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Arc 139281: Ghost Widow's Strike Force

The other person who volunteered for Sarcastic Reviewing was Mistress Shaana, who warned me that her arc was designed for teams, which was echoed in the description, so I broke out the kitty. No, not that kitty, this kitty.

A robo/dark/mace MM is like a walking battalion. Huge blasts of fire and energy damage, all at range, which keeps the group together for heals and avoids AI issues. The protector bots heal the group, and keep you and the bots safe in bubbles. Dark has an AoE defense aura, many dmg and tohit debuffs, an AoE heal, a hold, and another pet. Mace adds more defence for you and another hold. Add triple leadership, and you have an Unstoppable Kitty of Doom (in PvE at least).

1) The contact is Ghost Widow, which is a good sign. If she had a real SF, people would be standing in line to do it. I can't be the only one who runs the mouse pointer over GW's boobs during the CoV loading screen, right?

We are sent to an abandoned warehouse to retrieve a Night Widow spy from Longbow. It's obvious why she got caught: her name is "Night Widow Spy". You'd think Ghost Widow would be smart enough to send someone named, say, "NOT A Night Widow Spy", which would improve her chances dramatically.

Here, the FAILing begins. It's a defeat all. Then, after Defeating All, we escort the spy back across the map to the exit. Then, we find and defeat Indigo, who spawns waves of Longbow ambushes... then, cuz it's a defeat all, we need to mop up the ambushes. Time wasters are bad, mmmmmkay? It's even worse if it's a team, because Defeating All takes at least as long, plus you've wasted up to 8 people's time instead of just one.

2) Ghost Widow reveals that she has found the Soul Stone, which will allow her to transfer her spirit into someone else's body. This reminds me of her patron quest, where she tried to become human, but the Arbiters said no. I guess Arachnos likes her as a ghost. Besides, if she were to become human, she'd have to change her name to something other than 'Ghost Widow', and Bewb Widow is already taken

We go to some caves, filled with Rularuu with Longbow patrols, who don't attack each other for some reason. After getting the Macguffin and defeating the Eye of Doom (dialog: "DOOOOM! DOOOOM!") we encounter Crimson, who summons waves of Longbow as well. Not a kill-all mercifully.

3) Ghost Widow needs a ritual to do the deed, so we are off to raid Oranbega. This is becoming the biggest cliche in the game, both in MA and canon. The Circle could avert all these raids, and make a fortune, by opening an online bookstore.

Here, I suspect that Ghost Widow has been smoking some Funny Little Cigarettes. I'm not sure how a ghost can do that, though... maybe when a real joint dies during traumatic circumstances, it becomes a ghost joint, which Ghost Widow can smoke. Anyway, when telling us about her plans, she concludes with "MUAAAH AHH AAHH!!" In the sendoff text, she says "Get going you buffoons!" (not the still busy text, the normal sendoff text).

Anyway, after fighting through a big Oranbega map, we find that Akarist has the Secret Ritual. The Kitty And Her Deadly Robots are unable to defeat him, due to his high resists and regen rate, plus his running around the map constantly, into the Oranbegan pain crystals, which messes with the bots' AI.

But, let it never be not said that I don't not run though broken glass for my readers. I logged off that kitty and got my Brute kitty, slogged through the previous missions, and engaged Akarist, who nicely stood still while being pummeled.

4) Ghost Widow has decided that she wants to inhabit Miss Liberty's body, so we need to capture her. (Insert joke about being inside Miss Liberty ) As we leave, GW says "be warned, she won't go down easily." Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

We arrive in Atlas and find Miss L... who, for some reason that defies explanation, is a Hero rather than an EB, despite my being soloed on difficulty level one. I hit Overload, but I can't get in anywhere near enough damage before it crashes, so I'm outta there. (ironically, the MM kitty _did_ solo Miss Liberty as a hero once, although it took 3 Shivans. Still, I'm not going through all that again.)

Ghost Widow's Strike Force is impossible to solo. Although this was warned about in the description, it still puts the arc out of reach of 95% of the player base. To quote Venture, if it's your job to design a whorehouse and you design a slaughterhouse, you've failed. Or something. Worse, the time-wasting first mission and mediocre writing make this something you wouldn't want to subject your team to anyway.

Rating: FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL

Arc #74097: Canine War

Champion may not be the biggest server, or the PvPest or farmiest, but, IMHO, it has the least morons per capita, the most catgirls, and it's the friendliest server by far. When I asked on the Champion architect channel yesterday if anyone had an arc they wanted 'sarcastically reviewed', two people came forth right away. I hopped onto Netminder's Canine War with Purple Lovin' since there was no mention of EBs in the description.

1) The contact is a fox named Iron Blood, who asks for help against the wolves who have been oppressing his people for generations. This is original, and brings up visions of scantily clad Kitsune maidens He tells me about an ancient blade that supposedly can kill a wolf with a single scratch.

I'm sent to an outdoor map, populated by wolves. Some are the standard Shadowhunter wolves, and some are custom mobs, who have Latin names like 'Canis Aureus' and 'Canis Cunnilingus'. Or something. Instead of claws, they have powers like Fire and Mental, which adds variety and makes them not helpless when attacked from the air. They all have well written info text as well, although there are a few scattered spelling errors, which continues throughout the arc.

I rescue three captives, who have glowy captured animations to make them easy to spot. There's also a 'dirt' glowie that says "This is where the blade should be, but it isn't". How does the player know? Is there a signpost there that says "This is where the blade should be, but it isn't"?

2) The foxes need the CoT's help to enchant the blade, and conveniently enough, some mages were captured during an archeological dig and need our help. Into Oranbega, to rescue two Death Mages from Banished Pantheon, which makes me wonder how the top of the CoT's food chain could be captured by a few zombies. We also click three glowies, plus there's an extra glowie with info on the magic blade. I walk away thinking, "This is all a bit TOO convenient..."

(dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUN...)

3) Some well written exposition text about how the wolves use mercenaries, who aren't very good at keeping information, cuz they're mercenaries and all, so we should go speak to the mercs for information. (read: severely pummel) I go to the Eden outdoor map (complete with Arachnos flyer), where the nav text says 'get information from mercenaries'. The map is populated by DE, with some patrol groups named 'Mercenaries' wandering around the lake, who are Elder Vipers with some wolves mixed in. I commence pummeling the patrol groups, but nothing happens, so I fly around the map blasting everything I see, until I fly back near the starting point and see a hostage named 'Mercenary defector'. Either this guy was spawned after the defeat of some random other groups (BAD idea) or I'm just an idiot.

UPDATE: I played through the arc _again_ today- the things I do for my readers!- and discovered that the hostage _is_ in fact present when the map is created.

4) We have been given the location of a remote wolf village, which "the mages can shower with death." (?) To another outdoor map, filled both with wolves, and some foxes too, again with interesting powers and well written descriptions, although that doesn't really factor in because all you need to do is defeat the leader, an EB named Blood Fur. He gives you a Plot Twist upon defeat, but it doesn't really change the story much.

Canine War is a well written arc, which scores points for originality, and only FAILs by having an EB without warning about it in the description.

UPDATE: Upon playing it again, I found that Iron Blood is found as an allied EB in the final mission. Although EB/AVs should _always_ be announced in the arc description, this does make it more viable for non-awesome types.

Rating: F

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Legend of Five Rings world

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Er... heh, sorry, i have no idea what this is, except the real book (of a similar name). Card game?

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L5R is a CCG that came out in 1995, which later was expanded into an RPG. The CCG is still being produced today.

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Glad you liked the Yakuza! What was most annoying about the end fights that could be tuned, allowing solo play but still providing a challenge? Change their secondaries?

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The first fight can be fixed by just making the guy visible. As for the second, two EBs at the same time is too much for almost any solo player. Separate them, or make the Oyabun just a boss. Also, ambushes with debuffs are painful during an EB fight.

Arc # 8538: Honor's Shadow

I was looking forward to playing this, since it was obvious from the title that the author had created a mission arc set in the Legend of Five Rings world. Although I never played the RPG, I was quite a fan of the CCG when it came out, and could recite large chunks of the storyline whenever the corresponding card was played. I made many strange and bizarre decks, and spent hours wondering whether Hida O-Ushi wore anything under her armor. Since the mission description said there were EB/AVs, I used my brute, Fast Kitty, who might seem out of place in L5R, but I could just nickname her "Oni no Neko"

Sadly, there was no trace of Rokugan here. That's one FAIL already.

1) Your contact is Hsu Lu, an agent of the Tsoo. Asking if you want something to do, he says to get an amulet from one Lisa Wu. Without further ado, Fast Kitty flew to the dance club, and said "mew mew" as she blew away Longbow. After a mojito or two, I found Lisa Wu, and ran back to the door.

2) Unfortunately, the mojito glass had some gunk on it, so the Eye of the Gaki was stuck to my hand. Or something. Since I couldn't just carry it around, I went to get a tasteful setting for it on a necklace, which happened to be in a warehouse filled with Freakshow. Nothing really special here.

3) Now, the Eye is bound to me, but by honor it belongs to someone named Kageshi, but he's in the Zig. So, obviously, I need to go to Portal Corp to stop his younger self from retrieving his older self through a time portal. The building is filled with Yakuza, which are designed quite well. The author avoided stereotypes by only giving _one_ of them ninjas, and martial arts to one other. Some had control powers, which can be annoying on minions, but there were about 7-8 types of Yakuza (not counting bosses, if any) so there wasn't much spam. Another non-stereotyping bit was to give them modern clothes instead of kimonos, although one had green hair which seemed odd. Also, they all had Japanese names, like 'wakashu' being the ninja guy. At least I think they're Japanese names. Aside from L5R and a splash of anime, all I really know about the Japanese is that they like noodles and have really, _really_ strange taste in porn.

Eventually, you come to 'young Kageshi', who is ninja/ninjitsu. That's right, he's invisible. This is not a good thing. Because he is in a dead-end room, someone who is looking to stealth the mission will never fight the group that he's in, wandering the building for years until arthritis sets in and they can no longer operate the mouse. OTOH, someone who walks into the group will be unprepared for an AV/EB and be given a steel enema.

4) Now, all I need to do is assassinate the rival Oyabun, and the Tsoo's power base will be complete. Wait, I mewed, I only agreed to steal that fsking amulet, let's renegotiate my fee. Hsu declined, so I entered the Yakuza base.

After more killing, I found the Oyabun... with Older Kageshi invisibly beside him. Both bosses summon ambushes when low on health, hitting me with debuffs and making my framerate look like Powerpoint. I was only able to win by retreating, hitting Overload and pulling the Oyabun, watching some tentacle prawn while the tier 9 recharged, and finally going after Kageshi. When I was done, Hsu Lu rewarded me with my very own geisha, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be a chicken in a kimono.

Honor's Shadow is a good arc, but it has two fairly serious flaws; Bayushi Kachiko isn't in it, and the difficulty level of the EB fights is too high for the average player. Still, it's so well written it gets just half a FAIL.

Rating: FA

Arc 64537: The Great War of Paragon

Due to the lack of people posting their arcs to be shre^D^D^D^Dreviewed lately, I asked on the Champion MA channel if anyone had stuff they wanted done. One poor soul, who obviously is not familiar with my acidic pool of literary bile, offered his arc to be reviewed. I'm sure that it's just a matter of time before the very mention of my name causes purveyors of mediocre arcs to tremble... TREMBLE I say before the sheer power of my biting wit!! BWAAA HA HA HAHA!!!!!

Ehem...

1) The contact is "Solar Fusion", founder of the "Resolvers". I smell a vanity arc already. He says that "there is a gargantuan war coming", and he'll "give me taste of things to come". Although the last sentence reminds me of my altar boy years, I hit accept and am transported to a ruined Atlas Park, where Nemesis troops are fighting Rularuu. Is this time travel? A prophetic vision? People in costumes on a cardboard set? I click a bodybag and find... my own body. Ewww.

2) "Since you've agreed to help," (I did?) "I need you to go wipe out an office". Yep, it's a kill-all, this time featuring Praetorian demons with a splash of Carnies. Fortunately you get an ally, "Steel Strike", a sword/something EB with no info text. The minion barks are taken from the Generic Mob Handbook: "You can't possibly succeed." and "It is inevitable, you can't possibly stop it." (stop what?)

3) With still no explanation, I'm sent to a cargo ship. Although there are no spelling or grammatical errors, all the dialog in this arc is extremely minimal. Solar Fusion says 1-2 sentences per screen. The mobs are DE with a splash of Malta (??) and although this isn't a kill-all, there's plenty to do: 3 rescues, 2 boss fights and one glowie.

Things start to get _really_ weird here. The glowie is a safe (on the side of a cargo crate) with a file on the Resolvers saying how they are feared because when things don't go as planned they kill both sides. Uh... ok. The hostages are guarded by some unusually chatty DE boulders, and one hostage says, "Thanks, I'd like to fight you sometime." The Malta boss is a Titan who says 'Oops' when defeated, and the DE boss is a Hamidon mito named Katie.

