VGCulture - Garen Does The Monkey

Official Site: http://beta.na.leagueoflegends.com/
Source: Youtube Channel League of Legends

Garen was the 2nd champion I bought when I first started playing League of Legends and he was one of my favorite characters.  He was incredibly strong with high damage, high resilience, his spin skill (Judgment) allowed him to be invulnerable to all spells, and it was a time where Fire Cape stacked.  After numerous nerfs and changes to his skills, I didn't play him as much and I saw the same from the community.  It seems Riot realized this and decided to spruce Garen up a bit with new visuals, some refining in his skills, and adding a new dance!

Garen originally did the dance from N*Sync's "Bye Bye Bye" Music Video.  But watching the spotlight, I realized he did "The Monkey".  But where did the inspiration come from?  What is riot referencing when they added it in?  I looked what other people thought it might be and one mentioned Johnny Bravo.  I still remember that dance being in the intro of that cartoon (Dance at 0:22):
Source: Youtube Channel Chankis39

Then I saw one other possibility from an Animé I've never heard of called Overman King Gainer.  Dance at 0:46
Source: Youtube Channel ntyun

I am now addicted to the theme song and can't stop listening to it.  There's also the theory that Riot is referencing "Bird is the Word" from Family Guy.  Dance starts at 0:28.
Source: Youtube Channel FOX

It could be anything!  The dance is a bit goofy for Garen, I kinda liked his N*Sync dance.  Still, his visual upgrade looks pretty cool and I'm planning to check it out myself in-game sometime soon.

VGCulture - Humor - LoL My Bear Tibbers

Game Site: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/
Source: Youtube Channel PlagueOfGripes

There's always tons of fan made League of Legends videos, made everyday.  This one, in particular, just happened to be really funny.  Have a good weekend everyone.

VGCulture - League of Legends Lunar New Year Skins

Official Site: http://promo.leagueoflegends.com/lunar-revel/en.html

Every year, Riot Games will celebrate Chinese/Lunar New Year with the rest of the community with special releases of Champion Skins.  This year, it's not just 1-2 skins, but 5 of them.  For a limited of time, players can buy a special oriental themed skin for Annie, Cassiopeia, Corki, Jarvan IV, and Xin Zhao.  I'm most fond of Jarvan IV's Lu Bu skin and Xin Zhao's Zhao Yun skin which both has the likeness of those character designs from the Dynasty Warrior's series by Koei.  Aside from Champion skins, there also special wards, gifting, summoner icons, and a paper craft contest.  Click on the top link to check the details.  Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year's!  May fortune and good health bless you all.

VGCulture - Filler - Irelia OP

I'm sick...so here's a video I found to entertain you all:
Source: Youtube Channel Yagamifyed

VGCulture - League of Legends Semi-Finals continue

Official Site: League of Legends Official Site
own3D.TV Site: http://www.own3d.tv/game/League+of+Legends

Last week, the semi-finals for the League of Legends tournament never finished because of technical problems that prevented the first team from even finishing their game.  So the tournament is being held without an audience with the same hi-quality stream they would have had for an on-site tournament.  There are only 4 teams left.  Which 2 teams will go onto the grand finals?

GameLight - LoL Pulsefire Ezreal

Official Site: http://promo.leagueoflegends.com/pulsefire-ezreal/en.html
Source: Youtube Channel RiotGamesInc

Players of League of Legends have waited for the longest time for the so-called "Megaman" Ezreal, and yesterday it was revealed.  This is possibly the most detailed skin Riot has ever done for a champion.  This new skin has a different set of voice acting, sound, death animation, ability animations, taunt, joke, dance, and movement animation.  One of the coolest aspects to this skin is that the armor Ezreal wears evolves and changes look each time he levels his "ult" (Ultimate Ability).  At a certain point, Ezreal will hover for a short while instead of walking.  It's just a different animation and doesn't give him any ability to fly over walls or anything, but it's a nice little addition to the aesthetic.  Rather than firing from a bow, Ezreal's attacks comes out of his arm cannon which is said to be an homage to Megaman.  Even his death animation has a reminiscence of the blue bomber.  That little addition to having a different animation to minion deaths and champion deaths seem almost unfair as no other champion really has that amount of detail and care for their skins as this one does (and they have been just as expensive).  The taunt for this skin is a reference to a very particular scene from the Dragon Ball Z series.  This is possibly (if not most definitely) the coolest skin Riot has ever created for a champion and I hope they continue to have this amount of detail done for skins of other champions.

VGCulture - Infinite Power in League of Legends!

Apparently there's been a bug that players of League of Legends have found that has allowed them to place mastery points on a skill that reduces their cool down on summoner skills past the max capacity all the way to 105%.  By doing so, that player is able to spam their summoner skills indefinitely and pretty much steam roll over the other team:
Source: Youtube Channel sephshomarulol

The above video was featured on one of Kotaku's articles discussing on Riot's action towards this exploit.  What's happening is that the player is exploiting the bug mentioned above with a skill called flash that allows a player to teleport a short distance instantaneously and the skill smite which allows a player to deal large amounts of damage to non-player controlled enemies.  Combine those with the exploit and he can be everywhere and kill anything.   Source: Youtube Channel kindahappy123

Here's another video revealing the same exploit on the Chinese servers of League of Legends.  In this video, the Evelyn on the enemy team is constantly using the "heal" summoner spell which restores not only her own health but all her allies around her as well.  I imagine that they just pushed mid all the way and won the game as an invincible team.  I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that sort of shenanigans the past few days I've played.

