Joystiq

The rules have changed: Suiting up for Super Monday Night Combat

Patricia Hernandez — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

As free-to-play games are constantly changing, traditional reviews can't really do them justice, so Joystiq relies on a series of unscored review diaries to record our experiences with them. Today brings part one of our Super Monday Night Combat diaries.

In the future, the American dream is a crowd cheering a brutal battle for cash, prizes, corporate endorsements and bacon. Can't have the American Dream without bacon, after all. At least, this is the world Uber Entertainment has created in Super Monday Night Combat, the follow-up to 2010's (regular) Monday Night Combat. The premise is still the same: Opposing teams of 'pros' must escort regularly spawning A.I. bots to the enemy Moneyball, first team to destroy the enemy Moneyball wins. Bots are the only thing that can take a Moneyball down, but they have to survive through a staunch line of turrets, vicious arena bots and of course, several classes of aggressive (and perhaps insane) opposing players.

These classes all have special skills and abilities specific to their role, from the whimsical, Italian support class who can heal and place defensive turrets, to a giant gorilla in a pinstripe suit that can hurl flaming barrels. There's a mascot that can be beaten, shot and otherwise maimed for power-ups, announcers trying to sell products to the audience, and a weather-controlling blimp that can turn the tide of an entire match for the right price. All typical sport stuff, really.

Gallery: Super Monday Night Combat (8/20/11)

Continue reading The rules have changed: Suiting up for Super Monday Night Combat

The rules have changed: Suiting up for Super Monday Night Combat originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 10 May 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Riot Games' close calls with disaster

Mike Schramm — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:30:00 EST

Riot Games CEO Brandon Beck gave the closing keynote at last week's IGDA Leadership Forum in Los Angeles, California, and during the talk (in which he made the point that "Riot's secret weapon all along" has been its employees), he gave a few interesting examples of how Riot's staff had really gone the extra distance to turn League of Legends into the successful online phenomenon it is today.

His first example was about the matchmaking system -- originally, Riot struggled to make sure that players were matched up against each other in an interesting and effective way, and the company ended up bringing in not a game developer, but a programmer with a PhD in computational biology whose "thinking was radically different and compelling," according to Beck.

A month after this hire, the company had a whole new matchmaking system, and in the end, it turned out to be "too fair" -- the games were too close. Since "what players remember are the outliers," according to Beck, the team developed "snowball items," which were "risky purchases that rewarded flawless execution." That bit of gameplay mixed up the matches, and came to be the system the game uses today.

Continue reading Riot Games' close calls with disaster

Riot Games' close calls with disaster originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Blizzard DOTA, coming soon to a new platform called Blizzard Arcade

Mike Schramm — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:45:00 EST

Blizzard DOTA was back on the floor of BlizzCon 2011 last week, after spending a year away from the spotlight being "completely rebooted." We played the game as soon as we possibly could, finding it to be a much more polished take on the popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) gametype.

"Last year we had basically the style of the art, and the look that we were going for," says Samwise Didier, Blizzard's Senior Art Director. But as I said when I played the early version of the mod, the game itself wasn't quite as polished as the look and feel. "This year," says Didier, "we really focused on taking the DOTA-style game and really making it our own."

Blizzard has done a few interesting things to the gametype that has made League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth so popular. But the most interesting may just be how the company plans to release it. Blizzard is going to make sure everyone has a chance to check it out, even if they don't own StarCraft 2. "We haven't figured out the details," says Didier. "But there will be a free-to-play Blizzard DOTA on our Blizzard Arcade. We don't know how many heroes there will be, or how many maps, but we definitely want to make sure that everyone knows it will be free-to-play."

Gallery: Blizzard DOTA (10/21/11)

Continue reading Blizzard DOTA, coming soon to a new platform called Blizzard Arcade

Blizzard DOTA, coming soon to a new platform called Blizzard Arcade originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

League of Legends: Dominion ready for summoning

Alexander Sliwinski — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:00:00 EST

Less than a week after entering a random-timing public beta, League of Legends' Dominion mode is now available.

"Nearly a year in the making, League of Legends: Dominion represents the largest and most ambitious update to League of Legends since its launch in October of 2009," Riot stated in its release announcement. "League of Legends: Dominion is the latest example of our ongoing commitment to bringing you the best of the MOBA genre in new and innovative ways."

Dominion tweaks the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre of "attack a base" by shifting the action to several capture points. Those who've played Battlefield's Conquest mode or most any other game's "king of the hill" will catch on quickly.

Gallery: League of Legends: Dominion

League of Legends: Dominion ready for summoning originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

League of Legends Dominion preview: The squared circle

Mike Schramm — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST

League of Legends recently reached a total of 15 million registered players. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that all of those players have played their matches on just two different maps, one made specifically for Defense of the Ancients-style 5v5 play, and one made for 3v3 combat (there are a few other maps in the game, but they're used for training, not full game modes).

