Starting in early 2013, Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends, will be creating its own online gaming league. Called League of Legends Championship Series, the organization will pit the top eight teams from Asia, North America and Europe in weekly matches that will be broadcasted in HD for free. The teams will be competing for millions of dollars in prizes, and will also be salaried so that League of Legends is "a sustainable career choice for professional players."
The Championship Series will take place in a format similar to other televised sports, with a regular season that sees multiple matches each week, followed by a regional playoffs and a world championship battle.
The selected teams will be chosen based on their ranking in the League of Legends Season 2 competition. This increases the pressure on the teams participating in the upcoming North American and European Regional tournaments for Season Two, as the top three teams from each region will be automatically qualified for the Championship Series. The European Season Two Regionals will take place during August 16th -19th at Gamescom 2012 in Cologne, Germany, while the North American tournament will occur August 30th - September 2nd at PAX Prime in Seattle, Washington.
The creation of the new league doesn't mean Riot is abandoning its previous professional gaming partners, either. Today's press release states "the Championship Series will represent the absolute highest level of competitive play in League of Legends Season 3" but adds that "the competition will also be fierce in the Challenger Circuit, which consists of events hosted by Intel Extreme Masters, Major League Gaming and the IGN Pro League."
Want to learn more about the game Riot says is "the most played PC game in the world"? To see League of Legends competitive play, check out the abundance of broadcast matches and awesome videos over on the IPL website.
Fast-paced, brutal, and fun side-scrolling brawler Sacred Citadel is hardly the sort of game you'd expect from the developer of the adorable Ilomilo. The art style is immediately identifiable as Southend Interactive's -- it's bright, detailed, and unlike most other games. The design, meanwhile, is decidedly Sacred -- publisher Deep Silver promises an extensive customization and loot system. The game itself, though, brings rapid violence to a dwindling genre struggling to regain relevance.
Castle Crashers aside, beat-'em-ups tend to fall into the same trap, whether they're remade or re-released classics, or original action games looking to spark arcade interest. Repetition, a consequence of limited player capabilities and simple gameplay ideas, almost invariably leads to boredom. Sacred Citadel combats this with an extensive, evolving combat system.
Heavy and light attacks change based on your directional input as well as which weapons your character wields. Serrated blades are faster and more precise than an axe's devastating area-of-effect damage, for instance, but lack the range and power. At any given moment, you're switching between two types of melee or ranged weaponry. Depending on your class, you may bring a bow, magic, or big sticks to slaughter legions of monsters -- and as they build up the energy to unleash it, players can let loose class-specific special powers.
Suck it, log boss.
the moment-to-moment satisfaction of creating blunt-force trauma as a warrior, complete with visualized, comic book-like impact, Sacred Citadel drives you through its world with plentiful loot drops. New weapons, pieces of armor, and unlockable abilities empower your brutish warrior, rogue-like ranger, or shaman healer.
All of this comes together in a meaningful way. Your team's abilities play off each other, so while an archer distracts a gigantic fist-fighting tree boss, others can attack and heal as necessary. These classes do a great job of keeping each other safe because of their unique skills. It's a genuinely cooperative co-op game,and that makes it something far more special than others like it.
If your Golden Axe alarm is going off, you've got the right idea.
What makes Sacred Citadel interesting -- aside from simply existing as a surprising spinoff of its dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash action-RPG predecessor -- is the various itches it aims to scratch. Fundamentally, it's a by-the-books Golden Axe lookalike that hits an old-school note. The vibrant art appeals to those who love looking at pretty things. The depth and variety exists for hardcore RPG nerds, and action game vets will get something out of the combat.
Visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic expects game graphics to become "indistinguishable from reality" within 10 years.
In an interview with CVG, visual effects supervisor Kim Libreri shared his view that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between live action and rendered footage.
The way its going, it's gonna be pretty hard to tell the difference between something that is interactive and rendered in real-time, and something that was done for an animated TV show, or even a live action thing.
