Some of you out here reading this might have played a custom map in Warcraft III called DotA that has been around since 2003. Some might have played that intensively. Well it seems some loved the custom map so much that it warranted a standalone game to be made around its concept. Heck, it seems like three games were made from that concept. The released Demigod, the upcoming Heroes of Newerth and the title I’m here to talk about today, Leagues of Legends: Clash of Fates.

I was aware for a while, hearing some co-worker talk about it, that Dota existed as a custom WCIII map, but I never really knew what it was all about, and since I don’t own a copy of WCIII, I never went around and try it.  So when I applied to try out the Beta, I mentioned that I was a complete noob to the concept, but was looking forward to learn what was all the hype about.  So is this concept of a game good or over-rated like a lot of hyped stuff? Find out in this LoL preview after the jump.

I usually start with graphics and stories for these kinds of posts. But there’s not much story to speak of so far and the graphics are pretty much the same as Warcraft III, with maybe higher resolution textures, so there’s not much to say about it here. There might also be more polygons than in Warcraft III, the case is very likely, but I haven’t looked at WCIII in a while.

Presentation

Presentation makes or kills a game more often than not. This is why you want your game to appeal in visual and functionality at the same time.  Once you boot up the game, you have an interface where you can either go play, or take care of some of your accounts settings.  In the latter, you can put up points in one of three tree, much alike the talents in World of Warcraft.  It works exactly the same actually.  As a noob to the game, I find it a bit overwhelming, as I’m not really sure what works and what doesn’t, but I assume as experience playing comes, you have a clearer idea what you’d want to focus on.  You also have a book with different pages. On these pages, you can set up more and more runes that gives small bonuses to the player. You will be using one page at a time when in-game.  Now I’m talking about levels, but I don’t want to confuse anyone with this.  There’s levels gained as you play at the end of each game, which are the levels I have been referring to up to now. Then there’s the levels in-game, which starts at level 1 every game.

The game

When you create or join a game. You have for now the choice of playing a real game, or a  practice match.  My first time playing was in a real game. I didn’t mean to actually join it, but I would have felt bad about leaving just like that, given that it plays 5 vs 5.  So you choose your hero character every time you start playing a new game.  It seems like you can’t have the same one as any other teammate but you can have the same as an opponent. Due to the fact that there’s a few dozens of them, it’s nothing to worry too much about, and it’d get confusing if you had the same one as your teammate.  Anyway, to continue this first experience, once I was in the game, I had no clue what I was doing at first.  Since I didn’t plan on joining an online game, as I was simply curious I had clicked Solo play, which I assumed was going to be me and some bots.  But it turned out it wasn’t the case, since it was the option for those that didn’t have anyone they wanted to join already.  I think it’d be a great idea to change the word there, but it was just me being stupid.

As the game started, I had no clue what to do, so I asked my teammate, who were patient enough to tolerate my noobness.  Though they were spirited into winning, having me in their team, alongside another beginner (who had DotA experience, unlike me), we were doomed to begin with.  You basically have a base on each side of the map, with three main paths leading to one another. On the way, there’s some of your towers you must defend, and further away, the enemies’ that you must destroy if you want to progress up to the base of the enemy to destroy it.  Apart then you and your 4 teammates’ heroes, you have intermittent waves of units taking each of the 3 paths to help you attack and defend.

By killing those  units, you get  some in-game experience and you can level up to level 18, which is the maximum level. You gain access to abilities specific to your characters, to go along with non-character specific abilities, which I forgot to mention, you gain access to as you level up your player level. Those non-character specific ones can only be equipped 2 at a time, which can only be changed before the game starts.  As for the character specific ones, there seems to be 4 of them.  To give you guys an idea, in my first game, when I hit level 7, everyone else was at least level 13 or 14, and when they were 18, I was around 11 or 12. I was a dead weight, a huge dead weight. So after finding out about the practice option, I’ve kept to that and played with bots, and will keep to that until I can play well, though I’m about ready to hop in some real action.  There’s also a ladder match option, but it wasn’t active the last time I checked.

So the last big feature of the game is the ability to buy “armor” and “weapons”. They’re not something you can see your character wear or wield and use to fight, but they’re simply used to boost your different stats.  Those, along with the gold to buy them, are only there for the game you are in only, so they all go away once the game is over.

So that’s about it for now. I’m really enjoying the time I’ve put into this, even though I’ve had a few frustrations. First, the game won’t hold your hand even if it’s your first time playing. I might have missed it, but a tips popup option would do a great deal helping out people like me that never played DotA.  I wouldn’t put this as a negative point, but I also fell overwhelmed by the number of characters available, but at the very least, there game makes enough distinction with its filters so that you know if you are picking a tank, assassin, fighter or mage type of hero.  Other things though that irks me goes from your character stopping its way toward an enemy if it’s been killed, your character chasing up into dangerous parts more or less on his own if you’re not careful and finally the fact that when you want to retreat, the camera takes a bit too long to start scrolling back down (or up) when you move your mouse near the edge of the screen.  I’d kinda want it to be a bit more sensitive.  Though this might be in the options, but I haven’t found it, mostly because the options are actually only available while the game is going on, and since this is online, there’s no pausing.  That’s a bit annoying too.  But most of these issues doesn’t mean much in the overall experience, which is just plain pure fun and as you get better, you probably don’t mind these and have found out workarounds that works much better I bet.

So to any RTS fan, I think this should be something to lookout for, though I  haven’t tried Demigod and Heroes of Newerth, so I can’t really say anything in comparison to those two.  I also haven’t played much RTS in the last few years either, so I can’t comment on how it compares, but if I’d have to guess, this has more of an arcade-ish feeling to it.

To those looking into trying out the Beta, you can do so through Facebook, by adding the game as a friend. Follow the instructions over there. You can also ask a friend if he has any invites. I’ve had one, but I gave it away already.  But if I get any others, I might hand them off.

David A. beta, PC, Preview