That's about to change. Last week, Riot Games invited Joystiq over to its headquarters in Santa Monica, California, to see a brand new game mode for the online competitive title. It's coming along with what Senior Producer Travis George calls "the biggest update we've ever made for League of Legends," a new content release subtitled Dominion.

Dominion is a brand new gametype and is especially notable because all of the games in the growing DotA (or MOBA) genre have basically used the same premise: two armies of minions fight with equal strength across a series of parallel lanes, and player champions fight minions and each other to gain ground and win the battle. Dominion, however, is a brand new set of rules, combining elements of the DotA genre with scoring, much more akin to EA's Battlefield games or Call of Duty's Domination mode.

Gallery: League of Legends: Dominion

Continue reading League of Legends Dominion preview: The squared circle

League of Legends Dominion preview: The squared circle originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

League of Legends shows off new champions, spectator mode at E3

Mike Schramm — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 21:15:00 EST

Riot Games' League of Legends is one of the biggest free-to-play titles around -- it started off as a spiritual successor to the old Defense of the Ancients mod, but has since grown, strictly by word of mouth and organic growth, up into its own industry. Riot hasn't actually announced player numbers for the title yet, but this is a huge game online, consistently landing in the top spots on Xfire and other services' most-played lists.

If you've never played (and why not? It's free!), the basic structure of the game has you controlling a champion on a real-time strategy-style battleground, and Riot has been releasing one of these new champions every few weeks for quite a while now. In the game's booth at E3 last week, we got to hear about three of the upcoming new champions, as well as brand new feature to the game designed to get even more players involved: A spectator mode.

Continue reading League of Legends shows off new champions, spectator mode at E3

League of Legends shows off new champions, spectator mode at E3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 11 Jun 2011 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Rise of Immortals closed beta kicking off April 5

Griffin McElroy — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:00:00 EST

Rise of Immortals, Petroglyph's entry into the rapidly expanding multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre -- which includes Heroes of Newerth, Demigod, League of Legends and Dota 2 -- will invite nearly 10,000 applicants into its closed, friends-and-family beta test on April 5. Actually, we guess once those invites go out, it'll become less of a friends-and-family beta and more of a friends-and-family-and-thousands-of-strangers beta.

Check out our preview of Rise of Immortals to see if it's the kind of thing you'd like to play before its official launch. And by "play," of course, we mean "rigorously stress test and check for bugs." We're basically talking about a job, people. Freeloaders need not apply.

Rise of Immortals closed beta kicking off April 5 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Rise of Immortals preview: Potent Dota-bles

Mike Schramm — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:15:00 EST

The Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft 3 has spawned no less than four retail titles now (Heroes of Newerth, Demigod, League of Legends, and Valve's upcoming Dota 2), and Las Vegas' Petroglyph Games is throwing its hat into the ring with another, called Rise of Immortals. Petroglyph, which has its roots in EA's Westwood Studios and is also working on an MMORTS for Trion, showed the game to me at GDC last week and, while it's safe to say that the growing "MOBA" (multiplayer online battle arena) genre is probably well covered already, they are planning to put a few new twists and turns on the still-developing formula.

The most central of these is more of an emphasis on PvE -- while League of Legends or Heroes of Newerth is centered around five players battling it out with five others online, Rise of Immortals plans to make playing versus the environment a viable goal, with levels that spawn monsters to fight and even award persistent items for you and your team. There are some other innovations, too, and Rise of Immortals seems like it will be an interesting experimental entry into this quickly evolving genre.

Gallery: Rise of Immortals (3/8/11)

Continue reading Rise of Immortals preview: Potent Dota-bles

Rise of Immortals preview: Potent Dota-bles originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Petroglyph announces Rise of Immortals, closed beta sign-ups begin

Richard Mitchell — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:45:00 EST

Petroglyph has announced that its new multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, Rise of Immortals, is now accepting sign-ups for a closed beta test. Rise of Immortals is a free-to-play MOBA -- i.e. "it's like Defense of the Ancients" -- that features persistent character creation and, of course, plenty of microtransaction-fueled goodies. The game allows players to choose from twelve customizable Immortals with different abilities and take them into battle in either player-vs-player or player-vs-environment matches.

Those wishing to sign up for the beta should head over to the Rise of Immortals website; the test is currently offered only to "friends & family," though it will expand to more players in the coming weeks. Check out some screens in the gallery below and find a trailer after the break.

Gallery: Rise of Immortals (2/22/11)

Continue reading Petroglyph announces Rise of Immortals, closed beta sign-ups begin

Petroglyph announces Rise of Immortals, closed beta sign-ups begin originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments