League of Legends

For those of you who haven't heard yet, Riot Games came out with League of Legends a few months ago, and it is becoming immensely popular.  Riot Games is a new name on the online multiplayer scene, and it offers us a free, intense, and addicting game called, like I said, League of Legends.

Imagine playing a mixture between Age of Empires, or Warcraft, or any other fantasy RTS and the first-person shooter aspect of controlling one character with various moves in real time.

Out of a simple goal of the game (destroy the enemy's "Nexus," or home base), they've built a complex game system that includes leveling your character within and outside of games, "IP" points, or reward points for playing games and winning games (and other things as well) usable to improve your character before the game starts, multiple characters to play as, including a good number of free characters to choose from rotated regularly, a 5 on 5 game set-up, and a complex and challenging map worthy of this highly well-made games.

So lets go a little more in depth, shall we?

Let's start with the map.  This is the basic standard map:

The Nexus is the snow flake shaped thing in the top right and bottom left corner.  The goal of the game is to destroy this nexus before the other team destroys yours.

Sounds easy, right?  Not so much.

Between you and the enemy Nexus, you have 3 lanes through which it is easy to traverse.  Each of these lanes has 2 enemy turrets and another turret guarding the entrance to the base.  These turrets are strong buildings that can hurt your character and, eventually, send your character back to your home base, where you must wait to respawn.  Both teams have a set of turrets and constantly-spawning minions.  Minions are little mindless creatures whose goal is to advance in the lane and kill anything in their paths.  They aren't strong against your character, or "champion," but it is inadvisable to move forward without them being in front of you, especially towards an enemy turret.  You must fight with them to advance, kill the turrets and enemy champions and minions in your way, and make your way to the enemy Nexus.

Meanwhile, you are gaining in-game experience points from being around the minions and from killing minions, champions, and turrets.  Every game, you start at level one, and the top level to reach in a game is level 18.  The sooner you reach higher levels, the better spells you can cast, the better abilities you can use, and the higher amount of hits you can take.  This naturally makes you better for killing enemy minions and champions.

You gain experience points just from playing a game, and you gain extra experience points for winning games.  These experience points do not apply in-game, but outside of the game.  The higher your level outside of the game, the more in-game abilities you have access to.

Also, finally, another outside-of-the-game bonus IP points.  IP points are used to permanently unlock champions so that when they cycle through free champions at the free player's disposal, you can still use your favorite champion.  You can also buy runes to improve in game abilities and skins to make your champions look different from everybody else's.

Here's a common champion that a lot of newbies like to use:

Master Yi

This game is one of the most revolutionary and well-constructed free online games, and I would recommend it to anybody looking for a fun time.  You can play socially with friends, or you can play against people you don't know, but all in all it's a great experience.