Seeking new Game

So, what games are people playing now-a-days?  I'm currently revisiting TF2, both regular and dodgeball modes are lots of fun to me.  Still playing a bit of LoL, though I'm cutting back a bit (a loss streak really upset me because I know that most of them were just due to bad allies.  I'm being much more selective about who I play with now).  SC2 I barely touch anymore.  But that's about it for multiplayer stuff.  I had considered picking up DungeonSiege 3, but a bad review from Penny-Arcade made me hold off.  So I'm looking for something else that I can play with friends.

In singleplayer land, I rolled through Mass Effect 2 rather quickly once I was done with Arhkam Assylum and am still working on Valkyrie Profile 2 (console games always take me longer).  ME2 was a spectacular game.  It's major flaw is that it was too short.  I found it much more reminiscent of the Baldur's Gate series in terms of overarching RPG progression than say...Dragon Age which was a horrible let-down.
You have a starting "break out" mission.  Collect a team, and go face the big bad.  Part way through you can earn loyalty (or lose it) and advance inter-character interactions.  And by collect, you actually had to fight your way through mobs to prove your worth to your soon-to-be allies.  While Dragon Age, you were pretty much spoon fed your party members.  Never really having to prove yourself.  And so long as you didn't take the blatant "I hate you" actions the party members wouldn't leave.

Mass Effect 2 really deserves its own write up, which I don't have time for at the moment. But in closing, I would like to say that it's only real flaw is that it was too short and lacked the same depth in terms of world exploration.

At any rate, I've been looking for a new game to play.  Multiplayer preferably.  I am open to suggestions.

Current Games and Projects:

Computer: League of Legends

Computer: StarCraft 2

Computer: Team Fortress 2

Console: Valkyrie Profile 2 (PS2)

LARP: Live Effects (Wyrd, Veil, Lanaque, Messina, & others)

LARP: TwinMask

LARP: Fighter Practice (El Segundo)

Book: Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi (on hold)

Game Update

Work has been dragging down the amount of time I have for games in general.

I've been mostly focusing on LARPs which I can play on weekends.  SC2 is still played but rarely.  Mostly at work with co-workers.  I have a co-worker who got into Masters on 3v3 and Diamond on all other ladders.

LoL is my consistent game at night.  I've expanded my character repertoire to encompass all playstyles aside from Assassin and Melee Carry.  Current list of characters I can play competently (Sivir, Shen, Anivia, Cho'Gath, Amumu, Nunu).

Warstorm, I've been playing less and less.  It was certainly an interesting game that was remeniscent of Ogre Battle in that combat is automated.  Were Ogre Battle a card-game, Warstorm would be it.  For a simple Facebook game, it's pretty decent.

But anyways, the two new items on the list are Arkham Asylum and Valkyrie Profile 2.  Both are amazing games.  I've had the Batman game for awhile now, it was apart of a Steam bundle I bought awhile ago, and it's pretty amazing.  The only complaint I have is that the Xbox Live is mandatory if you want to save your game.  This DRM crap is getting excessive...especially for a single player game.  Aside from that, the game play is well done.  The combat system itself is pretty simple, left click repeatedly and you'll punch people.  Of course you can do MORE than that to be more effective, quick batarangs, cloak sweeps to stun, and using a variety of batman tools to beat them up faster.  The real fun, and the real reason I like the system is the stealth system.  It's not like the Thief games where you can just hide in the shadows.  No, you're batman, you just gotta not be seen.  Use ledges to grapple yourself up to and hide.  Perform stealth subdues...yes you can hang people by their feet like batman is want to do.  Common thugs don't really require this, but when they have guns, The Goddamned Batman needs to be a bit more careful and take them out from behind and pick them off one by one.

Valkyrie Profile is a game that received much acclaim when it came out, but it wasn't popularized as much. Now, I've ragged on JRPGs in the past, but the Valkyrie Profile games go beyond.  It shares the same flaw in most JRPGs in that you don't have customization of your characters.  You are given a cast of NPCs to control rather then these characters being truly yours.  However, within the confines and restrictions of the JRPG genre, Valkyrie Profile 2 shines brightly.  The combat system and the ability to avoid combat are both very engaging.  The combat system itself is highly tactical requiring a good amount of thought and managing your action points wisely as well as positioning.  The tactical map allows you to see where the monsters are.  Not only can you avoid most fights, you can freeze the monsters for a short duration and stand on them to reach high ledge or even teleport between them to reach locations you would otherwise not be able to reach.

