Venture

Arc #191775, "How the Other Half Lives"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: throws the Idiot Ball, technical issues, canon issues

Reviewed on: 9/3/2009
Level Range: 43-54/43-54/40-54/40-54
Architect's Keywords: Canon Related, Comedy, Drama
My Keywords: same
Character used: Venture/Virtue

Levantera asks for your help with a new government project. Seems that the Suits think Vanguard's success at working with Rogue Isles supers might lead to bringing some of them over, so they've arranged a "student exchange" program. They're going to send a rookie hero to the Isles for a week, and Arachnos is sending a rookie villain over to serve as your sidekick. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Levantera admits this is pretty hairbrained but with Vanguard's budget coming up for review.... Your first mission is a "routine" sewer run, seeing as how that's where so many new heroes go to cut their teeth. Of course it's anything but, as you've got some workers to rescue. Your "sidekick" turns out to be a Fortunata named Becky...OK, I think we all know which direction this is going in.... Her approach text seems to suggest she's already been naughty. This is reinforced when you discover a machine labeled "Hydra Berserkifier" with little hearts dotting the I's. Levantera has the techs investigate what's left of the machine.

Instead of reaching the obvious conclusion, though, they catch the Idiot Ball and you're sent to a nearby Rikti base they believe may be the source of the device. You're to take Becky with you again as she's driving everyone at the Vanguard base nuts. The Rikti commander, Eiz'nHawa, claims after percussive interrogation that someone broke into the base about a week ago and stole components that could have been used to make the Berserkifier. A check of the storage units and the Rikti's security system verifies that. The video (would Rikti have video?) shows "indistinct but clearly human" figures breaking in, one of which waves to the camera. Becky mysteriously vanishes in the exit pop-up....

Levantera finds out the technicians did notice the Berserkifier was made by humans, but that detail was removed from their report, undoubtedly by Becky. Worse, there's a peace conference under way, and it would be easy to slip one of the Berserkifiers in since it looks like Rikti tech.... When you arrive, you find everyone at each others' throats, as the Berserkifier has been improved to work on everyone. The map is filled with Rikti and Vanguard, all hostile (unfortunately many times I found mixed spawns of Rikti and Vanguard not hostile to each other). The raid leader, "Executioner Wilson", had a miniature Berserkifier in his helmet...but it had been sabotaged and wasn't working at full power, which is evidently why you weren't affected. Levantera informs you that in a backhanded way the Ararchnos attack aided the negotiations by showing everyone how pointless fighting was. And, of course, the "student exchange" program is officially over.

Unfortunately, Vanguard has lost contact with the hero sent over to the Isles. Their beacon is off and Arachnos denies any knowledge of the hero's whereabouts. You're being sent over to find him. Or her, as it turns out, as the hero in question was Fusionette (who, competency notwithstanding, is way past rookie status). You run into Becky on the way in as a hostage, and now a Tarantula Mistress of course. She gives you the security codes you need because you were nice to her, and says Wilson had her turned into a Tarantula Mistress so she retaliated by sabotaging his Berserkifier. Fusionette declares that she's switched sides because the Arachnos guys don't care if she pulls too much agro or causes collateral damage, and all heroes did was make fun of her, but finds out to her dismay that her Arachnos mediporter doesn't work. Fusionette realizes who her friends really are, the end.

The comedy really didn't work for me as it relies too much on throwing the Idiot Ball. There are problems with the use of canon as well: Becky (according to her speech in "Von Grun's Redemption") volunteered to be a Tarantula Mistress, and having Fusionette behave like this wasn't really credible either. There are also issues in the third act with factions that should be hostile but aren't (I've had similar problems and it can be done properly). There's some potential here but it needs a lot of work.

You are not this entire forum.

Who even implied that I was?

I have been playing the Champions Online beta, and now the headstart. I will probably alternate between the two games once the headstart period ends, and will return to reviewing the rest of the arcs in my queue then.

After that I haven't decided if I'm going to accept more requests.

Hitting a few points from upthread:

• I'm closing in on 150 posted reviews, not counting arcs I played but didn't formally review. I have Seen It All. Custom mobs are a nearly insignificant part of the AE experience.
• Arcs that exist only to showcase custom mobs are almost certainly not worth playing.
• Mainstream authors for the last several centuries have limited themselves to stories about perfectly ordinary human beings that live in a world their readers are intimately familiar with, being as it is the one the readers themselves live in. Somehow, they have yet to run out of viable stories and continue to get paid for their work.
• Corollary to the above, there are no stories that can be told outside of Paragon City that could not also be told within it, once you realize the story has nothing to do with what the costume and FX departments are doing.

The upshot of all this is that arcs that are stuffed to the gills with custom mobs almost always do so in an attempt to mask a weak or non-existent story.

If you don't care about story then you're in the wrong place to begin with. Bejeweled or an arcade shooter are probably more to your liking.

How many times can you recycle the same boring enemy groups before it gets old?

Custom mobs are "the same boring enemy groups", just wearing funny hats. They don't do anything you haven't seen before.

According to who? You have a dev post to back that up?

How about the loading screen tip that says "use custom mobs sparingly"?

Or is this just more of your, if an arc is not canon it fails, nonsense?

Where did I say that?

Meaning that all the work the devs did for AE and them moving it from issue 13 to 14 BECAUSE OF CUSTOM MOB DEVELOPMENT was a waste of time.

No, it means custom mobs are put into their proper context -- something to be used to enhance a standard faction, not replace one.

So you're happy that a custom critter has to have at least 5 times as many powers as your average stock critter to give the same amount of XP?

Yes.

Moral: use standard mobs whenever possible.

I would very much doubt anyone in the City universe is writing much about vampires in the romantic sense when they've actually got vampires (or Council soldiers pretending to be vampires) running around killing people.

Really, "vampire porn" barely makes sense in the real world....

Thanks for the review.

Humor is always hit or miss, so far it's hitting more than it's missing. Sorry it didn't work for you. It does use "pop culture" references because it's written for the people actually playing the game. I very much doubt that Twilight books exist in the City universe, at least in any form we would recognize, seeing as how they have real vampires (and fake Council ones) running around.

The waypoints in act I clustering up was the RNG at work -- there's no control over spawn points on outdoor maps. Despite what the editor may tell you, everything is "front". All the Freak LTs are chromed up so I didn't really consider them suitable, and I didn't want to drag in the psy powers and Rikti weapons on the Abberants. In any case the arc is at 99.X% space used now so I don't think I have room anyway.

Yes, the "Sister Psyche" in act II is a custom job. It should be almost exactly a match to the regular one -- yes, I used the Ampules belt. I was tempted to go for the "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS" look but thought better of it. I know it's a bit jarring to suddenly see "Defeat Sister Psyche" in the nav bar with no bring-friends warning but there are no EB/AV warnings in the browser so people should know in advance it's not really her.

Heh, thanks for trying it out.

The final AV is not set to run. If he ran it was the Artificial Stupidity (sic) at work.

I've just added "Why We Fight" (253990) and "Splintered Shields" (253991) to CoHMR. I probably won't bother to add "Psychophage" (283147) as it's deliberately bad.

Recent comments:

• "Hey I'm not going to rate this, but I spent 20 minutes just flying around the map looking for that last checkpoint. Couldn't do it; maybe you should make them more obvious somehow! " (I can't tell if this person is serious or not -- I used the Rikti Computer model, it's got a huge pillar of light and is extremely visible.)
• "From a purely technical standpoint this would be a strong four, maybe a five. The missions are well paced and the custom enemies are clearly put together by someone who understands the game. It's the attempts at humour that let it down. The Arbiter's overblown voice is perfect and the alterate reality ideas are good, but the trite lolcats at the end and the randomly sexist jokes in the Lady Bella mission put me off." (Oh well, either it works for you or it doesn't. I will point out that the jokes in Act III are aimed at the people telling them.)
• "It's a pleasure to see a comedy arc that's something more than a series of in-jokes. Well, I suppose this WAS a series of in-jokes, but it was presented in such a well-written manner that it didn't seem like one to me. Notes/criticisms: 1) There's a minor typo in the mutant boss's information (the only typo I saw in the arc). 2) Why is m4 in an Arachnos warehouse?  Not that I don't like that map and consider it underused, but the connect wasn't clear." (Typo fixed. I used the Arachnos warehouse because I hate the Arachnos base maps with the heat of a thousand suns.)

Recent comments:

• "Fun Arc!"
• "A very well written arc! I am curious as to why I was given an ally in the 2nd to last mission which I didn't need at all and no ally to help fight the EB?" (I put in Allies when I feel the story requires them, not as "difficulty adjustors" -- if a player feels he needs help, he can always get a team.)

A recent comment:

• Longbow dialogue in first mission using "him" is confusing, since I'm a her. Victor belongs to "All custom characters";If I reseal the crates why do they vanish? And again Sister Themis, I'm not a guy. Malta? How dumb are you, Livingston? Going to them was kind of out of left field. Ah, the elusive Theseus, needs a hat Nav says "defeat Kobushi" but me and WMD are helping him... Overall a pretty good story. (Fixed Victor's faction and Themis' dialog. Crates vanish in act III just to get them out of the way. The Longbow agents in act I don't know who's coming. You and WMD are not expecting to help Kobushi in act V -- it should be clear from his first two appearances that he's not interested in anything you have to say.)

I almost always leave feedback. Of course, I'm also closing in on the 150 posted reviews mark....

The majority of ratings I've gotten have come without feedback, even good ratings. Sad, but not unexpected. Most arcs don't get enough plays to drown out "vengeance ratings".

Arc #149765 "The Crey Conundrum, Act I - Project: Sleeper"
tl;dr: 2 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", borderline Random Events Plot, Your Princess Is In Another Castle, plot issues, poorly written canon characters


Reviewed on: 8/13/2009
Level Range: 40-54/30-54/35-54/30-54/30-54
Architect's Keywords: Canon Related, Sci-Fi, Drama
My Keywords: Canon Related, Sci-Fi
Character used: Gothzilla/Triumph

Messed-up level range and "Act I" in the title...not a good start.

Gordon Stacy asks you to look into "Project Sleeper", which he believes is a Crey project that preceded Revenant Hero. He asks you to do this based on an email he's received, which is probably a reference to the Doctor but as it's not spelled out it seems your character is running off on pretty thin information. Anyway.... The first mission takes you to an abandoned tech map full of Psychic Clockwork. There are six "piles of junk" to search, one of which yields a scrap of paper with the name "Dr. Russom" on it, and another has a USB drive that might be salvageable. There's also a somewhat dimwitted ally to rescue, "Commander Cosmic". His rescue triggers the spawn of Clak-on, a required Boss objective.

Stacy gets too many hits on the name "Russom" and starts working on eliminating suspects. His techs recover two names from the drive: Scratch Kitty and Thermovore, both heroes. He wants you to track them down and speak to them. Kitty is the RWZ assisting Vanguard so that's your first stop while Stacy tries to locate Thermovore. Kitty turns out to be in the midst of a fortress attack, making her a rescuable ally (I didn't try to bring her into combat) and giving you six Rikti Bombs to destroy. Afterwards she tells you she got her powers from Crey, and the project was led by Dr. Timothy Russom. When you get back Stacy tells you he's located Thermovore.

Thermovore has located a new Crey lab being set up by Russom with Protectors on guard duty. Anythere they're doing is worth undoing, so in you go. You are to meet Thermovore (ally, saved for last, also says she got her powers from Crey), click on a bunch of computers (only one of which says anything at all, and that's just the Doctor being cryptic), and take out the base leader who is not Dr. Russom as expected but Commander Cosmic. His combat dialog implies that he's being mind controlled. Stacy is very nonplussed at the fact that you had to pummel a hero to finish up.

The Doctor tips Stacy off to three possible locations for Russom. Wherever he is, he'll be on the move in an hour (timed mission). Stacy sends Scratch Kitty and Thermovore out to two of them and you to the third. It seems pretty obvious at this point that all these heroes who got their powers from Crey have been given the Manchurian Candidate treatment, so sending them out on missions is pretty iffy. It turns out the Doctor agrees: you find a computer with a message from her saying the other two leads were bogus. This means Stacy's the only one catching the Idiot Ball. There are a few computers to save from destruction, which give up a very terse and poorly-written Clue telling you Russom has brainwashed a lot of heroes, and the "base leader" turns out to be a clone of the Invisible Falcon (with a very bad costume and probably the wrong powers) and weaker (Minion) clones of himself and Commander Cosmic. Your Mad Scientist Is In Another Castle, again. Stacy says the brainwashing didn't "take" on most of the heroes...how does he know? He's got SERAPH looking into the clones you fought.

Time for the Fight Scene: Russom has fled to a lab in Boomtown. The clones are not up to Crey's usual standard and will deteriorate in a few hours. You're to go after Russom with a bring-friends warning. You have to defeat all mobs on a large abandoned tech map. Russom himself was an Energy Assault/Ice Manipulation Elite and no big deal. Stacy thanks you for stopping Russom and his clone army (which wouldn't have outlasted milk in any case), says all the remaining heroes associated with Crey have been cleared by psychics, and then gets an email from the Doctor reminding him there's a part II.

This arc needs a lot of work. The early acts border on a Random Events Plot. Important information is only discussed peripherally, Stacy catches the Idiot Ball (but thankfully doesn't pass it), both he and the Doctor are way off in terms of voice, the plot doesn't make much sense (why are we all up in arms over a guy holed up with a bunch of temporary clones?), and frankly the last mission is the opposite of fun. The storyline is really too similar to the Revenant Hero arc as well. I'm not really motivated to check out part II.

The offender turned out to be the graphics card. I've replaced the old 8600 with another 8600...didn't want to spend more on a 9000-series when I wasn't sure about the trouble, and I don't think my box has the power supply for a good 9000 anyway.

Should be back to reviewing soon!

I'm not voluteering -- I have no idea when I'll be able to play again, for starters -- but it would help if you were more specific about the kind of comedy you want to write. Satire, parody, over-the-top screwball antics....?

Reviews will be delayed indefinitely as my computer up and died last night (mid-review as it happens). The machine I'm posting from would spontaneously combust if I even tried to install City on it....

I have no idea how long I'll be without game access.

Arc #167493, "Gizmette"
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: weak theme, limited enemy selection

Reviewed on: 6/13/2009
Level Range: 50-54
Architect's Keywords: Challenging, Custom Characters, Origin Story
My Keywords: Challenging, Non-Canon, Sci-Fi
Character used: Venture/Virtue

"A strange little girl" (no bio), obviously a robot of some kind, asks for your help. Her "daddy" is asking her and her "sisters" to hurt people, which she knows is wrong and isn't like him. She wants you to talk to him. You're sent to an abandoned lab with a defeat-all objective. The place is full of robots resembling your Contact with a variety of powers. There's a homeless man to rescue but he doesn't know anything useful. The patrols talk about looking for a locket, which you find on the leader. Inside there's a picture of a man in a lab coat and a little girl who looks like the robots.

When you get back, your Contact gets a message from "dad" telling the girls to go to the home of a hero, Captain Barnstorm, and attack him. She says there's no record of any previous interaction with him and wants you to intervene. This takes place on the increasingly-overused Midnighters' Club map. You have to rescue Captain Barnstorm (no bio) who just runs away, asking you to save his wife for him. She's triggered by his rescue, held hostage by a bunch of robot girls asking her to be their mommy. She does get a bio, which asks if you should tell her that her husband just ran off and left her (I totally would).

Next, "dad" tells your Contact to come in for "repairs" since she's been disobedient (typo: "disobediant") by working with you. She's going to go, but wants you to go with him. There's a warning on this one to "let the tank go first", which to me is an indication that maybe this map wasn't such a good idea, but the author seems to like special maps and this one is Ghost Widow's tower. You have to confront Dr. Gizmo (actually, you have to find his journal in a safe) and free your Contact (Robotics/Force Fields Elite Boss), which triggers the spawn of Dr. Gizmo (Assault Rifle/Invulnerability, I think, either Elite Boss or AV). He, in turn, spawns "Gizmette", a copy of your Contact only at AV strength, when he gets low (Rocks Fall Everyone Dies style). From his journal you learn that Dr. Gizmo blames heroes for the death of his daughter, who died while he was out protecting other people, thus turning him from hero to villain. Your Contact takes the news pretty hard as there's no information in her database about Gizmo's real daughter.

After she composes herself, she suggest you look for Dr. Gizmo at the site of his daughter's death. She wants you to take him in without killing him, but can't bring herself to come along. You get yet another special map (three out of four in this arc, for those keeping score at home), this time the flooded office map. The only objective is Dr. Gizmo himself, who sported Gravity Control for a secondary this time (and maybe last, but I didn't see him use any powers from it....). An ambush spawns when he gets low but it's a friendly one, as several of the robot girls tell him he has to give up the memory of his daughter. He asks you tell his "girls" that he is sorry as the PPD takes him away in the exit pop-up. Your Contact thanks you and gives you a metal heart with the words "Thank You" engraved on it.

While the arc does have a theme I didn't feel it was very well explored. Dr. Gizmo just has the truth beaten into him and we never learn very much about the precipitating incident, or Gizmo's past history, or anything really. The exclusive use of the one custom faction leaves the arc lacking in variety as well; all four missions feel pretty much the same. It's good but with some extra work could be outstanding.

Arc #91644, "Shenanigans on Striga"
tl;dr: 2 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", undeclared timed defeat-all, typos, weak writing

Reviewed on: 8/12/2009
Level Range: 20-29/25-29/20-29/20-29
Architect's Keywords: Canon Related, Mystery
My Keywords:
Character used: Mr. Pagliacci/Virtue

Shaun McPherson (no bio), a guy who says he keeps an eye on the Striga docks, wants you to break up a Warriors' raid on a pawn shop (typo: "warriors", also in nav bar). This map had the indecency to only spawn two Bosses, which is not the author's fault. A search turned up a broken safe with a few random items in it, nothing obviously linked to the Warriors. Shaun says according to the owner nothing was missing ("warriors" still spelled in lower case).

Shaun is still wondering what the pawn shop raid was all about when the Warriors suddenly attack a Council warehouse. He says this level of violence is unusual and asks you to stop it before it escalates. This is a short fight on the small newbie Council map. "Archon Kiwi" (really...) implies they were attacked by the Family before the Warriors showed up, but there's still no indication as to what this is all about.

The Warriors are still on the move (and still in lower case) in act III. Now they've brought a truckload of explosives onto a Family-owned ship. Shaun wants you to clear the ship of hostiles so the bomb squad can move in (Striga has a bomb squad? Striga has police?) A defeat-all on a ship...with an undeclared one-hour time limit. Blech. This map really broke out the spurious Bosses for me, I think I counted six of them, including a Consigliere encountered after the named Consigliere, Lefty Legalle, who managed to drain my tray of Break Frees. After his pummeling Left says this whole thing was "Knuckles' "idea", and he's got "it" over at his club, whatever "it" is. Shaun fills you in a bit more, telling you that Lefty is the second in command of Knuckles Calbrase, one of the Family big shots. Knuckles arranged to have an important relic stolen from the Warriors and pinned the blame on the Council, hoping to spark a costly war between the two. (All the gang names are in lower cases here.)

Time for the Fight Scene: Shaun suggests you bring friends to pummel Knuckles. He was only a Super Strength/Invulnerability Boss, though, and not very difficulty (of course, I was tossing Psi at him). After clearing out his club you find a medallion with the initials "D.O.H" engraved on it and a crossed-swords emblem. Shaun tells you the initials stood for David "Odysseus" Hill, the Warriors' leader, and it's been returned to him to quiet things down. The end.

This would be a three-star arc if it had some more polish to it. It's going to need some work to do better than that, though. There's no theme, the writing is pretty weak and that kill-all on a ship map is a real groaner.