A comparison between URF, One-For-All and Hexakill

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

Riot Games has introduced us to three different fun modes over the past six months and with the last one being such a huge success, we decided it was time to give you an overview. So let's get straight to it and see what made every mode tick and what made it fun to play.

The first mode introduced to us was One for All, a mode that let you vote for a champion that everyone had to play. The champion with the highest number of votes would be played by everyone. With an equal number of votes, the choice would be random among the champions that had the equal amount of votes.

This already sounds like an interesting mode to play, however it did have some flaws when it came to the enjoyment of the game. If, for example, the majority of the votes would fall on Annie, players with have a high chance of performing well. Annie is fairly easy to pick up on and to have fun with. But what happened if the majority vote would go on someone like Lee Sin? He is a rather demanding champion for which you need to have quite some mechanical skills. Now there you are, you wanted to have some fun and are forced to play a champion that you will most likely not enjoy and have a hard time mastering with all the consequences that go with it. And all of that because of a majority vote ending in your disadvantage. Most popular picks were Nidalee, Lux and Lee Sin(despite being mechanically hard to play) while champs such as Graves and Quinn sat at the bottom of the rankings.

This mode was thus best when playing as a 5 man premade, with friends and voice communication.This way you could decide on a champion everyone was fine with and enjoyed playing. Showcasing some funny moments from One for All is this video by Youtube user Dadamixful.

The second mode that Riot shot onto the rift was called Hexakill and was live from 02.20.2014 until 03.02.2014. In this mode, teams were made up of six summoners and the highest possible kill wasn't a pentakill but a hexakill, which is where the game mode got its name from.

The mode however wasn't nearly as hyped as the One for All mode. Basically it's a Summoner's Rift game with six champions instead of 5. Reset champions such as Katarina or Master Yi were quite popular here, as they upped your chances for the desired Hexakill.

The biggest thing you could play around with here was during the laning phase where you could go 1-1-3, 2-1-2, 1-2-2, etc. in combination with a jungler or even without and put extra pressure on the lanes. A nice way to experiment with champions in different lanes where before there wasn't any room for.

Showcasing the Hexakill, here we have Diamond Pete's Katarina!

Last but not least Riot introduced Ultra Rapid Fire, better known to the community by URF. It went live on 04.01.2014 and will be live until 04.13.2014. URF has no resource cost on spells and everything is on a 80% cooldown reduction, including summoner spells and active items. Additionally, ADCs have double up on bonus attack speed. There are a few other bonuses but these are the main ones.

This mode has been hyped a lot, which shows in the amount of people playing. Given to us on the 1st of April as a little April's Fool from Riot to the fans, it delighted players all over the world. This gamemode let you test out ridiculous stuff noone would be able to do in a normal game, such as a Lvl 3 Fiora soloing dragon, but also allowed new players to test out champions without having to play a full SR game. People could get the feel for a champion they wanted to try out for so long because the main idea is to have fun. While the gamemode is for fun, there are also negative sides to it. Overpowered champions were quickly found by the community and the amount of Alistars, Hecarims and Evelynns in the games grew. Sona was so strong that she was completely taken out of the queue by Riot. Riot had removed Ryze and Kassadin straight away from the start and added in some tweeks to champions like Shaco and Teemo. You could ban 6 champions just like in ranked, however this was often not enough and thus sometimes you just got demolished on the Fields of Justice. Overpowered champions in their turn brought out the worst and the best in people - from flaming to competitng for the win. People couldn't take the fun mode for fun but brought in the competitiveness that belongs in the normal and ranked modes, often ruining the game for other players.

Overall URF mode is a very enjoyable game as it lets you try out some crazy stuff and some player's favourite champions have now become viable in a weird way. This all contributes to the great success that is called URF.

Riot put in an extra effort to have the URF mode hyped as they organized a showmatch between two NA LCS teams, namely Cloud 9 and TSM. On Day 1 of the EU LCS Super Week, after the regular games and before the challenger series hit off, this game was played in the NA studios. Being cast by both the NA and EU casters and with interviews being done while the teams were playing, a rare but enjoyable sight to see.

With TSM picking Vladimir, Maokai, KogMaw, Xerath and Lux and Cloud 9 picking Ezreal, Urgot, Lux, Jayce and KogMaw, both teams picked up champions that were rather favored by the everyday player as well. The game was really fast-paced and even though we are used to the teams playing it rather safe and going for objectives before kills, this game showed they definitely like to take kills as well! Finishing the game within 19 minutes with 29 kills for TSM and 48 for Cloud 9, Cloud 9 took the victory. A game we won't be forgetting so easy.

As an example for what a Hecarim can do in this mode, watch this video from dali style getting 9 kills in a row, diving around in the enemy base.

So all in all it's safe to say that the URF mode was the most fun out of these three, with the least exciting one being Hexakill. URF gave us so many new things and everyone could just play what they wanted, the only downside to it is that even in a mode that is meant to give us laughs and let us have fun we can find people who take the game a bit too serious. In Hexakill it was a nice way to explore different tactics but that's basically where the fun ends. All for One brought the opportunity to see how far 5 Blitzcrank's could pull in a champion or how much 5 Teemo's could shroom up the map. Though best played with friends this game mode has brought some enjoyable moments as well.

What do you think was the most fun mode to play? Give us your ideas in the comments below let us know what you enjoyed the most.