Anyways, that's it for now.  When I have time, I'll give more detailed rundowns of the games.

Current Games and Projects:

Computer: League of Legends

Computer: StarCraft 2

Computer: Warstorm

Computer: Batman: Arkham Asylum

Console: Valkyrie Profile 2 (PS2)

LARP: Live Effects (Wyrd, Veil, Lanaque, Messina, & others)

LARP: TwinMask

LARP: Fighter Practice (El Segundo)

Book: Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi (on hold)

LoL - Game Guide

So my League of Legends game guide has been receiving some very good reviews from community members.
[Game Guide] Logistics, Strategy, Tactics

Let me know what you guys think and I'll see about improving it.

League of Legends

First off: sorry for not having updated for awhile.  Having a job is far more time consuming than school in my case.  However, I do try to squeeze in a game of SC2 or League of Legends every night.

So League of Legends is a Defense of the Ancients spin off. I never played DotA, but I am greatly enjoying LoL.   These games are classified as MOBA games, a sub-genre within RTS.  The key difference that I've observed playing SC2 and LoL is that LoL is all micro.  In an RTS like SC2, macro is necessary so that you have units to fight with, and sometimes a large enough army will just make micro irrelevant.  However, in LoL, you control one hero unit, so everything is about microing that one hero unit.  Incidentally, my SC2 macro needs work, but my micro is awesome.  So if we play on a team, share control and I'll micro while you tech and macro.

My main is Sivir and I feel she is perhaps the best champion in terms of how much she teaches you about the game.  Like most RPGs, there are archtypes of characters.  You have your Tank, DPS, Mage, and Healer/Support.  Sivir's primary role is that of a DPS.  She fills the role exceptionally well in larger team fights as her abilities allow her to hit multiple targets simultaneous.  To further fuel her team oriented playstyle, her ultimate ability is a group buff for all allies in the area, increasing attack speed and movement speed.

So, what about Sivir makes her so great for learning the game?  There are many aspects important for the game.  All of these aspects directly or indirectly affect the win condition: destroying your opponent's nexus.

Pushing (direct)
Leveling/Farming (indirect)
Team Fights (indirect)
Ganking (indirect)
Map Awareness (indirect)

Pushing is the act of destroying enemy minions and towers so you can "push" closer to the enemy nexus.  Towers must be destroyed before the nexus can even be targeted, and towers in a lane must be destroyed in sequence.  Thus Pushing is the only direct method to victory.
Sivir is the queen of pushing.  While many come close, there is no champion that can both destroy minion waves and destroy towers as quickly and efficiently as Sivir.

Leveling/Farming is what I consider to be the second most important thing.  Often times even if you have a bad matchup in a fight, you can still win if you out level your opponent.
Sivir, being an excellent pusher, likewise accrues XP and gold faster than most champions.  Thus while she may be weaker than other individual champions in a stand up fight, her superior equipment and higher level will oftent allow her to win fights.

Team Fights are when you and your allies gather up and fight the opposing team.  Sivir's role is often to sit back and allow her ricochet ability to bounce her attacks between enemies and thus damage all opponents quickly and efficiently.  As noted before, she can also use her ultimate to boost herself and her team.

Ganking is when someone tries to ambush someone else.  Frequently the ambush involves stealth characters of hiding in bushes waiting for opportune moments.  In these situations, high burst damage is valued.  Sivir's Boomerang Blade is one of the largest sources of burst damage in mid game.  Incidentally, Sivir is also fairly weak if she gets attacked, so she also focuses on not getting ganked frequently.

Map Awareness is knowledge of the surrounding environment.  This is probably more important than all of the above, because without map awareness one cannot push, level/farm, team fight, gank, nor avoid ganks safely.

Needless to say, in order to play Sivir properly, one must be aware of all of these aspects of the game.  I've gotten pretty into this game and recently I've started working on my first guide that details how to level and thus come back from a poor early game.
http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=477680

Current Games and Projects:

Computer: League of Legends

Computer: Team Fortress 2

Computer: StarCraft 2

Computer: Warstorm

LARP: Live Effects (Wyrd, Veil, Lanaque, Messina, & others)

LARP: TwinMask

LARP: Fighter Practice (El Segundo)

Book: Art of War by Sun Tzu

Book: Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi