My Usual Spiel: League of Legends, the MOBA I know

Release Date:  27/10/2009
Genre: RTS/MOBA
Publisher: Riot Games
Developer: Riot Games
Platform: PC/Mac
Players: 2-10 online
Classification: T for Teen


League of Legends, where do I start? I suppose I should start with explaining that League of Legends or “LoL” as I may refer to it in the remainder of the article, was and is still one of the biggest MOBA games of today, “MOBA” meaning “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena” and also “Action Real Time Strategy” (ARTS) it was the game to coin the genre but wasn’t the first of its kind as I will now explain. The gameplay from League of Legends is generally known to have been taken from Defence of the Ancients or “DOTA” which was a custom-made map for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and the Frozen Throne however this is only partially true. Aeon of Strife was a Starcraft custom map which in part inspired the creation of DOTA and the whole MOBA scene. League Legends is currently one of the top Esports games being played along with Starcraft II and Warcraft III in the RTS category and the Counter-strike series in the FPS category.


A very informative video series on the history of the MOBA genre.

I for one did like the idea of playing as a single unit in an RTS game, so much so that I did various experiments utilizing the addition of heroes to the Blizzard RTS series in Warcraft 3 such as editing multiplayer maps with the Warcraft 3 map editor so I (and my brother sometimes) could play a map as a single hero unit aligned with an ally cpu character, which was fun but hard to manage and sometimes annoying when you have to work with the cpu players constant attacking and retreating as it does in that game also it because hard to strive to the finish when you had to have buildings available for you to respawn with. I had a good time doing the same thing in Company of Heroes where I created a 2v2 or 3v3 cpu player fight and tacked myself onto one of the teams but played only as a single tank or sniper while the cpu players fought.

DOTA Company of Heroes style

 I never really played the Aeon of Strife Starcraft map, but I did play a bit of DOTA back when it first started, because DOTA was basically just a custom map and did not have much in the way of instruction and support for newcomers, which although this did improve it has now become a common theme that MOBA games have a very steep learning curve. DOTA was a MOBA at its most basic, the classic square map with the map split diagonally down the middle with two enemy factions controlling each side at the bottom left and top right corners  the three “lanes” which are defended by enemy towers and small “creep” units that move down the lanes to attack the enemy with each faction have a “home” structure which needs to be defeated to achieve victory.

The basic MOBA map layout

Though I liked DOTA there were some things I didn’t like, namely that I had no idea what items to get or in what order (this was soon fixed in League of Legends) and also the unforgiving fact that you had to be there at all times, in FPS games and sometimes RTS you can leave for about 3-5 minutes and come back and still be fairly competitive, well at least you can still kill other players, if you did that in DOTA you’d all of the sudden be outlevelled and spent the rest of the match trying to keep up and failing as you are pounded by the higher level players. I think even then I did feel that whole game based around that would be good idea.

The pioneering DOTA

 So in October 2009, 6 years after the first DOTA custom map was created, came League of Legends by Riot Games, the publisher who was known to have coined the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) name as a marketing term. My brother and I enthusiastically played LoL a lot when it came out as we were eager to see this game based around DOTA and also like other MOBA games it was completely free to play which was still quite rare for a game of this magnitude. and it was good, one thing I did enjoy was the way the game matched players of equal skill (at the lower levels), and it was just so much easier to play, the game had tutorials and information all over the place and best of all when you got into the game you a list of suggested items how to get them and in what order. We played for awhile until I got bored of the game and my brother tired of the unbalanced nature of the higher echelon as when the game first came out there was problems like this but otherwise I had a good experience with the game and was able to stay competitive.

Pushing a lane with a ranged character

Like most games playing League of Legends is pretty simple to learn and takes a while to master, it follows the usual MOBA map and play style which I won’t go into too much detail here about how you do things but basically you are a “Summoner” and you choose a “Champion” to use in the arena. You have to fight your way through the small creep units, taking down the towers and defeating the other players to get to your enemies castle and destroy it. This sounds quite simple but it quite complex, in order to stay alive you must know when to attack and when to retreat when to “push” your lane and when to fall back and defend and when to attack enemy players. Then there’s all the advanced things like teaming up to defeat enemy champions easier and venturing into the middle parts of the map in between the lanes aka the “jungle” where treasures and neutral monsters can be found. League of Legends has several different modes of play, there the most common 5v5 played on the “Summoner’s Rift” map, which is the classic 3 lane MOBA style, 3v3 which is played on the “Twisted Treeline” a smaller variant which runs horizontally with two lanes instead of 3, ARAM (All Random All Mid) which is played on the Howling Rift and is pretty much a head on collision course between the two teams with only one lane, and finally Dominion, which is played on the Crystal Scar map and is based around a ‘point capturing’ style of play.

The Twisted Treeline, a smaller variant on the classi MOBA map style

Controlling your champion is pretty simple if you have played any kind of RTS game before though when moving the camera is focused on your champion, you click on the minimap or main map to move or attack and use the QWERTY keys to activate your champion and summoner abilities though these are just the basic keys there are many more to use as your skills increase as with all games really. The game interface is relatively simple, you have your character portrait, level, stats, gold and items on the left hand corner, your Champion and Summoner abilities, Health and Mana in the middle and your minimap and menu buttons on the right. You also have things like your teammates portraits, health and mana, kill and assist info and target portraits around the main screen. The graphics as with most MOBA games are fairly cartoony with a cel-shading aspect that marvellously accentuates the heroes from the creep  and other units, you’d come to expect the cartooniness and this definitely doesn’t distract from the main game as it looks great, especially the lighting with all the glowing and how it adapts to the environmental dark and light places.

The screen interface at the starting area of the twisted treeline.

As a Summoner you play more matches and win and lose you receive experience and level up and also (depending on how well you do in a game) obtain Influence points (IP) this can be used to purchase Runes and some other items in the store. The other online currency is Riot Points which can be purchased with real money and is used to purchase Champions, Champion skins and booster items that increase the amount of IP you get from games, it is also used often as prizes for tournaments.

When starting a normal game of LoL against random opponents you first have to join the queue of your chosen game type, once you have done this and you are matched with a team you then you then need to do four things The first of which is to pick a Champion, these “champions” have many different traits inc different stats, spells and abilities but can be roughly classified under 6 types:

• Assassin: Champions who excel at sneaking around and burst-damage for quick kill

• Fighter: All-round melee champion who could have both tank and assassin traits.

• Mage: Champions who cast spells and have most of their power in their abilities

• Tank: Champions who have lots of health and abilities that draw enemies to attack them instead of allies.

• Support: Champions that have abilities that heal, strengthen or protect allies.

• Marksman: Are non-magical ranged champions

The store where you can purchase champions for IP or RP

You then need to choose your “Summoner spells” which are spells that you the Summoner use to assist your champion when playing, these include things like healing your champion and slowing enemy champions. After that you need to pick your Rune page and your Mastery page. Runes and masteries are an additional way of modifying the champions you select, runes give whichever champion you are playing with extra stats for example more health, armor, or things like lifesteal, there are many different kinds of runes which can be bought with Influence points (IP). Masteries are essentially a talent skill tree which is used in many games (most prominently MMO’s) and as you level up by playing LoL you receive more points to use for your mastery sheet, mastery sheets have 3 trees, Offense, Defense and Utility which you can points into one in particular or one or two,  you also can fill multiple mastery sheets depending on which champion you are going to use.

Runes and Quintessences page 

Masteries Page

Another thing you need to think about is items, as the game progresses you acquire gold through last hitting minions, killing Epic Monsters, destroying enemy turrets, and killing champions (or assisting) which is the in game currency of LoL, you use gold to purchase items from the shop from where you start, the shop consists of Defense, Attack, Magic, Movement, and Consumables categories. Many high-end items in the shop are obtained by purchasing low-end items which when purchased in order allowed you to create them.  I was pleased to see that the game had a “recommended items” list and even told you what to buy and in which order which you could just double-click each item to purchase and merged the two items together to create another one.

The recommended items screen makes things much easier to pick your items when in the heat of the match and having only 20 seconds to decide when respawning

Playing League of Legends online (as with most MOBA games) has quite a steep learning curve even when you are matched with opponents of a similar ability when you first start you are sometimes chastised with your lack of experience. But thankfully there are plenty of tutorials when you first start the game and suggests to try some matches with easier AI controlled players before going in the deep end but thankfully once you do you are matched with similarly ranked players which are hopefully of the same standard to you, it seems to work for me as I found that most of the time I was pretty competitive, winning more then I lost.

You learn lots of things fast playing League of Legends for the first time, you learn not to rush in recklessly and get killed many times, you learn to use the bushes to hide and you learn that continuously “pushing” your lane isn’t always the best idea and venture into the jungle and appear behind the enemy for a bit of stealth killing which is what’s known as “jungling”. When playing your champion you must remember their strengths and weaknesses and play appropriately to the type of champion you have selected i.e you wouldn’t charge forward with a ranged character as they are often weaker and you wouldn’t pick an assassin-style champion for basic lane-pushing and they are more suited for jungling.

'Jungling' with Udyr who is preferable champion to use for this style of play

League of Legends as I have mentioned has been a hit with the gaming community around the world, putting it on par with Starcraft II as one of the biggest esports games today despite being almost 5 years old today it continues to draw fans and competes fiercely with the likes of rival MOBA’s such as DOTA 2 and Heroes of Newerth. LoL is played as one a tournaments at the Lanslide that I attend almost solely for the purpose of playing League of Legends and possibly Starcraft II. I like it, I don’t find anything much wrong with it that the MOBA haters always seem to, sure it’s tough sometimes and the learning curve is steep but it’s a game that makes you want to co-operate with your teammates and win and I can tell you I don’t get that feeling with many games. Although the game is free I must admit I most definitely paid for it as I have spent almost $80 on new champions and skins to play in tournaments which I will probably never win but justify as donating to a free game that I like, it’s something I’ve never done before and I’m not sure why but meh, it was worth it as I may not be the best on the battlefield but at least I stand out from the rest.

Whether it's been a well-fought game or an imbalanced drubbing, seeing this is still incredibly satisfying.

League of Legends may be one of the more complicated MOBA games, with its runes and masteries and other champion customization features but it was the one that paved the way for the MOBA genre, and I approve.

JD

A thrilling match between two world-class LoL teams, in this video you can see how big LoL has become in esports.

Run away!

Minecraft Creations: The Jungle Greenhouse

The Jungle Greenhouse I am proud of as it won me the Lanslide 4.0 Minecraft Competition and even then it was only half finished, of course I must admit I was only competing against one person as we didn’t quite get the number we had last time but even so this time I was determined to make something, and make something good. To be honest that did mean I spent a lot of time in Minecraft but I didn’t really have a problem with that, just glad I won something to the chagrin of my colleagues who were trying to win at least something the whole night, I do remember last Lan I was trying my hardest to win the Armagetronad comp but ended up coming second by a very small margin but anyway, all’s good. The screenshot below I took with the default texture pack, the rest were with the Faerielight 256x256 “Resource” pack as they are now called.

Where I got up to at the comp

 For the competition I had an idea in my mind about a Jungle Treehouse, just what kind is all, I did originally want to Make a sort of series of houses along platforms that connected with bridges, but when I saw a group of jungle trees on a high hill I just knew it was going to be something similar to what I usually do lol, so I made various platforms of jungle wood planks on different tops of trees as I usually do but instead of making all of the individual rooms I ended up buildings frames out of jungle logs making all of the platforms apart from the tallest one into one large open room, I also built around one of the trees so that it would be inside. I made the roof in a similar design to what I usually do, I was going to try something else, the topmost level I made into a sort of penthouse with a balcony intending it to be my bedroom and that’s basically where I got up to for the competition, I reckon I did pretty well for the time limit. After I got home I decided to work on it some more where I then got the idea of it not actually being a house but being some sort of greenhouse a jungle greenhouse. 

Front and back view of the completed Greenhouse

 

My usual layered rooftop

And thus I fashioned huge windows and  grew more jungle trees in every square space in the big room that I could find, I also worked out how to make the taller jungle trees (4 jungle saplings placed together then add 2-5 bone meal) I turned the upstairs “penthouse” into a sort of wilderness Herb/Alchemy lab similar to Dr Earnhardt’s lab from Farcry 3, except mine is purely for research purposes and not for creation or hallucinogenic drugs (well mostly) I included a sapling/flower garden plus a covered mycelium mushroom garden and an alchemy section with 3 cauldrons and Alchemy tables with an additional garden bed outside. 

Indoor jungle trees!

My drug Alchemy lab

Sapling/Flower and Mushroom garden

The next problem I had to deal with was how the hell you get up to the Greenhouse/Lab as in case you didn’t know Minecraft jungles (and jungles) in general are notoriously difficult to navigate as they are very dense with bushes and are hilly so creating a decent looking entrance on the ground would not be that easy, so I had a look around the general area down below the house and found a nice secluded spot where the Jungle biome meets the forest/plains biome which was nice and clear and had some stone showing through, I decided this would be a great place for a (semi) secret entrance and began to dynamite a tunnel upwards towards the bottom of the greenhouse where I eventually came up right under it, of course the place was still a fair way up so I made a downwards extension from the bottom of the house to connect the with the tunnel and built a narrow staircase up. I made a stone staircase from the entrance up through the tunnel as well as some iron doors for the entrance and decorated (and hid) everything I could with vines.

The shady entrance

Stairway up to the... well other stairway

The stairway up from the tunnel into the house.

I then got a fantastic idea for making the whole place blend in a bit more with the rest of the jungle, yes that’s right I covered the place in vines which looked good coming down the walls both on the inside and outside of the greenhouse. I also added them to the upper tiers of the roof (as you can only hang them in edges or corners not hanging from the bottom of a block itself) and this made a great “hanging vines” effect, I might have put a bit too many around but meh it’s supposed to be jungely and wilderness isn’t it?

Vines

More vines!

Even more vines! (may have gone a bit overboard)

 So when I finished that the place was looking pretty good, but I needed to fill it with a few more things, I decided to continue the greenhouse/natural alchemy lab theme down below and put logs of various tree types with bushes on top for collecting ‘samples’ as well as tables and chests around the lower area for examination and storing. I created another alchemy lab in a corner and made another plant and mushroom garden with examination table at the bottom of the stairs up to the main lab, and that was pretty much it.

Logs and bushes for sample and chests and tables for storing and examination.

The "corner" alchemy lab

The lower sapling, flower and mushroom garden.

 I was in a bit of a hurry to get this thing done so didn’t spend too much time on every little detail and did forget a few things like more glowstone for the plant gardens and alchemy labs and I did actually forget crafting tables but I guess crafting tables really aren’t needed in retrospect as this was a Greenhouse and also one of the very few things that I’ve made which isn’t supposed to be a proper Minecraft house.

So I’m happy with it in that regard and I’m glad that I did end up finishing it, stay tuned for more Minecraft shenanigans on Angrathar’s Amarthine Minecraft server that he very nicely set up and paid for us all to come on and play on a server to ourselves.

JD

You call that house?

Hustlin' through the Old Republic: Back in the US of A

Well it’s official, it’s been official for awhile actually, the news regarding the fate of the Oceanic servers has been announced with further explanation here. I’ve got to admit, I was kind of disappointed with Bioware’s decision as were a lot of other people. Their choice to close down the Asia-Pacific servers and transferring us into 3 US servers was not well received though their reasons for not merging the APAC servers were:

1. Certain players would lose their preferred gameplay type i.e. PvP, RP/PvE
2. The current population issues would still exist.

I do understand the first reason but I would hardly think that PvPers and RPers would care that much, as the players on the PvP server would only lose open-world PvP and the players on the RP server would have to mingle with people from PvP and Normal and possibly cop some harassment or abuse but I think that’s completely tolerable.

The second reason, I along with the reason of the Australian SWTOR community it seems really don’t understand, the representative from Bioware, Eric Musco claimed the below:

“To clarify a bit more about this decision. We did previously ask what folks on the forums would like to do as an APAC solution and some, but not all, offered up the solution of merging all APAC into one. The other option on the table was to merge APAC into the NA servers. When we discussed the options internally we looked to address everyone’s primary issues with APAC, low populations were creating a less than optimal game experience.

We went and looked at what current server populations looked like across all of APAC and to put it simply, even merging all of APAC together into one server would not solve the population problems. Even with that solution you would still see long queue times for things like Warzones and Group Finder. It was because of this that we decided that moving APAC into the NA servers was the best option.”

A lot of us were baffled by this, almost all of us were for the server merge, and as player keltzy replied:

“So having 100+ on coruscant, 150+ on fleet, 3 instances of Ilum for gree event is not considered Population? Each planet while questing had at least 30+ on it and that's just PUB side on Dalborra”

Which was true in a way that Dalborra never really had that much of a population problem, it was the other servers which had the issue and merging the three into one would most definitely fix the issue. But as people have said it seems this is more a financial move by Bioware rather than a considered response to the community as I could see how shutting down the APAC servers would be a more profitable solution then keeping them up.

I decided to stay with Academy Exemplar and move to Bergeren Colony as I had been with them for a while now and didn’t really mind that much playing on an RP server, I am not and have never been a Roleplayer but I didn’t mind it and it’s pretty fun to see in action. We’re all on there now and are setting up the Guild, getting people invited and organising operation/etc the ping isn’t that bad (usually around 170ms) and I don’t really have that much of a problem with it as I used to play WoW and I also don’t PvP at all really though it is still a shame as the low ping was one of the main things SWTOR had going for down this end of the earth.

But anyway we can’t dwell on the past and life goes on. I’ve actually missed a month where I was playing and trying to remember what happened So if I remember correctly I finished off Voss with my Jedi Guardian Jxan, reached level 50, got my Tionese gear and was currently up to Corellia which might be the final planet of the Jedi Knight storyline but was thinking Ilum might be. I also finally got to grips with the last (non-heroic) space missions and with the help of my Guildie and friend Nefash’s Pilot Training school which has great tips (like using the movement keys to doge enemy fire while aiming with your mouse) and also I shelled out the Cartel Coins for the three Grade 7 ship upgrades pack which made things much, much easier especially with the specific functional ones. Unfortunately though when I tried some heroic space missions, it required you to have grade 7 ship armor so you can guess I failed hard and pretty much gave up doing Space missions until I just want to either farm the old ones or try harder with the heroics but goddamn there SO MUCH STUFF SHOOTING YOU aaaaaaargh! but anyway practice makes perfect.

Regnant Station Assault - Republic Heroic Space Mission by Nefash, damn he does it well

I had finished off Alderaan and helped House Thul to conquer this time instead of House Organa and started Taris on my Sith Assassin Kxan. Taris is interesting on the Empire side as one of the two planets  with dramatically different questing levels for the Republic and Empire (Balmorra is the other) it seems that Taris though is in a completely different instance of the world as it contains the same locations but the npc’s and setup are different and it always seems to be at night time. The end of the Sith Assassin questline on this planet was quite important as I finally was able to get Ashara Zavros as my companion and could start gaining light side points to my hearts content without fear of affection loss though recently it put me in deeper thought about it yet again, it’s becoming the most contentious thing about my SWTOR playing.

Republic Taris, happy days in the ruins

Empire Taris, moonshadow

I had a good think about the issue of Dark/Light side favouring when I was faced with the situation again after getting to 10000 affection with T7 on Jxan as I though the logical step would be for me to use Lord Scourge as he’s a tank but he does quite a bit of damage too possibly more than T7 and plus I could make gear for him having the Synthweaving skill, I then realised though that I was almost full light sided (9650) and It would be a shame not to get the achievement and see the purchasable items once I was full light though to be honest I did look at what was available from the Light Side Vendor but apart from a vanity pet and speeder that I didn’t want anyway she doesn’t really have much apart from some pretty good relics.