By now, I'm suspecting that this is the sequel to "The Extadine Lab"; I actually smoked a high grade of paraquat-soaked reefer prior to the first scene, and have been hallucinating ever since. I'm half expecting to round a corner and encounter the Bugblatter Beast of Traal, or hear Nieman and Marcus arguing

4) The office-into-tunnel-into-Rikti map, where 7th Generation Paragon Protectors are fighting Squall Elementals.

5) To un-destroyed Atlas Park, filled with Nemesis, and also by pedestrians who say "nice day, isn't it?" You fight Lord Nemesis, an EB who says "how you like them apples?" when a hero is defeated. Then Solar Fusion spawns (fire/fire EB, generic info text) then upon defeating him he was revealed to be a shapeshifter, so we fight Lunar Fusion (dark/something EB) Upon return, Solar says "ah Lunar Fusion, I knew she was after me". Or something. No, it wasn't a hallucination.

I hate to pick on a fellow Champion-ite, but The Great War of Paragon commits almost every FAILing that there is; sparse writing, custom mobs without info, a defeat-all, mobs chosen at random, story makes no sense at all, EBs without warning in description.

Rating: FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL

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and a 45 dark/regen brute (mal'd to 38) running the arc on diff 3.


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A regen brute? Is that the latest vet reward? Or given as a reward for having enough internet memes in a mission? Maybe I'll make the 2G1C mission after all...

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The customs were pretty well balanced, and I think the only thing I would have had difficulty handling solo was the Wardens in mish 5 (& possibly the final EB).


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I was worried that the Wardens were too hard... I didn't have a chance to fight them myself, since (IHMO) you can't get bosses to spawn soloed. They're set to hard, not extreme, but that still gives them access to Whirling Hands and Total Focus. But then, they're set to prefer ranged. Maybe I'll give them Devices and give the minions something else... a few people complained about Web Grenade spam.

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I liked that everyone had flavor text placed in, and I really appreciated that the Ally text changed between the two missions that featured them, despite being the same people. Those are the little details that make a MA Arc quality. I loved Mistral as a cocktail swilling ne'er-do-well.


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I _had _ too... their default description text is too long for MA

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what would you recommend to de-twist some of this arc's confusion? More text? Less text? Simplify it? Replace the Elixir of Evil with some sort of psionic amplifier and explain it as mind control?


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I think the only real problem here is that the arc can't decide whether it's serious or funny. If the former, toss the Elixir (and the slime woman). If the latter... jokes!!! Add more! Pile them on!!

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Mission 3 is the Scrappy level . I hate CoT, but I'm not really sure how to streamline the mission in any significant way.

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Eh, I had no trouble there, even using a Warshade. As an aside, go to Xen Syndrome and scroll down... they use CoX as an example.

Arc #180333: The Secret Origin of Lil' Red Hood

First of all, thanks for the comments on my arcs. Yes, I realize that dictating the player's responses will rub some people the wrong way. However, my entire style of humor consists of projecting humorous personalities onto people, including the protagonist. I'm pretty sure that Ice Mistral doesn't _really_ like shrimp cocktails and frozen mudslides, hence teh funnay.

I'm hoping that we will be given branching dialog options in the future, such as...

You scour the database for Nemesis' world domination plans, but find nothing except a DVD-rip of South park episodes.
1. Oh well, let's move on.
2. Download it anyway, there might be hidden data encoded in them.
3. Wow, I'm mission the 'Death Camp of Tolerance' episode! Download away!

This would allow for humorous writing without projecting onto the player.

I fixed the spelling errors you pointed out, although Black Scorpion's text was actually misspelled on purpose, going for a tough guy way of speaking.

Anyway, over to The Secret Origin of Lil' Red Hood. The contact is the Pillar of Ice and Flame, except that we are actually talking to a consciousness _inside_ the pillar, which is working to oppose the Coming Storm, but in ways that oppose the Menders. I think that's it. Anyway, we need to go back in time to ensure that a villain named Little Red Hood is created, who is one of the author's characters.

1) Into a warehouse to find a Family guy and lead him out. Normally I decry 'lead hostage to exit' goals as a waste of time, but the map is small. When you do, he says he can't leave without his capo, 'Barking Mad'. So you get him and lead him to the exit, where he attacks you, although this also ends the mission so it doesn't matter.

This gives me a mission clue that Antonio (the guy you saved) is now marked for death by the Family because he didn't help Barking Mad attack the player. Maybe it was the two Cape Codders and pipe of salvia I had beforehand, but this doesn't gel. He is so loyal to BM that he won't leave without him, even tho BM's flavor text says what a backstabbing [censored] he is, then BM backstabs the player, who presumably feeds him a lead sandwich, but now Antonio will be killed because he didn't help backstab the guy who saved them, even though all the witnesses are dead? I don't get it.

