1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Playing this one on a high 30s archery energy blaster, diff settings 1 hero +1 yes bosses no AVS.

   NO WEAPONS NO ITEMS FOX ONLY FINAL DESTINATION

   Caveat: I know nothing about Queen, other than that any casette tape left in a car for long enough will become a Queen album.

   —

   “see the terrible future” is a 75% chance of Red Atlas.

   Oh! Marchand’s Office!

   …the “back” spawn doesn’t work in this one though. Just so you know. Since the map is part outdoors it can just drop it anydangwhere.

   Huh. Custom Arachnos? Some “Crab Spider LB”, which I guess stands for “longbow” archery/SR with stat resists. Kind of an odd choice given Arachnos is pretty techno. Also no crab backpacks. Maybe call them Wolf Spiders?

   Ah, wolf spiders are melee, crabs are range. Kinda odd given that the actual ones are capable at both distances.

   Missing like crazy because every lieut’s SR. Also completely unable to apply any kind of crowd control. I can connect with Total Focus, Bone Smasher, and Energy Punch and they’re still up and attacking.

   The lottery strikes and Amanda Vines actually shows up on the roof. She tells me what I’ve picked up from the patrols - someone killed Arachnos from the inside and then took out most of the world’s heroes under the pretext of a peace talk.

   …but if that’s the case, why is the new Arachnos even bothering to use the old one’s nomenclature and costuming?

   Anyway, this all came to pass because somebody got hold of a dimension-hopping being of pure potential and misused him.

   —

   So let’s go play Child Protective Services, shall we?

   Aw. Not much going on in this base aside from one dude who’s an investigator. I liked the copious chatter in the first mission and I was kinda expecting it to keep up.

   These first two missions have had basically successive clues showing up on complete - there’s only one thing to do, so it drops a clue, which completes the mission, which drops ANOTHER clue…

   Why bother? It’s not like they’re separate bits, either. One usually ends up restating the other in part or in whole.

   —

   So, on to the final boss fight.

   Apparently you weren’t planning on this to be some kind of rock opera…

   But I really have to ask why not.

   Anyway, “Youth” is as mustachioed as the guy who’s been sending me on these missions, and he has no description at all.

   …and I thought he was kneeling, but it turns out he’s just very very small.

   So about half this map is completely unused, as the boss just shows up right by the portal when I tag back to it. He’s Thugs/Fire, and mad enough to sport a giant pumpkin head for no apparent reason.

   Fortunately my squishy pal who’s rad to be with has things under control there, with an assist from my AoE self. He rezzes, but by that time the mission’s complete and I fly the coop.

   Unfortunately somebody bugs me to look something up and I misclick and miss the ending text.

   —

   Storyline - ****. Not that I expected the ending text to be worldshaking. The storyline was pretty straightforward and nothing I haven’t seen - madman acquires being with cosmic power, attempts to take over world, you put the kibosh on his plans, sail on star travellers. It seems like this “great power” of Youth was just what Magic was doing for me - Mad Al just had more capacity to take advantage of the visions of the future. The title led me to expect something more, like for Mad Al’s troops to actually be created from Youth’s imagination, or his own mad scientific perversions thereof.

   Design - ***. The last map is 50% unused space - I scooped up Youth right on the first floor down, took him to the portal, and the boss fight was right there. While a nice touch overall, it left me wondering if something hadn’t gone wrong somewhere. The custom Arachnos… really aren’t “out there” enough. They’re basically HK Arachnos - recolors with off-brand armor. I thought this guy was supposed to be MAD.

   Gameplay - ***. They are pretty maddening to fight, at least. SR makes the hard to hit and shrugs off crowd control and knockaround. Add the rocket boots and any melee lieutenant is practically guaranteed to be in your face beating… uh… your face in. I could understand if this was one lieutenant’s gimmick, but it’s the same for all of them.

   Detail - ***. No bio on Youth just made me a bit sad. No specific variation on the New Arachnos bios for powersets (or even to explain the difference between Crab and Wolf) was a bit of a letdown too. The restated clues for the first two missions just didn’t make any sense to double up on… and while I’m not taking points for this, I really got the hankering to see this done up as a rock opera.

   Overall - ***. An arc that doesn’t exactly swing for the fences but is fairly solid for what it is, which needs a little more attention to detail, powerset variety, and objective placement to really shine.

   Posted on September 21st, 2009 at 10:41 pm