New direction of Loic?

     Hey guys, I've made a decision- ima keep posting to this blog, even though I have no mentary incentive to do so, just because why not? Anyways, me and my friends have been playing alot of LoL recently and one of them decided to record a few games and put it on youtube. With no further ado, here is part one of one of our LoL games. I dont have a PC microphone (yet) so I wasnt speaking (name is Arkasion, played Maokai) but my buddies are pretty funny so I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Well, this sucks.

     Yesterday I recieved an e-mail telling me that my Adsense account had been disabled due to "suspicious activity". I was pretty bummed about this as I hadn't even reached £60 yet and I never even openly asked for ad clicks, but it seems like someone had taken it a bit too far and caused google to act. Whilst I'll (probably) still continue the reviews, this is a real blow to me as the money I might have recieved from adsense was a big driving factor to this blog. I've sent an appeal, but does anyone else know what I can do to help? Thanks for you continuing support.

My actual face when I read the email. :(

2000 views, what the bejeebus.

     This blog reached 2000 views today, which is crazy. Seems like just yesterday I had 1000 views, and just last week that I started this thing! I'd like to thank all my loyal readers for helping me reach this point, and for coming back every couple of days to see what other game I'd destroyed in a review. Hopefully, someday we'll reach 20,000. . . one can only dream.

Warcraft 3- God of all RTS games.

     Today I'll be reviewing the strategy game Warcraft 3, made by Blizzard. Being an RTS, WC3 relies on strategic decisions and micro-management in battle, and it has a heavily contested online playerbase. Whilst not as popular as Starcraft (also made by Blizzard) WC3 is still the best out of the two for me as I find it alot more fun.

     In WC3, the story revolves around 4 races; Humans, Orcs, Night Elves and Undead. In the campaign for each race, you play through a number of scenarios where you battle other races to reach a goal- for example, as the Humans, you must first defeat orcs, then undead, and then find a fabled sword, which leads onto the protagonist becoming the antagonist as the sword corrupts him and starts the undead campaign. The story is excellent, and has many twists and turns, so I wont spoil it for anyone who wants to play it.

Instead, I'll spoil all these famous stories. Sorry.

     Gameplay is like any typical RTS- you build barracks to spawn troops, you build x houses/huts to get x food and so on. Like I said, battles are often won with superior micro management and troop usage rather than sheer numbers. However, what WC3 brought into the RTS genre was "Heroes". Each race has its own set of hero units than lead their army. They level up, which increases all of their stats, and can pick up items from various monsters around each map (which are there just for your hero). No RTS had combined RPG elements like this before, and whilst some people didnt like it, the majority thought it was brilliant (me included).

Typical hero screen, showing items, EXP bar and other stats.

     The real gem in WC3 though is its online mode. You can play ranked or unranked matches of the original WC3 game online for a challenge, or you can head over to the custom games list for a whole lot of fun. There are all kinds of games that modders made using the WC3 engine, from tower defence (which actually originated in WC3) to hero wars and DotA (also originated in WC3). This is what makes the game hugely popular, even now after 7 years, and is what I spent the most time on (next to endless custom matches against bots, which practically made up my childhood.)

 

 Also known as a popular Basshunter song.

     Overall Warcraft 3 is a great game. Along with Half-Life and Runescape (sigh), it definately defined my childhood gaming experience and made me love the RTS genre, which I think is woefully underplayed. You can probably grab Warcraft 3 and its expansions on Amazon now for as little as £5 ($8ish), which is a great price. As always, I hope this review made you consider buying the game and, if you like my stuff, dont forget to leave a comment and follow me to show your support!

Busy day, no review :(

     Sorry for the lack of review today, met up with a bunch of college friends I haven't seen for a while so I didn't have the time to write one up. Never fear, there will be one tomorrow, and I'll get back to all your comments too. For now, here's yet another bad pun:

Geddit? Between the lines? Eh, it's bad.

League of Legends- totally free and totally life consuming.

     Today I'll be reviewing the free online game called League of Legends. LoL is loosely based off of the popular mod for Warcraft 3 named DotA (youtube it), has a huge playerbase across Europe and America, and is also completely free to play.

It's like this, but without the money.

    There are two different game modes; 3v3 (Twisted Treeline) and 5v5 (Summoner's Rift). Each of these modes can be played against people online or against bots at varying levels of difficulty. At the start of every game, you must choose a champion. LoL has a lot of heroes to choose from, although unless you wanna save up Influence Points (which you get after every game and vary in amount, depending on if you win/lose and how many kills you got) or buy Riot Points (nothing is 100% free) you have to make do with the small selection of free to play heroes, which changes every week. After this you can choose summoner spells to help you play. These spells are generally very helpful, like healing spells or teleports, but always have large cooldowns.

Typical champion selection screen.

     The game is kinda like a RPG in the way you have to level your champion to learn skills and abilities which help you kill minions and enemy heroes, which earns you money which you can use to buy beneficial items from the store at your spawn. Gameplay starts off slow but can get very tense and fastpaced in mid to late game. It can also get very heated, with arguments regularly breaking out on the ingame chat (which are incedentally hilarious) and many ragequits if a person isnt doing so well.

Sadly, it happens all the time.

     Overall the game is a hell of a lot of fun, especially if you play with friends, as teamwork is the driving force behind any successful game. I also really like how, in the champion store which I first thought would be a "GIEV US MONY 4 HEROEZ" type of thing, you can use ingame currency to save up and buy new champions without spending a penny of your real money. This is also very rewarding, for if you play well you gain more ingame money and therefore have better heroes.

Not bragging. At all. Nope.

     I hope you enjoyed this review and, as always, if you like my stuff dont forget to follow me and leave a comment to show your support!

Y U NO POST

     Sorry for the lack of reviews guys, I've been pretty preoccupied the last couple of days since my brother got admitted to hospital. He's doing fine, but we've been going in alot so I haven't had a spare moment in the evenings to write a review. Once again, I beg for your forgiveness and leave you with another very bad pun:

Geddit? "F**king Sirius"? Hilarious.

Game addiction- worse than drugs.

     So, I recently discovered the online game called League of Legends, based off of the DotA mods for Warcraft 3- and its AWESOME. I've been playing it alot in the evenings, and I dont think I'm that bad at it.

The order is kills/deaths/assists. YEEAAH STOKIN' MAH EGO!

     Totally epic game, and totally free too. Tell me if you play in the comments below, and if you do leave your summoner name and we'll play a few games! Mine is Arkasion, feel free to add me.

Hat Fortress 2- wait, I meant Team.

     Today I'll be reviewing the multiplayer FPS Team Fortress 2, made by valve. TF2 is kinda weird FPS as it has a sorta RPG element in the way of an inventory and ingame shop, where you can buy new weapons and items as well as, you guessed it, hats. Whilst this upset more than a few people when valve added it to the game ("omg tryin 2 get mor mony frm us") its now widely accepted as a part of the game; and who can complain when it's free to play?

Because every heavy deserves a monocle and a top hat.

     In TF2 you have the choice of 4 game modes; capture the flag (or in TF2, the enemy intelligence), control point (where you have to hold points for a certain time), payload (where you must move your cart, loaded with explosives, into the other team's base to win) and arena (a full blown deathmatch.) All of them are full of fun, but my personal favourite is payload as it leads to some very tense and exciting gameplay near the end. Once you join a game, you have to pick your class from a choice of nine: pyro, engineer, heavy, soldier, spy, medic, demoman, sniper or scout.

Try and guess which one is the heavy.

     Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each also has its own set of items, weapons and hats which can be found whilst playing or bought in the ingame store for cash. The key to TF2 is successful teamwork; a heavy is useless without a medic, snipers need to be watched or they'll easily be backstabbed by enemy spies and engineers are deadly as long as you cover them enough so they can set up their dispensors and turrets. Whilst this may seem a little daunting at first, once you get the hang of it TF2 becomes alot of fun- especially if you play with friends.

If you dont work together, you'll all die. Repetedly.

     Overall, TF2 is a very enjoyable and different multiplayer FPS, thats easy to get the hang of and has lots of playability. Add this to the fact that it is completely free on steam and you have a winner. I hope you enjoyed this review and, as always, if you like my stuff dont forget to leave a comment and follow me to show your support!