With Great Ideas, Comes Great Expectations…

So writing my last post, the review on the City Of Heroes MMORPG, gave me an idea. What if Marvel attempted to do a similar idea, just capitalizing on the mistakes of City of Heroes/Villians. So you could create a superhero or villian and of course give it it’s proper background story and name. Give it powers and abilities. Choose movements and things, just expanded.

The Story: There are several options that I think they could have.

1. Go with a main story of X-men of the Brotherhood and Magneto vs Xavier and X-men/good mutants and hell even go crazy and add like the sewer mutants that aren’t really on either side. Creating almost 3 opposing factions or 2 opposing factions with a 3rd neutral one. You could create a mutant and either join the Brotherhood, X-men, or just be a lone mutant who could just be there on his own or join the Murlocks in the sewers. The could be quests to join either side and betrayal quests. Main idea of evil would be to take over Human world and main idea of good could be to stop that. **Of Course you wouldn’t be able to be any of the known characters of the X-men or brotherhood**
2. Apocalypse could be in the game, creating a situation where there are three major opposing positions. Players with Apocalypse, Players with the Brotherhood, and Players with X-men. Again players could walk the neutral path in between. To start off the game they could start as an affiliated player or a neutral player that could later join a side or act as a mercenary.
3. ***Note*** Although I refer to the sides as X-men vs Brotherhood, I truly mean good vs bad. This would not be specifically geared towards X-men, but also include stories of Spider-man, Avengers, Iron-man, Hulk, Venom, Dr. Doom, and other villians and heroes from all of marvels stories.***
4. The final idea could be attempting to implement the Civil War. Clearly having two sides divided. Players could choice the side of for the Identificaion Law or against it.

Other aspects of the game could be similar to those of other major MMORPGs. Crafting could be making new suits or weapons, or even vehicles. Political aspects such as law-making or political assassinations (for villians) could play a role.

A game like this would have to be careful in implemetation, but if it is executed properly, it could be a kick ass game. If the first idea was used, the second idea of including Apocalypse could even be used as an expansion. I know if it was executed well, I would totally play this game for hours upon end. Any ideas or comments are more than welcome.

cout<<“T. Evans”

MMORPG Reviews: Part 3 – City Of Heroes

For those of you who enjoy comics and superheroes and the such, this is actually a relatively fun game. It’s been a while since I played it so many of what found to be unenjoyable may have actually been fixed, because I played it when it first came out.  The idea of the game is simply to create your own Superhero and play as him. He/she is put in a Metropolitan area where he encounters gangs and evil-doers.

The best part of the game was easily the character creation. Spending endless minutes just finding and creating the perfect costume for your mighty hero. And of course any good superhero needs a good name. Once you have a look and a name you get to pick a story line. Is your hero a mutant, result of artificial super power, or a result of an accident. This is basically added to appeal to all us nerds who know the difference between say X-men, Iron-Man, and say Spider-man. Next is selecting powers and movement ability. Is your guy a tank, then give him armor spells and typical attack stuff. Is a a mage type, give him distant blasts and radial damage stuff. And of course movement because come on, what super hero just walks everywhere. You can pick between super-speed, flight, super jump, and teleportation.

My first goal was to create Ice-man. I dont remember his name, but I think it was something stupid like Frost or Ice Blade. He could fly, shoot ice shards, create ice armor and an ice sword, and I believe freeze. He was cool and fun to play for a little bit, but I quickly just wanted to create another character. 10 or so characters later, Q-tip, Lizarda, Spike, Syfer, and so forth were created making my own little stupid, but funny superhero team. I stuck with Syfer, a green nightcrawler with mental powers who was quite fun to play.

However each quest, I found I was fighting basically the same enemies over and over and over again. What was missing ? Villians! Arch-rivals! Nemesis! whatever you wanna call them. However word quickly got around that an expansion / new game type thing was being added, City of Villians. Basically it was suppose to add the other side of the comic book world. Same type of the, but evil people. Basically adding a gigantic PvP possibly, similar to World of Warcraft’s Horde to Alliance. But it took forever to come out. I don’t think it actually came out until like a year or two after City of Heroes came out, and by then most people had lost interest. I know my gang of friends and I lost interest within a month or two.