2) Back in time again to ensure that a girl becomes Red Hood, by putting the Elixir of Ultimate Evil in her governess' allergy medicine. No, I'm not kidding. You fight some Hydra on the way in (it's a defeat all, but the map is tiny) and once you do the deed, you are stopped by a woman named 'Red Slime', who is in fact made of slime, and was sent by the Menders to stop you. Really.

3) To Oranbega, to ensure that the two people's souls are melded together, but not by using the Soul Cage. Or something.

4) Red Hood has now become a villain, so as my reward, we go to the present, or maybe the past but not too far into the past, to help her as she kills several Family leaders to consolidate her power base, which causes her to become ever grateful to the player. She is depicted as being about 12, so screenshots of her saying "Thank you, I'm forever in your debt!" will be serving as fap material for certain segments of the populace for years to come.

I'm having a hard time coming up with a rating for this. It has no technical FAILings... well, OK, a few. There are some spelling errors, and during mission 3, the nav text says "Destroy the last Soul Cage", even though there _was_ only one.

Which brings us to the plot. This may be a brilliant, multifaceted plot worthy of Hitchcock and Kurosawa, or it may be an indecipherable mess. I'm really not sure, so I'll give it a ME. In other words, either the plot is MEH, or it's ME who's too dense to follow it.

Rating: ME

Review posted. Suffice it to say it was just the kind of arc I was hoping for.

Arc #172576: Eternal Legion Task Force #1

Given the lack of people offering their arcs as sacrificial lambs the past few days, I've ventured outside this thread in search of arcs to bestow my sarc^D^D^D^D infinite wisdom and benevolent guidance upon. When I saw a lone post asking First story good or bad?, I knew I'd found some fresh mea... er, a delightful arc to review.

Eternal Legion Task Force #1 looks like a vanity mission for the author's SG. Now, vanity missions aren't invariably bad- for example, Dollmistress' "Champion TF" is quite good- but in general, missions showing off how t0Ta11y 4WE$Ome your character is tend to suck harder than a ten buck ****** at 3pm on Friday afternoon. Even though a forum search for "Eternal Legion" came up bupkis, it had been played once and given five stars, which means there's at least one person in the SG besides the author's alts.

The arc's awfulness is apparent the moment you talk to the contact. The dialog sucks. Not just did-it-once-in-a-hurry sucks, I'm talking "6th grader snorting Ritalin" suckage. And not even a 6th grader from a good private or suburban school, I'm talking 6th grade in a school that rhymes with "warton boother sing". Misspellings, grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and capitalization errors abound. Most amusingly, not only are sentences not capitalized, but random words in the middle of sentences are.

1) A guy in a suit tells us that Eternal Legion sometimes takes on outside help, so it's up to me to clean up a breakout at the Zig. Well, I can see why they didn't want to do this themselves; it's a kill-all, using generic Prisoners. Those *@&$!#ers infested every corner of the map, inside and out, taking about 15 minutes to mop up. At least there's some minion chat: "ya fat chance pigs were not going back to pots and pans." Anyway, you have to find Dark Raven, who is the big villain, but for some reason is non-combatant. (although the dialog _does_ catch this).

2) Into a Rikti ship, to stop the "Sinister Swarm" from raiding it. They are custom mobs with fear-inducing names like "pale one" and "soul seeker", and generic minion text. At the end of a huge map is a glowie with no text or clue at all.

3) To the 'Oranbega with fog' map the stop the Sinister Swarm from opening a portal (?). The Contact says he'll send two of his best agents to help you, but I only found one, "Deadra Khaine" who is DB/something. Her flavor text says she deploys force fields on her allies, which is not the case. We destroy a glowie and get a nonsensical clue about how the portal opens anyway.

4) We need to go through the rift for some reason. It's a 'destroyed city' one, the map where the Psychic Clockwork King is found. It's filled with Spirits, who have been put in a custom group named 'rift dwellers' or something. I spent 10 minutes looking for a glowie, which is an Arachnos computer for some reason I won't even try to comprehend. This spawns Dark Raven, so I spent another 10 minutes looking. She is grav/something, with no description text, and dialog from the Generic Villain Phrasebook... "I may be defeated but my master is more powerful than you can imagine!"

Overall, Eternal Legion Task Force #1 is a great arc... if you're a reviewer who takes delight in others' shortcomings. Oh, and there's an Eternal Legion Task Force #2, but it hasn't been played at all. Guess the author didn't have enough DOs to bribe his SG mate into plowing through it.