So the bottom line is I’ll probably just be striving for full light just to get the achievement which is enough I guess, I would have gotten it not so long ago had it not been for the time I was trying to use this Lightsabre that I got which need Dark I (1000 points in Dark side) and ended up getting 600 points in Dark side which I now regret as before I even got up to using the sabre I replaced it with something better. I think that I might just go light or Dark depending on the situation though I’ll still try and get to full Light or Dark with a character before going back down (or up) again just for the affection of a companion as it seems the best way to do things though I get the idea that doing Dark side choices all the time might get a bit disheartening, and doing all Light side choices would seem a bid bland and boring but I haven’t really experienced that tbh.

Is it worth the toll on your conscience and good reputation to gain the affection of some slightly evil or ill-intentioned companions? I'll find out when Lord Scourge is my companion, he even wins the "evil-off" between him and Khem Val

So my Sith Assassin now has Ashara as his companion and I am free to choose Light side and the “good guy” number 1 options to my hearts content though I’ll still have to watch what I’m doing not just blindly pick good options like I do with T7 on my Guardian. I have some regret that I didn’t just go Dark as soon as I got Khem Val as now I have kinda decided to just go dark when he is with me and I lost so many points picking light side options with him around but anyway live and learn and I’m not going to start my Assassin over again I’ve done that twice already lol. When I stopped at level 40 I had just completed chapter 1 of the Inquisitor storyline (or 2 I can’t remember?) and have finished Alderaan and Taris and am currently heading to Quesh to save my new apprentices.

Ashara Zavros, don't make her go against her teachings as she repeatedly says, fortunately I have no intention of doing that.

I’ve noticed though that lately the Sith Inquisitor campaign that the character you play is kind of stupid, especially if you pick the Light Side of the force though it seems you’re forced to do foolish things regardless, I don’t want to spoil the story but repeatedly walking into Sith Lord’s Tombs and confronting powerful Sith Lords when you’ve been warned not to (only to be beat down on) is not a good idea I’ll admit that my preference for Light Side makes me a bit naive especially when you willingly follow her orders and never question but I’m not really enjoying the Sith Inquisitor storyline that much anymore. It was great fun when you started on Korriban as a slave and I kept humble picking non-threatening conversation options and Light Side decisions and it was funny to see the reactions to my unusual kindness, but now it’s all “I’m out there for myself and am going to destroy all opposition: (and fail a bit too) but nevertheless I’ll see how we go with the rest of the storyline.

This is an old shot of Kxan, but it's SO COOL

WARNING: JEDI KNIGHT STORYLINE SPOILERS AHEAD

I finished off Corellia with Jxan and managed to get T7 to max affection, I also managed to finish off T7’s questline which involved doing nothing at all really just a whole series of conversations of some kind of conspiracy in the Galactic Republic Senate and then T7 “worked it out” then that was it. It turns out that Kira is one of the “main” companions or perhaps “the” main companion in the Jedi Knight storyline, whether or not all romanceable companions have multiple side quests remains to be seen. After Coreilla there was pretty much just the finale with the Battle against the Emperor and there was some interesting conversations with all of my crew members and I had to be careful not to lose any affection with any of them. The finale of the Jedi Knight storyline was a pretty easy affair we ended up making a 6 man assault on an instanced version of Kass City and the Sith Temple which was pretty lame as the security was very minimal, it’d be funny if they asked you to storm the place in real-time on the server as you’d have to pick a time where almost no-one would be online heh.

During this final mission you were forced to use T7 as your companion as anyone else would fall to the Emperor’s powerful will much to the annoyance of many players who hasn’t used T7 since level 15 unlike me who had recently gotten him to max affection and upgraded his gear. The actual fight with the Emperor was pretty straightforward and kind of un-epic as 1. I had Epic Tionese Gear 2. I was level 54 and 3. My T7 had up-to-date gear. The Emperor splits into many clones who attack and I died the first time but the second time you could actually start with your focus on the real Emperor so you just attack him and let T7 tank them all and that’s pretty much that though Lord Scourge gets kind of angsty depending on what you do after you have defeated him. And so after all that you escape and fly back to a hero’s welcome about one of the republic starships with Master Satele Shan and a crowd of other people you’ve met doing the storyline missions in various planets which pretty much looks like every other ending in the Star Wars movies with you and your crew being exalted with your efforts, even Lord Scourge your reluctant Jedi-buddy.

Unfortunately this isn't me, I kind of forgot to take screenshots during the one-time-only ceremony. go me anyway this is a shot from it.

