 20 minutes, which is much easier to schedule.