Nowadays, City of Villians is out and a see it every now and then with City of Heroes so I do not know how it compares to its early version, but hopefully its gotten better. I haven’t bothered to pick it up and try and because I got my fill of it, and I’ve kinda lost interest.

“Remember with great ideas, comes great expectations… ” (I don’t know if anyone actually said this, but if not I just said it so Me)

cout << T Evans

MMORPG Reviews: Part 2 – Star Wars Galaxies

Star Wars Galaxies was a very interesting game. For a lot of people, it seemed like you loved it or hated it. I however found the middle ground. There was a lot of things I absolutely loved about the game and some things that I learned to hate about the game.

First of all it’s freaking Star Wars so points for that. (If you need a review of the point systems. Please see other post about the Universal Point System.) I loved being plunged into the Star Wars world to basically do whatever I wanted. As a huge Star Wars fan, I loved the character creation, which finished in a Zebrak (Think Darth Maul). The worlds were beautifully done and the creatures were wild, crazy, and exciting. Except for the bunnies, which will be covered more in detail later.

Alright the Ups: They avoided levels, which I give them a pat on the back for. There were no levels in Galaxies, or at least the original version, I don’t know what the have now-a-days. It was a skill branch system. NO JEDIS – at first…-. They let you pick whatever skills you wanted to have, between: Hand to hand, fencing, polearm, fire-arm, creature handling, smuggling, explosives, building, and more. I of course went Hand to Hand/creature handling because for whatever reason, my favorite character always seems to be a monk type. The creatures were cool, and combat system was well done. Rebel and Imperial alliances were cool. Random battles would insure through the galaxies and you could join either side or walk down the neutral path. The sight of storm troopers, AT-STs was awesome the first time they were on my screen. It was an overall good game for the first month or so.

The Downs: The problem was the more people played and discovered, the more the games weaknesses and unbalances appeared. Bounty Hunters were over-powered and became a super-class. The fact that people could just delete their skills and go in any direction saw an increase in bounty hunters. With me as a hand-to-hand fighter I never got the chance to even hit the things we would be fighting, before my friends rocket would find home in the beasts chest. Occasionally my pet would get a hit off so I could get a tiny sliver of experience. Introduction of Jedi, (shakes his head). The game announced early on that it wanted to avoid playable movie characters and jedis, cause everyone would want to be them and jedi’s would be overpowered compared to a monk or a smuggler or whatever else. It was rumored that Jedi’s were in the game but the company was not going to release what skills you needed to reach Jedi status, which was fine, but then you realized that once someone got it, everyone else could delete there skills and take that path. Then the company just have a patch/expansion that said, heres jedi, and BOOM, lightsabers were everywhere.

The bunnies. The first creatures of the game that most encountered were bunnies or butterflies and stuff like that. Now these looked like normal bunnies, but I assure you, the grass they ate was filled with steroids. These things destroyed you if you weren’t prepared, but lets face it at low levels you were no match for the panthers a few yards behind them.

So overall the unbalanced elements of the game and introduction of Jedi is what killed this game for me. I fell in love with the game early on. I enjoyed playing music and exploring all the different worlds, seeing all the insane creatures and things, but as the game progressed I realized my class choice was apparently a weak one, as I’m sure many others saw. I hope the company tries a second version, this time with no jedis, and much much more balanced elements, cause I admit it. I enjoyed Galaxies. I’ve heard that they are working on new Star Wars games but I haven’t had the chance to look at them so I will check them out and if anything interesting pops up, I’m sure you’ll see a post about it.

