Shootmania Storm Open Beta First Impressions

I have been a big fan of the Trackmania series ever since I first got my hands on Trackmania nations. Too many hours of my life were spent racing around their roster of tracks and the ones made by the community and I regret none of it. Then out of the blue Trackmania 2 Canyon appeared and I had to grit my teeth as I notice it now had a price tag. How long has it been since I saw the game arrive on steam and how long have I been putting off buying it? You can guess how excited I must have been when an open beta for Trackmania 2 Stadium appeared. However, even though my mind was set on Trackmania, I noticed something else has been opened to the public with a similar name. That game is called Shootmania.

At first I wasn't entirely sure if this game was going to be any decent as Iv'e always known Nadeo, the people behind Trackmania, to make racing games and not first person shooters but once I had dived head first into Shootmania I realised my assumptions were wrong. When I had to explain what the game was like to the rest of my group, I simply told them to imagine it as dodge ball with guns. You are dropped into a map with many players and the object of the game is to hit your opponents without being hit yourself. Get hit twice and you are eliminated until the next round until the last man standing wins.

However to actually be able to eliminate your opponents entirely and stop them from respawning, the flag in the centre of the map must be captured. This causes a huge tornado to start closing in around the arena and forces everyone to move towards the flag or risk being eliminated as the it wipes out those left behind. This means the remaining players are all closer together for a close-quarters finish. Considering the game doesn't actually come with a tutorial of sorts I had to find out what everything did myself and never before have I been ambushed by a natural disaster. That tornado seems to come out of nowhere and usually takes the less experienced players by surprise.

Trackmania2 Stadium Open beta First Impressions

I'm not going to lie. I expected something to actually be different about the sequel to the global racing extravaganza known as Trackmania but after only ten minutes of navigating the menu's and racing the first set of tracks I realised that there was really only two major differences between Trackmania Nations and Trackmania 2 Stadium.

Trackmania in short, is an online racing game with single player and multiplayer content you can download from steam. Every race is either a checkpoint time trial or a lapped circuit that become progressively harder as you make your way through the many tracks in the single player mode. What makes this game so appealing is the way each track is somewhat over the top, incorporating loops, driving on walls and launching your car off of ramps to get to that finish line in the distance.

The game doesn't just stick to racing though as the in-game level editor used to make the single player tracks is open to the players to build something themselves. That is where multiplayer stands out the most, gathering huge amounts of players all on the same track created by other players where the creativity of the community is only limited by what blocks they can use. I myself recall competing against these other players to see if they could beat my time (of which they managed every single time) on some peculiar track that involved hurling your car sideways so that you do not crash into a billboard and still maintained your speed round the corner.

League of Legends Review

Created by Riot Games, a company that had concealed itself beneath the radar and devoted most of their time into this one video game, have put together one of the most popular online video games out there today even though they had not actually released any other video game before it. Inspiration for League of Legends would most likely sprout from the Warcraft III mod: Defence of the Ancients which set the bar for Riot to hurl themselves over. And they did exactly that.

League of Legends isn't the hardest game to understand and get good at but it does take some time getting used to. Once you have figured out how everything works and what buttons you need to be pressing it can become very enjoyable. The easy hot-keys and controls allow newcomers to the game to dive right in. But what does League of Legends actually involve?

The League was created to settle disputes between the many different cities around the land. Instead of letting war break out, they all agreed to place their most powerful warriors into an arena and whoever won got the final say in the arguments. Although this is only the bare bones of what the story is all about as each champion has a different lore that explains why they joined the league. You can delve into these extra snippets of information or ignore them entirely as it has no real impact on the game.