The Gaming Den

Gameplay videos showed it was a spiritual sequel to Marvel Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends 2. I am their target audience. I'm that guy, and on my shelf right now I have Dark Alliance 1 & 2, Hunter the Reckoning Wayward, Justice League Heroes, MUA, and XML2 -- action RPGs are kinda my thing.

So I registered and waited with dreadful anticipation for the beta invite. I received it in April and jumped right in, despite warnings that my laptop didn't meet specs.

The characters look very good, and the animations seemed smooth. The Raft didn't have as many destructible objects as I expected. Hell's Kitchen was dark and bland, with no real landmarks.

I was having some trouble figuring out the keys. I tried the arrow keys, then WASD, even plugged in an X-Box 360 controller, but nothing would let me move my hero or pan the camera. I probably just had the settings wrong, so I made do with the mouse-move: left click to walk and/or attack, depending on pixelbitching the hitbox. Mouse wheel to zoom in the camera.

So I select Captain America and started. I did okay in the Raft tutorial, even though it was frustrating not being able to find the block button. I got to Hell's Kitchen and was mobbed by a dozen thugs. Then the Hulk appeared like the Spanish Inquisition and turned the tide. Huh, maybe there's something to this MMO nonsense.

The camera was killing me. I kept getting swarmed and plinked from guys outside my field of view, even with the camera fully zoomed out. I just wanted to pan it so I could see where I was going!

Next day I went to the beta forums, to figure out what I was doing wrong. It turns out I couldn't figure out the controls because they aren't there, and the devs don't plan to add them. The camera can't pan because they didn't bother making a fully 3d environment. The characters can't jump or block.

The frustrating thing is that it could have been a good game. Instead, people are going to show up, find out it is less functional than Ultimate Alliance, and quit in disgust.

Awesome, great to meet someone of my similar interest, however what about Champions of Norrath (both games)? Also, my knowledge of Marvel universe isn't that "quite" great, especially nowadays.

Quite sad to know that the developers were so lazy to create a single button masher? like that of Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom. Even junk like Samurai/Dynasty Warriors games had combos and dodge to change it up!

Lastly, not familiar with "XML2" some super old PC game I guess?

I've played the first Elvenbreast, but not the second, and I own neither; I remember the first level of the first game was fun, before it devolved into a generic save the world plot. XML2 is X-Men Legends 2 for Playstation 2. It may or may not have been better than Ultimate Alliance. It was cell-shaded, had more gear slots, and let you assign stat points at level up.

Sir Neil wrote:I remember the first level of the first game was fun, before it devolved into a generic save the world plot.

For some time, I've been thinking of this quote of yours, though I wonder if someone else had said this on the Den, or I otherwise I mistookit as "Norrath was a good game, till it became about saving the world". Anycase, I'm wondering why you felt this trope bit a bad thing at all, I thought this game was cooler than the namesake MMO, for the idea the story seemed to be more meaningful/cool.

I'm pretty sure I've complained about Champions of Norrath on the Den before. There have been no shortage of RPGs where the goal is to save the world. Champions seemed to be rejecting that trope for a smaller story, about protecting the a single tree village. I was disappointed when it turned into a plane-hopping jaunt to stop the god of ugly hats from ending the world, or whatever the hell he was doing. (It's been several years, and memory is the second thing to go.) I think that mission creep detracted from the unique local feel the beginning offered.

. . . well crap. I'm too tired to beat my word salad into an explanation that flows logically from point to point, so I'm just going to put some thousand island on top and hope it fills you up.

ElvenBreast

I've spent the past year playing Marvel Avengers Alliance on Facebook. It is a fun turn based RPG. Not great, but passable.

Recently they created a spin-off game, MAA Tactics. You direct a team of four heroes and SHIELD agents in turn based combat against an assortment of enemies. You have to suffer through wonky instability issues, open-world PVP and resource bottlenecks, but with a partner to bounce gifts between and sufficient free time it can be overcome.

It shares many factors that I blasted Marvel Heroes for: the inability to block and jump, rotate the camera, or move with the keyboard. But I enjoy playing it anyway. So I decided to give Marvel Heroes a second chance.

I reinstalled it, selected Captain America, and went to work, trying to forget the way the developers compared it to Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Looking at it as a variant of MAA Tactics, it wasn't bad. Still not worth money, but I'll play it now and again.