In any case, the exploit causing players to be able to spam their summoner skills indefinitely has been fixed by Riot and they made the effort to find and ban every player that was abusing the bug.

Source:
-Kotaku: Riot Closes “Bull****” League of Legends Exploit, Bans Hundreds of Players

GameOn - MOBA Games - League of Legends

Official Site: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/

Source: Youtube Channel RiotGamesInc

If we are to talk about MOBA Games, League of Legends (LoL) is bound to be the one game to be brought up (other than DotA 2 which isn't officially out yet).  I have accumulated close to 600 hours on LoL since I first started 2.5 years ago when DotA was still my main MOBA game.  That is perhaps the most I have ever spent on a single game (even more than Phantasy Star Online).  It is undeniable that Riot Games' League of Legends is the most popular MOBA game on the market and one of the most played online games.  Although there are many similarities from DotA's cast of characters, many of the champions in LoL are distinct with their own personality, unique play-style, and story background.  The game is constantly expanding, improving, and updated so that the game's quality continues to further itself.  A new champion is released every month with changes to existing ones to balance out the gameplay.  There are many things that Riot does right with the new MOBA genre: simple to learn gameplay while still keeping it highly competitive and challenging, organized user-interface and comprehensible item shop, impeccable level design and art style that distinguishes objects from each other and the environment, and listening to the community to keep them involved.  Like many other games, it does have its faults.  The community is filled with younger audiences which unfortunately brings a lot of immaturity, whining/raging, name calling, and profanity filled goodness along with high egos and arrogance (this is not a generalization, you can tell the difference before schools out and right when the time they get back home).  Children aren't the only ones to blame as many adults can be just as disrespectful and uncouth as they are in the streets.  In short: the general community of LoL is ill-mannered and hard to get along with.  That doesn't mean that everyone who plays LoL are going to rip your head off if you happen to do something wrong.  In fact, I had a few matches where players from both teams were very courteous and joked around a lot which made the game really enjoyable (rare case, but they exist).  Another problem is that the game frequently suffers from lag, bugs, disconnections to the server, glitches, and problems (usually right after a new patch).  The Riot team is incredibly hard working though and has always made it a point to notate all issues and remedy them.  The following for LoL is very strong and so there are a lot guides and videos that help players understand the game better.  LoL is very balanced and the dynamics of how the game can be played makes for a very interesting match each time one plays.  I highly recommend League of Legends for anyone who wants to play a MOBA game as an introduction to the genre as it's one of the easiest to learn and get into.  Click on the top link and click play for free on the upper right hand corner to begin downloading and playing.  This concludes this week's GameOn event, I hope everyone enjoyed it.

NewNews - LoL Dominion is Live (for reals this time)

Hey League of Legend fans and players, Dominion is finally out of beta and is Live (really this time)!

Source: Youtube Channel RiotGamesInc

Dominion feels like a totally different game (if you're already used to the DotA style map and haven't tried this one yet) and allows a player to try out characters with different builds and play-styles from their usual modes.  The matches are much more fast-paced and team-intensive as the main objective is to capture more points than the opposing team to knock their team life-bar down to zero to be the victor.  If you have missed a previous post on this, check out the last post on League of Legends and see what this is about.  If you haven't tried out League of Legends yet, I implore you to give it a try as it is free, easy to learn (compared to DotA and Heroes of Newerth, also good games), and a ton of fun.  You can sign up and download the game at Riot Games' League of Legends sign up page.  Have fun summoners!

GameLight - LoL Dominion is Live!

Official Site: http://dominion.leagueoflegends.com/

Source: Youtube Channel RiotGamesInc

League of Legends is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) based game inspired and developed by the creators of the ever popular Warcraft 3 custom campaign "Defense of the Ancients" (DotA).  Riot Games have been working hard to deliver the best MOBA experience to the world by releasing their game as a Free-To-Play game with Pay2play quality.  New characters are added every month, the game is constantly being improved, and the game always seem to bring something fresh.  Just today, Riot Games released Dominion officially after a very very short beta of only one day (yesterday) and is allowing the general public to play the new map and mode.  Traditionally in MOBA games, a team of 5 players on each side fights against each other to push their army of minions into the enemy's base to destroy the main point.  It's like an Action-RPG mixed with an RTS style Tower Defense map between two teams.  In Dominion, the goal is to capture more points (5 in all) than the enemies to lower their team's health bar.  It's much more fast-paced and is nearly always player vs. player.  Think Company of Heroes or Call of Duty's Domination mode where players capture a point and gradually decreases the enemy's points until it reaches zero.  A lot of new items have been added, new rules are put into play, and characters that might have been useful in the regular mode might not necessarily be useful in Domination.  I play a lot of tanks and captured a lot of points (or defended one) because of my ability to take more hits.  Having one less player can really harm a team (which has happened when players get disconnected).  Since it just came out today, I noticed that the mode isn't 100% bug free yet.  Lag was persistent, character skills might glitch, and some of the map items seem to have some hit-box issues.  The mode isn't perfect yet, but it's incredibly fun.  To be able to fight so many players consistently and finish in 15-20 minutes is a mode competitive players will love.  If you still haven't tried out League of Legends yet, you gotta check it out (It's free!!!).