1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this as a DB/fire brute in the mid-40s, 2 villains +1 level all bosses no AVs.

   Man, is there some interesting shorthand somebody’s developed for that?

   Anyway.

   —

   Huh. Okay. Looks like I get to confront my inner demons. …or, y’know, laugh maniacally with them.

   Sup dawg I heard you like streamlined cars so I took all your car parts.

   While I enjoy humorous accept text as much as the next dude, it deprives anybody else reading the mission of the amusing segue. I’d suggest putting it into the mission briefing in pale green and using a more objectively written accept text.

   The customs look like MA/pipe wrench minions with MA/merc lieutenants and bosses. Thematically consistent, but the MA seems kinda weird. I guess it’s supposed to be dance-fighting?

   Anyway, no defensive powers means they’re wheat before the scythe here.

   A couple of patrols talk about infiltrating the gang and being thoroughly skeeved out at the “colors”, such as they are. And there are some Malta chillin’ in the main garage. The big bosses generally have number-number-number designations, so calling this guy Star Platinum 10-1-5 or something would fit the Malta naming scheme.

   Anyway, time for a little Magician’s Red.

   Hmm. The boss clue shows up when I pop the turret - you should probably tie it just to the boss. Also Malta are unnaturally fond of using “MHI” for “metahuman incursion” to describe a super showing up somewhere they ought not be.

   Titan project! There’s a bad angle to be on the receiving end of.

   —

   So a prominent Paragon politician is actually a lizardman. I’m well-acquainted with conspiracy theories, but I find it a little hard to buy that I can look at a Malta hard drive and figure out the secret identity of one of their conspirators.

   I thought they were a little more paranoid than that.

   But okay, let’s go a kidnap.

   Meteor Atlas? I thought there was another Atlas Park outdoor map that worked alright, or does it not have any spots for captives?

   Reporters interviewing cops. That’s pretty nice. …but is thiis a custom group of PPD? Because I’m seeing a lot of grey hardsuits and suchlike kicking around, and that seems to be what I16 does to custom groups with any kind of level range. You can just use the PPD random spawner, and it should work out fine.

   I have a look around at the bios of the supergroup that’s shows up to work security. Them and the protestors are a pretty welcome touch, but for some reason the optional bosses vanish from the navbar as soon as I spring the lizardman.

   Oh! This is an interesting way to take this.

   —

   Yeah, when the contact’s inside your head you can set yourself up in all kinds of crazy situations. I’ll bet this is the Darque map.

   Bingo!

   Okay, time to get moving. Lots of random cars and trucks lying about to blow up, which is welcome.

   Not so welcome - the lady Longbow Flamethrower who the councilman addresses as “Steve”. (Have you got space? You can do a passable recolor of the Malta in Longbow red and white.)

   Unfortunately the Titan ambush spawns down in the streets below, and I can trot back to the van without it getting in my way. Well, unfortunately for the ambush, anyway.

   —

   Ah, time for a sidelight to gram some kaboominite. It’s part of your complete breakfast!

   Huh. This “Crey Security” seems to cap at 45 and be rather anemic on XP - are there any bosses in it?

   Also glowies do this thing where “Back” actually means “Middle” and “Middle” actually means back, so the safe with the stuff is right around the corner from the entrance. I didn’t even need to fight anything, but I bounced around anyway to see if there was anything like an interesting security chief No dice.

   Oh! So that was a deliberate first link in a chain! Man, I feel silly now. I did think the last room looked a bit empty.

   Gasp! International playboy and man about town Roger Warp is secretly Justice Squad high-flyer Warp Drive! Grav/energy, though I figured him for more of a tank based on his bio.

   …and the Malta show up when I drop him? Uh… why, exactly? Just coincidence?

   Also for some reason the mission exit popup and return text are identical. “You escaped with the explosives, now for the final phase of your nefarious plan.”

   —

   Huh. Jump on a boat? Is this the Warburg hangar?

   …no. It’s the Faultline building?

   What?

   This place is pretty much pre-bombed for my convenience.

   I hear Chameleon ranting as I step inside, then I realize he must have been OUTside after the first floor comes up empty.

   …huh. No, it doesn’t look like he’s outside either.

   Well, time to get on with things. Eagle decides to try and defeat me to escape, and he’s got a pretty keen costume but his MA/Shield is just a little too weak to stand up to me.

   You can make glowies that fade in now. Whether you want to do that to these tiny dynamite packs is up to you.

   So there’s this giant robot that’s trying to remember what it used to be. I think I will call it a Stand, because it’s standing there in the middle of the room.

   The boss is a stock Gunslinger like Star Platinum was. I don’t know why the mission was warning me to bring friends, he was pretty easy with a giant mechanical distraction to draw fire from the ambush.

   …and I find a Malta org chart just lying around on a computer. Really?

   Really?

   That’s the second vital piece of intel on these guys that I just kinda haphazardly picked up.

   The souvenir talks about people having their homes destroyed in some ensuing flood, but, uh, the north, inhabited, end of Faultline is about 20 stories up from where that building is. Must have been a hell of a flood.

   —

   Storyline - ***. So why was I in Faultline again? The run-up to mission 2 talks about some secret bunker underneath a public park, but the south part of Faultline is about as far away from “public park” as you can get. Also, how does Chameleon get out of my secret lair to menace me in the fifth mission? Turn into a fly or something? (I’d probably get an answer on this if I actually fought him but I explored all around that map and couldn’t find him anywhere.)

   Design - *****. Pretty sure the cops in mission 2 are a bug. Pretty sure the Crey in mission 3 are working as intended. But mission 2 was just such a nice press-conference kind of feel, and the rest of the arc is at least passably realized, so this is a kind of “6 - 1 = 5″ thing.

   Gameplay - ****. Carving through blue Crey for half XP, on the other hand, is a modest sort of downer. I realize Crey get kind of monolithic above 45, so why not just set the arc 40-45 and use stock Crey? It’s not like 50s will lose any powers now, and they’ll still get XP to boot.

   Detail - **. So apparently Indigo and Crimson were doing it wrong this entire time. You don’t need civilians on the inside. You don’t need to try to work your way into some decent piece of information by torturously prying open the shell around Malta with a tiny sliver of intelligence. You don’t need to decipher codes or piece together clues or anything like that. You can just walk into a Malta base, tap a random computer, and you’ll get everything you need to know about who Malta is, what their plans are, and how they operate. This isn’t to say that any of what I found was wrong or misleading or contradictory. Far from it. But… why did I find it at all? Malta don’t even show up as a main-mission enemy group until the last mission, which is great, but why is all this vital information about them just kind of left there for me to find? This is supposed to be an intro, there’s room to leave stuff unknown. I have no problem with finding a link to a city councilman in mission 1, but that’s all I really need to go on. Consider this: On the computer in mission 1 I just find the dude’s name, and maybe the rally he’s attending (that you might be able to site in actual park-like surroundings). So he’s got this odd habit of hissing, and when my back’s turned after mission 3 he just up and vanishes. But I know there’s something in the park so I arm up in mission 4 and go down into the bunker (maybe a 5th/council cave?) in mission 5, and find the city councilman who’s now trying to claw my face off and spit poison down my neck., along with some heavily redacted information that indicates these guys are one cell among many, and they’re working with military-spec gear that you need serious connections to get your hands on. Maybe drop some vague hints about Malta scouting me for the Titan project too - I rather liked those - but don’t just spell out what they are in the last mission.

   Overall - ***. Probably a pretty good arc when it launched, but with I16 some aspects of it need a second look. I don’t need to know anything that I found out about Malta to actually see this arc through, and while I’d applaud the extra incidental detail in a lot of cases, it really feels wrong when it’s coming from the secret multinational paramilitary organization.

   Posted on October 5th, 2009 at 10:36 pm