League of Legends launches Showdown, its second experimental game mode

The word "gameplay" sits proudly on top of the PC Gamer style sheet's forbidden words list. It was banished from our collective vocabulary for being a lazy replacement for more meaningful, accurate words. That's a problem, because I need to now write about League of Legends' Showdown - the second in Riot's experimental "Featured Gameplay Modes". You see the problem: less than a paragraph in and I've already written "gameplay" three times. We'll soldier on anyway, but please, for the love of all that's Christmas, nobody tell our production editor.

Showdown lets you take part in 1v1 or 2v2 duels on the one-laned Howling Abyss map. Players can win by getting a kill (or two, in 2v2), waveclearing their way to 100 creep score, or destroying your enemy's turret before they do the same to yours.

The purpose of Featured Gamep... er... match types, is to provide small, experimentally varied rulesets to keep things fresh. Think of them like Left 4 Dead 2's mutators, both in terms of how they vary a standard game type, and in their limited availability. Showdown will run until January 2.

Thanks, PCGamesN .

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.