 The thing I want to know is, if in the Jedi Knight storyline you’re the one who defeats the Emperor, how the hell do the other Republic class storylines finish? I suppose they are all separate from each other. Also I now have 10000 Light side points from finishing the storyline but apparently you still don’t get the achievement for being full Light side until you “alignment” is 100% so what that means is I’m going to have to “reduce” my remaining 550 dark side points which seems to be what happens when you are full light but not zero dark.

 THE SPOILERS BE ENDED

So basically what this thing is saying it, I'm not Light V yet cause I still got some Dark in me but apparently I can fix my "alignment" by doing more "good" things. Who says you can't fix your past?

So all’s well that ends well, next stop: Ilum and maybe some actual High End stuff like Operations etc, if I’m going to get all the extra non-daily stuff done on other planets I’m gonna have a heap to do really, what I’d give for a larger quest log. Finally in some somewhat related news a US Academic has rewritten Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in Shakespearian, which is sure to be a lot of fun to read plus the illustrations are pretty cool too.

JD

And ever shall the Force remain with thee

The Past and Times of Yore: WipEout HD/Fury, the Last of a Legend

 







Release Date:  September  24, 2008 (HD) October 15, 2009 (Fury)
Genre: Futuristic Racer
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Developer: Studio Liverpool
Platform: Playstation 3
Players: 1-2 (Splitscreen) and 1-8 Multiplayer
Classification: E 10+

Playing this title again, It never occurred to me how much impact this title has now despite being almost 4 years old, since Sony announced the closure of Studio Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis) in August last year it is essential the last WipEout game to be released for a Playstation Console (apart from WipEout 2048 on PS Vita) and thus ends the Wipeout series. I can still remember playing the original WipEout game on PC the late nineties using a joystick as well. Back then the only racing games I had played before were SNES titles such as Mario kart, Biker Mice from Mars and Rock’n’Roll racing, but this was something else. The first Wipeout defined what the whole "playstation experience" was with a single game. It also defined a lot of current day "club culture" At the time the WipEout soundtracks were also, for a lot of younger people, the first time they were exposed to artists like The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, LFO, Underworld or Aphex Twin which could possibly have been my first influences into Techno and Dance which I love today.

Of course the main point of Wipeout was the awesome speeds you could reach with the Wipeout “ships” which blew away any car racing game out there, ships being the operative term here as they obviously didn’t have wheels they hovered above the racetrack and used ‘airbrakes’ to turn corners and there was a small backstory about the Anti-Gravity “F” titled racing league and mock press releases in the booklets for each game

The original Wipeout game released in 1995, oh the memories. by mastes1

I was only in my early teens at the time and was a bit young to realise but the original WipEout revolutionized gaming for the older gamers who were around when it all started, it had a non-cutesy futuristic setting with ultra-fast ships and bangin’ dance beats, it was like it was made for that generation hence why the directors of the movie Hackers saw it as something they wanted to include in their film which had a dance music listenin’ cyberpunk culture of young people which WipEout appealed to the most and represented in the gaming world. I kind of never saw it this way, I just thought of Wipeout as a cool futuristic game and spent many hours zooming along trying to win all the races and not hit the damn sides, and it was a blast to play especially when I got the PS1 version which worked perfectly compared to the PC version which I had a bit of trouble sometimes getting to work properly being DOS and all.

Shortly After that came Wipeout 2097 with more tracks, classes and music, the second game in the series smoothed down both the graphics and the physical racing gameplay making the racing experience much more enjoyable, it also added shield energy to the game for the first time, meaning that the weapons as well as stalling your opponent now drained their shield as well which they could recharge by flying into a “pit lane” which was adjacent to the starting grid and losing a few seconds. This added weapons such as the Quake disrupter which fired a ripple down the track and the Plasma bolt which destroyed opponents in a single hit. The game also introduced the Vector and Phantom being the slowest and fastest Speed Classes in the game with the original Venom and Rapier being in the middle. Wipeout 2097 was probably best known for its soundtrack which featured The Prodigy, The Future Sound of London, The Chemical Brothers, Fluke, and Underworld. There was also a popular soundtrack album. I now know that the reason for all the Red Bull advertising was that the game was featured and played in various nightclubs as a promo in conjunction with Red Bull Energy Drink though it wasn’t till years later that I actually started drinking the stuff lol it seemed that back then Wipeout was more in the club scene than ever.

Wipeout 2097

In the interim of Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3, Wipeout 64 was released which was basically a port of 2097 but had two very distinct new features such as steering with an analogue stick (digital control was disabled even) and split screen multiplayer which is written as supposedly being 2-4 players though I only ever played 2 players with a friend myself, this is still a massive improvement over 2097 where the only way you could play two player was the ridiculous Playstation “link cable” which you need to purchase as well as requiring two television sets, two PlayStation consoles, and two copies of the game. It was the time where the Playstation multiplayer functionality was laughable compared to N64 which had a greater number and quality of (albeit kid-friendly) multiplayer games and most important 4 controller ports whereas I had to buy a multitap for both my PS1 and 2 to be even able to play 4 players. The benefit with that though was with some games you could get up to 5 players but that another story.

Wipeout 64 vertical split-screen gameplay by jk7201b

I was much looking forward to the release of Wipeout 3 or “Wip3out” as  seemingly any 3^rd game of a series which has an E in the title always turns out to be i.e “Driv3r”, one of the most ludicrous version of this I’ve seen was Thief 4 or “Thi4f” I’ mean seriously since when does a number 4 look like an e? Also they didn’t do it with the previous game as there was no number in the title, figures. Anyway Wipeout 3 was a pretty clean package, it’s wasn’t that much different in terms of features, it retained the same ship/teams and most weapons from 2097 and added a couple more. The tracks were different this time in the way that they were not based on real world locations but in the fictional “Mega City”. The soundtrack was as good as ever being composed of techno and electronica tracks selected by DJ Sasha and features contributions by Orbital and The Chemical Brothers. Probably the two most prominent features of the game were for one the inclusion of a 2 player split-screen mode which after finally getting the feature I was only able get a few friends to play with me regrettably. The second feature was its unique graphical style which I really can’t explain, it was sort of like 2097’s graphics but much smoother, brighter and funkier (with most tracks) with a much better level of details then 2097 and was the first in the series to run at high-resolution mode (720 x 480, or 480i).

Wipeout 3

The Designers Republic who had worked co-operatively with Psygnosis on the first three Wipeout games’ visual style including menu’s, text, load screens and in-game billboards and screens really gave Wipeout its edge where other games may have had great looks vehicles and tracks but bland landscapes for the backgrounds, their designs were especially prominent with Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3 with the ultra-minimalistic menu interface.

Some shots of the Wip3out menu screen designed by The Designers Republic, minimalist is an understatement

Wipeout Fusion was the premier Wipeout game for the Playstation 2 and the first game made after Psygnosis' name change to SCE Studio Liverpool. The main changes (apart from the obvious graphical upgrade with the PS2) brought in vast changes to the track layouts which now instead of being a single track was a giant one split into 3 creating a short, medium and long circuit of a particular location, also for the first time trackless sections where I have slammed into a boulder and blew up a lot of dust in my time, it also included hidden-wall shortcuts or ones that required a turbo-boost power-ups to get over.  In Fusion weapons and combat suddenly became huge, the proton cannon, grav stinger, flamethrower, and gravity bomb was added and each team was given a unique super-weapon, as you progressed through the different leagues the cpu players got more and more aggressive, sometimes it was such a clusterfuck of ships firing everywhere that you barely got through the first lap without being blown up, it became less of a race then a survival to just see who could finish and the only time you could repair yourself was in the pit lane.


Wipeout Fusion gameplay featuring a trackless section of the course.

Apart from the pilot aggression there were a few other things I didn’t like firstly there was the way that there was no Speed classes anymore, when you did the various leagues you were given credits to spend on upgrading your craft which you needed to do to stay competitive, this was alright it’s just that then you end up stacking all the points into the one ship. What confounds this even more is the return of the Pilot characters from the first Wipeout which was evident as there was much more storytelling elements and backstory in the game, but instead of putting points into the team, you put points into either the first or second pilot and the more points you put into a pilot and their ship it got bigger and “meaner” looking with 3 variations. This kind of thing really irked me as I enjoyed the way Wipeout 2097 and 3 just had the teams though it did add a bit of character to the game but I liked the ships stats staying the same and changing accordingly so it was a bit off-putting. Also the way the ships had obvious damage I didn’t like either but I guess it was more realistic.

After Fusion I had quite a long break from the Wipeout series and really consoles in general, until we happened to get a PS3 and I course decided to purchase and download the Wipeout HD/Fury package, I’d only played it a bit before on a friend’s PS3 but buying it myself and having a good go made me realise what a nice tight package it was for a Wipeout game, it was quite similar to Wipeout 3 in terms of teams, tracks and controls so pretty much all the gameplay, and the grid style Campaign was excellent, I did the HD campaign first as you did all of the types of races including: Single Race, Tournament, Speed Lap, Time Trial, and Zone. Zone mode, which first appeared in Wipeout Fusion, has you piloting a ship with full stats in an awesome looking digitized track with minimal textures and a graphic equalizer in the sky moving to the current music. I was glad to see that pretty much all of the unwanted stuff inc individual pilots, new teams, credits-for-stats, super weapons have been taken out.

Wipeout HD

As you play through the campaign all the different modes of play are randomly laid out in a hexagonal grid, you start from the middle and gradually unlock the surrounding hexagons, you can change the difficulty at any time before/after a race if you are having trouble.  After acquiring a certain number of points unlocks the next , as you progress through the events the modes get harder i.e. faster speed classes, more aggressive opponents and more challenging medal goals. I reckon this a great addition to the series and much better then the Fusion version as what Wipeout really needed was a single campaign that created a fun and balanced way to play most of the singleplayer content in the game.

