1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Playing this on a high 40s DB/Fire brute, all bosses no AVs 2 villains at +1.

   —

   Ah, Shadow Spider. She’s like a villainous Indigo except she and Viridian actually possess the mysterious “cellphone” technology.

   Mr. Homeless is still running with these people. You might want to have that looked at.

   …oh joy. Liberty Belt Miss Liberty. It takes a Shivan to beat her natural regen, and she pops Unstoppable.

   Three Shivans and an equal number of ignoble deaths later, she’s finally down.

   And the end clue says to expect more of the same. Hoo boy. Time to restock and rearm.

   —

   So, taking out the heroines of Paragon City will get the lady in charge riled up. Because those crazy wimmins, they’re a HIVE MIND.

   That’s really the angle you’re going for here?

   …it’s spelled “Numina”. With two Ns. The entry popup and navbar both get it wrong.

   And so does her actual name. Eeka topeka.

   So okay, this is kind of funny. A couple of Surviving Eight stepping into Ms. Liberty’s shoes tending to the newbs and being completely exasperated about it.

   But run with that, man. Color some low-level mobs and make up some patrols of gray “newbie” heroes. Have Numina and Psyche talk about people wondering where to mine for fish or where the sewers are or something.

   As it is Numina’s largely silent and Miss Sis Psyche is going on a Hopkin-green-frog level obsessed rant about some fanfic she found on the Internet. it’s kind of creepy, honestly. It seems somehow personal.

   Besides, you can’t hook your brain into the Internet, it’d turn you into some kind of freakazoid.

   —

   Look, man, I feel for you, really. Not all of the canon missions are masterpieces, but it feels like you’re using the MA as a platform to riff on that, and that’s just kinda bad form.

   “Defeat all enemies in end room!” is the standard text for the defeat all. You might want to get more specific about it. Call it Ghost Widow’s lair or something.

   So, there’s Fusionette who is diagetically useless, and on the top floor a DBlast/DA AV… who is missing one of the standard powers for one of the sets, and is therefore worth no XP at all.

   Even though, thanks to Dark Embrace, I have to beat her twice.

   Fun.

   Ah, and Ghost Widow, who is getting her strength back after soulstorming the Vindicator ladies into next incarnation.

   —

   So, last boss.

   While it’s hilarious to see a kineticist bolt, Swan’s kinda got the universe against her here. It feels… well, again, somehow personal.

   Mynx is a bit more of a threat, hard-hitting quick-firing melee damage and all.

   Good lord. Four lucks do nothing.

   Sigh. Maybe you wanted to put something about Club Caprice in her death scream but there wasn’t room.

   I mean… this arc is supposed to be about a serious threat to the Rogue Isles, and while I appreciate a little incidental humor I would at least like to see things in the main base being relatively serious.

   So I click on a bookcase in the last room.

   …right. The end boss is a painted Jezebel. As were they all! Thank you for your many contributions to popular culture, Frank Miller.

   —

   Storyline - ***. Pretty basic here: somebody’s being a thorn in Arachnos’s side, so look into them, draw them out, put out a local fire, and take them down. What I don’t get is the “draw them out” part. Given how savvy this hero group is perceived to be and how much information they have, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll rise to take the bait. In fact, making a move against Arachnos isn’t unwise on the face of it, and I don’t even get to draw out the necessary information - Ghost Widow takes care of that on her own.

   Design - **. The same problems with the custom enemy group as last time. The new second is a black blob with wings and glowing eyes, which is about all you can usually expect from DA, but the lack of XP for dropping her is a bit of a problem. The hardest fight in this arc was Ms. Liberty in the first mission - and it didn’t even seem necessary as I picked up the computer on the first floor and fought Liberty on the second. The end boss gave me the least trouble - she was a toned-down Sonic Warden (no Liquefy I could see, or Dreadful Wail) with a handful more hit points. That seems about the opposite way things should go.

   Gameplay - ***. Wow, that Ms. Liberty fight was a giant pain. I got all stocked up for the devastation to come and everything else was actually pretty easy. The giant unavoidable stun on Soul Transfer was another, smaller pain, but more manageable.

   Detail - *. There are a lot of lines from the contact and the various NPCs that must have been very personally funny, but absent the context all they seem like to me is bizarre nonsense.

   Overall - **. Another arc with a decent premise that needs to spend a little more time making it plausible and a little less time kicking the canon when it’s down. It could stand to do with a shuffling of the canon heroines so the tougher ones show up later on in the arc, a bit of a tougher final fight, and actual XP from the new EB.

   Posted on October 29th, 2009 at 11:19 pm