May the Force be with you all, (except those people that give one prop)

cout << “T Evans”

MMORPG Reviews: Part 1 – Pirates of the Burning Sea

Before the release of Smash Brothers Brawl, I found myself looking for a new video game to play. It had felt like a long time since I had really gotten into a video game. It was then I realized that there was usually at least some MMORPG that I always had to play in the background. Thats what was missing. I didn’t have any MMORPG in the background that I enjoyed playing, so I started my search for the new Big MMORPG that will hopefully fill those moments of boredom when im not Smashing, Haloing, COD4 ing, or of course Colleging. In my search I ran into alot of ones I had already played and came up with my own ideas of what would be cool, so i decided to do a long series of posts about which games I thought were cool and which ones could have been better, ones Im looking forward to, and some that I think would be cool.

Enough ranting lets get into the good stuff. Pirates of the Burning Sea is one of the latest MMORPGs out there. If you can’t guess, your character is a Pirate, and well your goal is to explore and capture the Burning Sea. If you check out the website you don’t actually get much information that I could find on there. You can start out as a pirate or a member of one of the 3 major naval powers of the time, Britain, Spain, and France. From there you can be a Merchant, Naval Officer, or Mercenary. The class you pick determines your sword fighting style, or Swashbuckling, Fencing, and Dirty Fighting. These can be changed later on in the game.

Now lets start with the cool stuff: Character creation was indeed sweet. You have a wide range of stuff to truly create your own pirate or sailor. Your story starts off right as you are in a sea battle, and your captain has fallen, so whose to command the ship? You of course. After the first battle you head to port and welcome to your first town. The game is pretty cool in that its fighting is cool looking. Actual implementation of everything you wanna do is a little rough, but this is expected of any MMORPG. Sea battles were fun and exciting at first. Then when one drags on for a hour or so it gets a little repetitive, but it didn’t stop me from playing. I enjoyed most aspects of the Sea Battles. The intricacies like wind direction, boarding, broken masts, and you quickly get used to having to pull up side the other ship to fire all cannons.

The Bad Stuff: It just seemed like a Beta version or a Demo. The problem was it was the actual game. Now my roommate and I played the two week buddy version, but still, to both of us, the game simply felt unfinished. We asked our buddy who has the actual game and he said the main thing he has enjoyed is the huge PvP Naval battles, so that may be the game’s drawing point. The fighting was rough and the quests just didn’t seem very complete or in depth. It was usually just go out in the ocean and kill this guys ship. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Most of the moves you can learn lacked information and explanation. An Overall lack of information about the game, characters, quests, and moves + abilities annoyed me. Random glitches like when people attack your port you often see the ship going through the port.

The game idea was a really cool one and got my hopes up, but fell short of my expectations. There were a lot of small things thats added up that annoyed me, and although its hard to explain, the game simply felt unfinished to me. Hopefully the creators will be able to add much more depth to the game in patches and expansion packs. More involved quests, and much much more information about the game in general.

cout << “T Evans”

Round 3: Smash Brothers Brawl!!!

For those of you who don’t know, Smash Brothers Brawl, the third installment in the Smash Brother’s Franchise, came out yesterday. Words are hard to find so all I will say is this, “THANK YOU NINTENDO!!!!”

Its freaking sweet. It kept the old stuff that was cool and added several new layers of sweet stuff. It got rid of some of the minor characters from Melee: Pi-chu, Dr. Mario, Mewtwo, Young Link, and Roy. Now I don’t know about you guys, but the disappearance of Pi-chu and Dr. Mario is nothing I lost sleep over. The other three, especially Young Link and Roy for me, was rather hard, but have no fear, they have certainly made up for it. Instead of Young Link, they gave us Toon Link who is the same as Young Link, with small things that are different, that add up to a great character. Instead of Mewtwo, we get Lucario, which is basically MewTwo. Instead of Roy, we got Ike, which hands down is my favorite character. He is a modified Roy, which comes together Beautifully.

Overall Smash Brothers Brawl, has 35 playable characters overall. Many we’ve seen before, such as Pikachu, Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Ness, Fox, Capt. Falcon, Falco, etc…. Everyone else from Melee is here, but enough about whose back, lets get to the new stuff.

New Characters

1. Ike – Replaces Roy
2. Lucario – Replaces Mewtwo
3. Lucas – very Similar to Ness
4. Toon Link – Replaces Young Link
5. Pit – Sweet new character with a bow and dual blades
6. Meta Knight – New character from Kirby that flies and has a sword
7. Diddy Kong – a quick version of Donkey Kong with Peanut guns
8. Wolf – Similar to Falco and Fox, but BAMF
9. Wario – Haven’t quite figured him out, but he is fun.
10. PokeMon Trainer – controls, Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard each with their own moves and attacks
11. Zero Suit Samus – a form of samus, with her own kick ass moves
12. R.O.B. – The Robot – Cyclops in Robot form… just kidding, but he does shoot laser beams
13. King Dedede – Floats like Kirby but strong like Donkey Kong
14. Olimar – Haven’t quite figured him out as well, but uses he Pikmin to battle his foes
15.  Snake – From Metal Gear Solid, and uses alot of weaponry, including rocket launcher, mines, and yes his box
16.  Sonic – Yup your reading this right, Sonic is here. Uses his spin moves to hit his foes

What else is new and exciting ? Well they’ve added several new items that are certainly interesting, including the assist trophy. Using it will summon a random character to help you battle. Ship: collect three items and combine then to create a ship that you fire at opponents. Finally, the Super Smash. A floating Smash Brothers Icon, that once you break will allow your character to do a finishing, Limit type move. I will not spoil them all for you, but know that it is an incredible addition to this game, and works very well. If you wish to see the Super Smashes, you can find them all on Youtube, but don’t be surprised if you see Gigabowser, Super Sonic, and other such characters, including Super Wario.

Last component is Online Play. Yup when your done beating one player and unlocking all the characters, you can go online and play with other people who have the game. The first night my roommate and I hooked up with my Brother and his friend and were able to capture 6 victories out of the overall 8 battles. Nothing is sweeter than beating my older brother, but the true joy was discovering the new elements of the game.

For those of you who know and love the first two components of this Franchise, please trust me and go out and get this game. For those of you who don’t know of the Smash brothers Franchise, I demand that you go out and try it. If you like fighting games, you won’t regret it.

 cout<< “T Evans”

Props, Pound it! The Universal Point System

I’ve decided once and for all to put true definition behind the world of imaginary Point Systems. For those of you who may be confused, you know you do it too. Whenever your friend makes a good joke or does something insanely cool, you offer him points. “Props dude, that was good, you got me.” “Alright dude ill give you points for that.” “Sweet dude, pound it.” You all know that everyone of you have heard someone say this or you yourselves have said one of these things, so don’t even try to deny it.

Now that were on the same page, I realized that some people may have different points for different things, so I will take the initiative and create “The Universal Point System.”

• Point – one point (Duh)
• Points – three points (just because)
• Fist pound -two points
• High-Five – five points (Thats another Duh)
• Double High-Five – (Don’t do this, it makes you look stupid, and its a mockery to the point system)
• Prop – five points (Who the hell gives one prop?!? If someone gives you one prop, kill them they are a freaking duschebag)
• Props – ten points
• Props + fist pound – fifteen points

Now that the point system is established, I thought I’d lay down some rules or situations where these various actions can be used and when they shouldn’t be used.

1. Yo Momma Jokes – NO!!! Stop it. While I admit they are good every once and a while, they do not recieve any of these actions. A simple, “You got me” will suffice.
2. Pulling off a Super Smash on all of your opponents at once. Props are allowed. If everyone dies, Props + fist pound is permitted. (If you don’t know what this is. Than I pity you. Google or Youtube Smash Brothers Brawl and worship it in all its glory).
3. Jokes that leave them speechless are entitled to Points possibly Props depending on how long the victim is left speechless.
4. Do Not give out Props and Props + fist pound out for every little thing. They should be used discretely. Props + fist pound is what all should strive for. A Golden Trophy if you will.

These are just general rules for you all to follow. More will follow in the following weeks when I have more time.

cout<< “T. Evans”

P.S. – Please don’t actually kill anyone. I don’t want anyone’s death on my head. Thank you.