The new tracks were pretty damn cool, the first track Vineta K situated on the beach with a classic underwater section, Metropia dodging around skyscrapers with breathtaking drops, Ubermall, a new incantation of Mega Mall from Wipeout 3 and Sol 2, a track suspended in the air with a dreaded open-sided section. The tracks included a reverse option but were not divided into 3 as before, also there were no-more trackless sections or shortcuts in any of the tracks.

The Sol 2 (sky track) Phantom class time trial by HellfireWZ

The ship roster is made up of all the ships from the original Wipeout to 3 with new ones (Triakis, Mirage and Harimau) taken from Wipeout Pulse I was pleased to find out that the Triakis team is Australian and true to Australian form our ship is built like a brick shithouse with maximum shields though their quite hard to handle but I don’t care I go them all the time in multiplayer. As I had gotten the Fury expansion I already had access to the Fury ships which I used through the HD campaign where I should have been using the HD ships though it didn’t matter all that much as I used the Fury Mirage ship almost all the way through I wish I researched all the unlocks and ship skins etc properly before I played I used the same team for most of the HD campaign thinking that you had to get full loyalty for a team to get all their ship skins but it turns out all you need to get is 8000 for each team to unlock two alternate skins and 10000 only once for a team to unlock the classic Wipeout HUD (which I wasn’t going to use anyway) I ended up getting 26000 points with Mirage and although they are a great all-round ship it was kind of a waste as apart from achievements all the other skins are unlocked via the Campaign

Wiepout HD Ships/Teams

Reading the reviews now I notice that lots of people are saying how smooth and great the graphics look, I must admit I didn’t really notice this as all PS3 games look equally good to me really though I admit as the Wipeout games got better quality they also a bit harder to see where you are going as before there was just a plain coloured track and bland walls and scenery, now there’s intricately detailed track grids through Las Vegas entertainment complexes with lights (flashing, neon or otherwise) all over the place. But I suppose it’s not exactly that hard though I found though that when the lights went green (or whatever happens) on your first race and you thrust forward your eyes go kinda fuzzy and have to re-adjust to the speed, especially at the higher levels, the graphics look great though any way you look at it.

Wipeout HD - The Amphiseum - Phantom Time Trial by HellfireWZ

As I mentioned before the fury expansion brought new ships (with upgraded stats), game modes, tracks and another campaign. The new ships looked a bit sleeker, newer and somewhat chunkier/blockier then the previous ones. Three new game modes were added inc

Eliminator: Which is basically an endless single race where the objective is to damage and destroy other ships until you get to the targeted damage count.

Zone Battle:  Which is a twist on the original Zone Mode. Rival pilots appear on the track as you race to reach the target zone. Drive through zone pad to charge your zone bar and you can use it to either boost your zone and come closer to victory or absorb it to replenish ship energy and activate your shield. The first to reach a target zone wins.

Detonator: Which is again similar to zone mode except you are in a ships which fires laser bolts and have to destroy objects on the track in your path.

The new Detonator mode by Kylethe2011

Eight new tracks were introduced for the expansion with 4 of them being zone mode only, this made things a bit repetitive as with the whole campaign you only had 4 tracks for doing Single Race, Tournament, Speed Lap, Time Trial and even when they were reversed sometimes I still reckon they needed at least 1 or 2 other tracks for the normal modes.

On my recent foray back into HD/Fury to finish the Fury campaign, I’ve had a grand old time playing multiplayer and getting my ass kicked by Japanese punks, strangely enough even playing people from different countries, the game still seems to play pretty smoothly though sometimes I don’t see ships moving at all and certain modes like Eliminator can get fairly laggy though most of the time it’s just single race or tournament being played. I’ve done pretty well for myself though getting seconds and thirds though there’s always one lightning fast motherfucker who creams us all, one instance I was doing pretty good and got 2 minutes 14 seconds for a race in Ubermall but the guy who came first beat me by 13 seconds. As I said before my favourite team used to be Mirage but now it’s Triakis cause their Australian, the ship is hard to manoeuvre but is fast and tough as cause of the full shield stats.

I can honestly say that together Wipeout HD/Fury has been the best Wipeout game ever, yes it even beats 2097 and 3 and that’s in terms of overall features, gameplay and obviously visuals and for the mere fact that it’s the first Wipeout which I’ve been able to play online rather than having to make people play 2 player with me. I encourage anyone who hasn’t experience Wipeout to spend that 20 or so dollars and get a digital copy or get Wipeout 2048 if you have a Vita, and experience it as with a Wipeout game, you can’t really get any better  you’ve never seen racing like this before.

WipEout - Through the Ages 2012 by HellfireWZ

So sadly that would appear to be it, Studio Liverpool has been closed down by Sony so it seems unlikely we will see any new Wipeout games in the near future. Of course I haven’t mentioned all of them in this post just the ones I have experienced myself, the full list can be found here, feel free to have a look and more importantly “like” the facebook page to spread the love. I’d just like to say thank you to Studio Liverpool for creating one of my favourite racing game of all time and will hopefully see Wipeout again in the future where it began.

JD

Image from Studio Liverpool's final post on the Wipeout facebook page.

Perfect lap!