April First
Ah, but for the good ol' days. Wizards of the Coast isn't what it used to be. They've got a fake page "overlay" on the D&D site and an announcement about a Pirates versus Ninjas deck, but that's about it. Some others remain, though...
Google retains its sense of humor with a plot to go to Mars.
Blizzard's up to its old tricks. Starcraft II gets a new unit. Wrath of the Lich King is to have a new class, the bard. And they will introduce us to the 2-D glory of the Molten Core game!
And, if that weren't enough, IGN has the premiere of the trailer for the Legend of Zelda movie.
So now I'm decked out with all four Guild Wars boxes and the expansions. I still don't think I would have paid for them, but if access to that content is important to those I play with, I've nothing against accepting gifts.
Each of these has come with a trial key for multiple NCSoft games. I passed one to gabefinder and kept one myself to try something else out...
So we started playing City of Villains. It took me a little bit to get used to the controls and get them configured comfortably. Otherwise, my initial thoughts (while leaving prison during an assault by an evil organization) included "well this is kinda cool," "look at my character jump," and "this all feels a bit hollow."
I've played my ranged-attack-based character up to 8th level thusfar. It's got a whole lot of things from the super hero genre right - in concept. In practice, however, a number of things are falling short in my eyes.
I'm trying to build up to real flight, but so far all I have is "hover," his is a slow, slow flying ability. It does let me keep people at range, as intended, but watching the enemies run around under me like headless chickens, pausing to shoot with the ranged attack (usually a gun) that they inevitably have, is not very thrilling. Neither is getting attacked by any of approximately 60% of the NPC population while running (because it's faster than hovering) back and forth between jobs.
Of my first ten missions, I believe four or five involved fighting snake-men. This was getting pretty old. Additionally, it's clear that the instance-designers (or random generation, I'm not sure which) reuse the same "tile sets" over and over again. There's some mixing, as I ran into caves with techy stuff placed in it instead of just the same caves, but it seems repetitive too.
I'm also unclear on why the "recently injured and weakened" base leader I'm sent to retrieve is found cowered in some sort of second-floor pool of water that looks like it belongs in a chemical treatment plant along with a couple guards. I wanted to stop and remark to him, "Shouldn't you be in bed?" But I guess that would be out of character for a villain anyway.
On the up side, there's a lot of little tweaking available in character design. In a lot of ways, it gets the look and feeling of freedom one would expect from being in a superhero comic world. And there is a lot of genuine appeal to that.
But, ultimately, I expect more from a subscription-based game. Maybe WoW has me spoiled. I doubt I'll pay to play after the trial ends.
Google retains its sense of humor with a plot to go to Mars.
Blizzard's up to its old tricks. Starcraft II gets a new unit. Wrath of the Lich King is to have a new class, the bard. And they will introduce us to the 2-D glory of the Molten Core game!
And, if that weren't enough, IGN has the premiere of the trailer for the Legend of Zelda movie.
So now I'm decked out with all four Guild Wars boxes and the expansions. I still don't think I would have paid for them, but if access to that content is important to those I play with, I've nothing against accepting gifts.
Each of these has come with a trial key for multiple NCSoft games. I passed one to gabefinder and kept one myself to try something else out...
So we started playing City of Villains. It took me a little bit to get used to the controls and get them configured comfortably. Otherwise, my initial thoughts (while leaving prison during an assault by an evil organization) included "well this is kinda cool," "look at my character jump," and "this all feels a bit hollow."
I've played my ranged-attack-based character up to 8th level thusfar. It's got a whole lot of things from the super hero genre right - in concept. In practice, however, a number of things are falling short in my eyes.
I'm trying to build up to real flight, but so far all I have is "hover," his is a slow, slow flying ability. It does let me keep people at range, as intended, but watching the enemies run around under me like headless chickens, pausing to shoot with the ranged attack (usually a gun) that they inevitably have, is not very thrilling. Neither is getting attacked by any of approximately 60% of the NPC population while running (because it's faster than hovering) back and forth between jobs.
Of my first ten missions, I believe four or five involved fighting snake-men. This was getting pretty old. Additionally, it's clear that the instance-designers (or random generation, I'm not sure which) reuse the same "tile sets" over and over again. There's some mixing, as I ran into caves with techy stuff placed in it instead of just the same caves, but it seems repetitive too.
I'm also unclear on why the "recently injured and weakened" base leader I'm sent to retrieve is found cowered in some sort of second-floor pool of water that looks like it belongs in a chemical treatment plant along with a couple guards. I wanted to stop and remark to him, "Shouldn't you be in bed?" But I guess that would be out of character for a villain anyway.
On the up side, there's a lot of little tweaking available in character design. In a lot of ways, it gets the look and feeling of freedom one would expect from being in a superhero comic world. And there is a lot of genuine appeal to that.
But, ultimately, I expect more from a subscription-based game. Maybe WoW has me spoiled. I doubt I'll pay to play after the trial ends.
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