"The way its going, it's gonna be pretty hard to tell the difference between something that is interactive and rendered in real-time, and something that was done for an animated TV show, or even a live action thing," he said.
"Ten years from now, I'm pretty sure, if you extrapolate where we've gone with the console generations and the changes in video and ATI hardware... We're getting to the point right now [with real-time rendered graphics] where we're matching the quality of an animated movie seven or eight years ago, and another ten years from now, it's just going to be indistinguishable from reality."
His comments come hot on the heels of similar ones from 2K Games' Christoph Hartmann, who said last week that game graphics needed to become photorealistic in order to communicate emotions. He claimed, "Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now."
Industrial Light & Magic was originally set up by George Lucas in 1975 and has produced the visual effects for the Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises, alongside many other well known films. The studio currently has 15 Best Visual Effects Academy Awards and is working with LucasArts on the upcoming Star Wars 1313 to try and create a high-level cinema aesthetic through vocal work and motion capture.
Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
Continuing the winning streak from last week, The Newsroom delivered yet another knockout episode, and further established itself as the best political drama currently on TV. And, also like last week, the episode dialed back the annoying relationship fluff to focus directly on one historic moment in our history – the death of Osama Bin Laden.
“5/1” starts off at an anniversary party for News Night, but things quickly kick into high gear when Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) receives an anonymous phone call informing him of an issue of national security.
The New Night team leaps into action, attempting to confirm what exactly the event was, with many assuming it's the death of Bin Laden. Meanwhile, in an ironic turn, Don, Sloan and Elliott are trapped on a plane, worried they'll miss reporting one of the biggest news stories of their lifetime. Also, on a more humorous front, Will McAvoy is slowly getting more and more stoned from a pot brownie he consumed at the party earlier that evening. Thankfully, this subplot doesn't draw the negative connotations and cliches it could have easily exploited. Perhaps TMI will dig into it in future episodes.
It's hard to forget that fateful day in early May, when President Barack Obama addressed the nation, informing us that one of the most daring missions in the war on terrorism had been successfully accomplished. A criminal terrorist with a staggering distaste for humanity had been killed in a raid – a mission that could have cost the President his credibility, and endangered the lives of soldiers and citizens, had it gone south. Politics aside, it was a touching moment for the U.S. – a pause for reflection and a brief moment of unified joy.
It was only natural that The Newsroom would eventually reach May 2011. I've been waiting for this episode for a few weeks now, eagerly anticipating how Sorkin would pull it off. Considering The West Wing was still on during the September 2001 attacks, and that the show addressed that conflict head-on, this was likely a very personal episode for Sorkin. He didn't let his audience down, either. It was easily one of the show's most tearful, even topping last week's one-two punch finale.
Every performer has a moment to shine here, whether they're first learning that Bin Laden was killed, or sharing the news with friends, colleagues or complete strangers. I teared up big time when Don revealed the death to the pilots, and when Terry Crews learned the news. But even the non-Bin Laden moments were touching.
Delaying the Maggie, Don, Jim love triangle a bit, Jim decided to give his relationship with Lisa (Kelen Coleman) a shot. In some ways, this symbolized the new beginning that many Americans felt in the wake of Bin Laden's death. Whether that was intentional or not doesn't matter. The final scene between the two of them was quite touching.
It would have been so easy to politicize and even criticize the death of Osama Bin Laden, but it was nice to see the show simply live in the moment, without too much commentary. That's for later episodes. Instead, The Newsroom made an even more daring decision, it showed us the human side of the men and women who bring us the news while also giving us insight into how they react to such a historical event. And to put it bluntly, that's why The Newsroom rocks.
EA has released a trailer for SSX that implies that multiplayer will be coming to the snowboarding game.
The footage implies that at least five players will be able to jump out of the helicopter at the start of a course, but the other racers will appear as hologrammatic 'ghosts' (presumably to avoid unsightly and painful collisions).
Although well-received upon its release, SSX have multiplayer out of the box, allowing only for asynchronous head-to-heads via leaderboards.
