The competitive experience is balanced and challenging without being overwhelming

“League of Legends” developer Riot Games announced a new champion on Tuesday. Kindred is a dual-spirit Lamb and Wolf marksman jungler -- and it is very over powered. “Kindred prowls through camps, marking enemy champions for death and permanently growing in strength if they’re able to carry out the promised sentence,” says a blog post from Riot. “But just as Kindred brings death, so can they delay it.”

That said, League of Legends is easily one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played. The champions -- each of whom comes equipped with four abilities, which scale based on player preference as the character climbs through 18 per-session experience levels -- are a colorful and diverse lot, each carefully considered and well-designed in terms of their battlefield contribution. My current favorites include the very clearly Todd McFarlane-inspired behemoth Cho’Gath (who eats people, grows massive, and generally rampages around the map as an unkillable menace) and the speedy swordsman Master Yi (who can single-handedly topple an unmanned enemy turret in about 10 seconds flat).

Faves aside, I can safely say (based on some 300-ish total games I’ve played to date) that every single champion earns their keep. The matte black finish is accented with yellow glowing highlights, from a glowing ring around the ratcheting scroll wheel, to yellow numbers on the Hex buttons, and a pulsing League of Legends logo on palmrest. The scroll wheel gets an extra dose of detail, where the rubber grip around the scroll wheel is textured with runes that should be familiar to anyone who knows the game well. If you’re a committed DotA enthusiast, you can ignore a good chunk of the nit-pickery above. LoL is a comprehensive update to a compelling idea.

It’s so crammed with heroes and items, combinations are near-impossible to exhaust. It also brings a meta-game where your account is a “character” that levels up, adding a whole new layer to the strategy of the DotA formula. League of Legends lets you choose from more than 110 Champion templates (characters), and you can customize the character to round out the character’s skill set with points earned from matches and achievements. A well-designed tutorial lets you play through the basics so you can learn how to attack, how to defend, and how to control your section of the map during gameplay.

The tutorial also offers beginning and intermediate matches against both live players and computer-controlled bots. To truly curb abuse, Riot designed punishments and disincentives to persuade players to modify their behavior. For example, it may limit chat resources for players who behave abusively, or require players to complete unranked games without incident before being able to play top-ranked games. The company also rewards respectful players with positive reinforcement.

With the game already out, there’s really only one map to play on and earn experience. A snow version of the map is said to exist, but I could never find a match with one. A third, smaller map, is in beta right now. As much as I love the game, and I borderline can’t stop playing love it, the lack of maps is a serious issue. Riot Games’ biggest push right now should be on rolling out more maps so the current one doesn’t go so stale no one will ever want to play it again.

In conclusion, League of Legends is an excellent game created by an up and coming developer with signs of serious promise. The gameplay is well designed, the art quality is superb, the graphics and sound are enjoyable without bogging down the game, and the competitive experience is balanced and challenging without being overwhelming. I would recommend this game to fans of RPG and RTS player vs. player content. The only thing holding this back from a 5 out of 5 and an overall score over 95% is the max zoom limitation. If they address that, I will revisit this review and make the appropriate changes.