Rating: FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL

This has happened to me a few times. Either the glowie placement code is flat-out bugged, or some maps have a very loose definition of 'back'.

Arc #162898: To Be Incarnate

First off, to everyone who is planning to do one of my arcs, please do #167567, "Curiouser and Curiouser". The other two have already been copiously lavished with praise, but this one has been played very little and only mentioned once. Don't worry about it being the sequel to "Two Chicks at Once", you don't need to have played that one to follow the plot. The AV/EBs are all optional, but it does present a bit of a challenge, mostly due to one mission containing Malta. Oh, and there is some mildly naughty subject material... nothing really dirty, but Sister Flame would come away with some awkward questions...

Anyway, To Be Incarnate presents the same lack of sarcasm opportunities as the previous reviews. I may have to change the column to Purple Lovin's Polite And Friendly Review Patio.

The contact is named The Trader, and he's wearing a suit, which of course makes you NOT trust him. How many villains in the Rogue Isles wear suits? Well, a few do, but most find them incompatible with demon wings, crab arms, and cloven hooves. The Trader's dialog is copious and well written throughout the arc.

Anyway, our friend claims to know about some water from the Well of the Furies, and he offers to let us guzzle some, at no cost to us! Wow, what an opportunity! Since there's no option to call him a liar and kick him in the nuts, we agree to go along.

1) Into an Arachnos base to hack a computer. Very short and quick (the clue even comments on this). The only delay is that this map is the prison one, which makes the game freeze for 10-15 seconds when you approach that room, most likely loading the textures. Have a book ready.

2) Off to talk to a contact about the file. Of course, since this is CoX, 'talk to' means 'severely pummel'. There's a cool custom group here, complete with minion descriptions (!!!) The boss has a very funny description as well.

3) Back to the same base (the guy mentions this) to download another file. This means we get the loading hiccup again. Read a few chapters of 'Atlas Shrugged', or talk your girlfriend into a quickie.

(who am I kidding, if any of us had girlfriends, would we be sitting here reading this? didn't think so)

4) Into Ghost Widow's tower, to get the water and become a demigod... but OH NOES! The Trader has snuck in and drank the water himself!!!!1one!! Now, normally, I avoid giving away plot twists, but really, this was obvious from the start of the mission. You and Ghost Widow pummel the guy, who is an EB but not too hard to beat with her help.

To Be Incarnate has no FAILings, aside from the loading glitch, which of course isn't the author's fault, but mentionable because it forces us to dwell for 30 seconds on our barren, girlfriend-less lives. Still, the fact that the Plot Twist is so predictable warrants a MEH, but then the writing is quite well done, so 2/3 of a MEH.

Rating: ME

Arc #81829: A Voyage Fantastic

Here's another interesting arc. A Rikti ambassador has come down with some with some sort of illness, and since he's one of the 'good' Rikti, it's imperative that we cure him. The obvious way to do this, of course, is to shrink the hero down to molecular size and inject him into the Rikti. This was adopted from the 1966 movie, Fantastic Voyage, which went on to spawn two books by Isaac Asimov (not the other way around, as I thought), and then aped by that putrid abortion of a film, Innerspace.

1) You meet with the doctor, who injects you into the Rikti's gut. The sendoff dialog is quite funny, but there's no dialog inside the mission, which is fine because bacteria don't talk much. The germs are Protean and Hydra, which are in a custom group called 'Ritki Germs' or whatever, but they retain their original flavor text referencing the sewers. Maybe you can't change the flavor text of regular mobs injected into custom groups, I can't remember offhand.

Anyway, this mission makes one big mistake: it's a defeat all. Defeat alls are bad, mmmmkay? Especially ones on the Arachnid cave maps, because mobs can fall into the geometry, or at least they could. I fell out of the map once myself during one of Terence Dobbs' arcs, although that was years ago and they may have fixed it by now. But then again, warshades still haven't been given human-form mez protection, and that's a far more pressing problem then mobs falling off maps, right?

2) After more funny dialog, you are sent into the brain, which uses the Leviathan map and is NOT a defeat all. Storm Elementals are used as 'Corrupted Neurons', but their name and flavor text are unchanged. An itty-bitty Nemesis is the boss, (fortunately not an EB), which fits in well with the RWZ storyline.

Overall, A Voyage Fantastic is a short, funny arc that only FAILs by having one kill-all.

Rating: FAIL

Arc #111486: To Slay Sleeping Dragons

Here's a rather interesting one. The contact, a villain named Malaketh, asks you to slay a hero, Azure Song. Possibly these are some of the author's characters, which is sometimes a warning that the mission will consist of 10 pages of the author expounding on how t0TaLL1 4WES0me his characters are, but fortunately that's not the case here.

Malaketh proposes killing Azure Song in an interesting way, by splitting off the dragon that is sharing her soul. Points added for originality here, since I've never seen dragon removal used as a plot device before. Maybe this will spawn a whole genre of missions. Maybe even mainstream CoX will jump on the bandwagon as well, with Viridian hiring villains to slay the dragon in Crimson's soul, or the I15 TF helping Statesman prevent Dr. Aeon from creating a mass dragon-extraction device.

1) You go into a Longbow base to get a book, "Dragon Removal for Dummies". Azure Song is there, but fighting her is optional.

Here a problem is seen that continues for the rest of the arc. The text is, well, not great. There's a few spelling errors and a few grammatical errors, but mostly it's just blah. It's certainly not as bad as some I've seen, which were obviously written by a 6th grader listening to Megadeth while snorting Ritalin mixed with Pop Rocks. I just get the feeling that it was written once and never reread.

(seriously, I used to know a guy who snorted his Ritalin. gah.)

2) You go to 'force the dragon to the forefront', or something. In an interesting twist, there's another dragon-possessed guy there, and the two are hostile to each other, although they both don't like you either. You can make them fight if you get them together, although it's not easy to make them lose aggro on you as well. I suspect a Phase Shift power will come in handy here. Once one is down, you need to defeat the other yourself, which is a bit hard (the intro _did_ state there was EBs).

Oh, there's a custom group here, "dragon phantasms" or something. Pretty cool, although the Lts have grav powers, which are annoying en masse.

3) You go to the 'Oranbega with fog' map to slay Azure Song, with Malaketh joining you. She uses Illusions, which requires a steady diet of Break Frees, since most mez resist powers don't resist confusion and fear.

Overall, To Slay Sleeping Dragons is an ok arc, which gets half a FAIL for some spelling and grammar mistakes, and one MEH for general bla-ness of text. A quick pass through could remove both.

Rating: FAMEH

Arc #51728: Speeding Through Time

By now, I'm sure we have all heard the news that 3DRealms has kicked the bucket, leaving Duke Nukem Forever as vaporware. While I'm sure this came as a great shock to everyone (sarcasm), let's look back for a moment at the game that put 3DRealms on the map: Duke Nukem 3D.

DN3D came out in 1996, which was like a million years ago, as part of the first wave of Doom clones. It wasn't a huge leap forward in technology, but it had a protagonist with a cool personality, a healthy dollop of humor, and most of all, it was the first 3D shooter to actually ship with level editing tools. Withing months, hundreds of Duke levels spread to BBSs across the world, (yes, BBSs. Google it.) which soon became thousands and thousands available for download on the blossoming World Wide Web. Soon, there were sites devoted just to reviewing Duke Nukem levels.

By now, some of the smarter readers have figured out where I'm going with this. CoX has given content creation power to it's users, and in response, tens of thousands of user made arcs have been belched from the gut of the unwashed masses, dripping and pooling across the steaming morass that is the Mission Architect. Only us; the few, the proud, the reviewers; only we stand between millions of CoH players and the quivering mounds of awful mission arcs. Armed only with our keyboards and biting-sharp sarcasm, we live to protect you from yourselves.

Which brings us to Speeding Through Time. Once again, I look for a chance to bring my sarcasm to bear, and once again I am denied.

1) The contact, Red Blur, asks you to go back through time to talk to his past self. This isn't new- "Crisis on Infinite Girls" did it already, among others- but by now, everything has been done already. Red Blur is elec/kin, which is nice because he gives you Speed Boost without having to say 'SB plz' every two minutes.

2) Back in time again to a destroyed Atlas park. There's a cool custom group here, who have somehow captured Statesman. From him we learn about the huge holocaust that has destroyed half of America. (the good half!)

3) Now the fun part. Desperate to stop the catastrophe, Red Blur has gone back in time again, creating dozens of temporal duplicates of himself as well. I'm not kidding, there's like two dozen of this guy to be found. Followed by an army of identical elec/kins, you whoop Dr. Aeon several times. You get very little xp/inf, because they do most of the damage, but that's not what we're here for, right? Right?

4) You pummel the Dr. Aeon of the present. I won't spoil the Plot Twist that surrounds it, but it's worth reading.

Overall, Speeding Through Time is a huge disappointment. I was hoping for a poorly written, sloppily produced arc that I could skewer with red-hot jabs of pointy sarcasm, but instead got a well written arc that's very much worth playing. Please, people, send me some lousy ones!

Rating:

Arc #1567: MacGuffin Delivery Service

I'm starting to get frustrated writing these reviews. I was hoping to vomit streams of acidic sarcasm upon poorly written arcs, sending their hapless creators crying back to Maple Story and Hello Kitty Online. Instead, I'm being handed a series of quality arcs with no opportunities for my scathing wit to, uh, scathe upon.

The contact for MacGuffin Delivery Service is 'your laptop'. I'm assuming that the story is being told in retrospect, as a diary entry or something. This is a unique method that works well here. However, the dialog is written for villains, and as a villain I'd be wary of having a diary, especially on a computer, since no level of encryption is safe in the Rogue Isles. It would have to be in some sort of code that only I knew. Maybe 'sending out for chinese' would be a code for stealing the Blood Ruby from the Tsoo, which would make anyone spying on it wonder why I ordered out 18 times in one week.

1) You rob a pawnshop, obtaining the 'emerald parakeet'. There is no one in the store when you enter, which makes sense. There are some unnecessary glowies as well, with text added so I don't feel like I'm wasting my life clicking them. You fight some Tsoo and leave.

2) You go speak to a contact, Amanita Infernia, which is obviously a plant/fire dom, possibly one of the author's. Plant/Fire is rather popular lately, which makes sense because Plant Control is awesome, but Thorny Assault, which would seem to go with it, is rather weak. I remember talking to one person who made a Plant/Fire named "Flaming Florist". I suggested his battlecry be "Who needs life insurance, anyway?"

The mobs inside are friendly, which goes along with the storyline, until the final room where you fight lots of Family. It must have taken a lot of tweaking to get that exactly right. You fight some Carnies to finish it off.

3) After some humorous exposition, you go into Oranbega to raid the Circle's library, which is a bit cliche, but oh well. You are reduced to level 40 for this, which is unusual, because CoT and Carnies both go to 50. Seven glowies to click, which a bit much, but they have funny text so it's ok.

4) Finally, into the MAGI vaults to get rid of the Black, er, Green Bird. This is perhaps the first time in CoX history that a villain has put something INTO their storage. The Every villain group in the game wants the Macguffin, and the PPD is there to stop them, which results in a wild free-for-all melee, with the Kitty coming up on top.

Overall, this is a well written, often funny arc. I was slightly disappointed by the lack of further Hitchcock or Maltese Falcon references. Of course, maybe there were some that slipped by, since I saw it a looooong time ago and don't remember it all that well, although the bit about 'having one in Constantinople' sticks with me for some reason...

Rating:

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City of Gyros. Right. I'm having flashbacks to Saul Rubenstein's Discount Task Force

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I know. This arc was up during beta, before Saul's. I did _suspect_ that he copied from mine, but... eh.

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Wait, why is Posi doing that weird monkey-walk thing? Is that something you did, or some bizarre Architect glitch? Odd... even though I logged out and came back (for nearly a day... I actually have a life right now, something that is taking some getting used to ), he's still doing it o.O

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Hehe... during beta and early release, there was a bug with some contact holograms. After returning from the first mission, Posi would be on all fours, so I mentioned it in the text. Now, they 'fixed' it, by having him run in place. Sigh.

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Aaaaand level limited again. Kind of jarring.

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I know. Supposedly in I15 we can control the level ranges directly, I'll fix it then.

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The wand clues aren't even trying to be funny?

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Well one is :-)

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The arcs are short and clean- not too much extraneous faffing around (although some optional glowies with more jokes would be good)... but there wasn't a lot of substance to it. I guess my final word is "Needs more funny".

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I know. My original conception of the arc, planned way before beta even started, was a serious TF-ish series that taught newbies the basics of teaming and fighting large groups. However, that proved to be hard to implement, especially since teaming in MA is _still_ semi-bugged. So I stuck a few jokes in, an well, there it is. Maybe I'll ditch it to post the third installment in the 'Two Chicks at Once' series :-)

Review posted.

Arc: #85544: Can You Win the Internet?

Here's a quick unsolicited review, just to act as a threadbu... er, I mean, cuz the arc is so great it just has to be reviewed! I won't bother to list the missions, just suffice it to say that this is really funny. I mean really, _really_ funny. The joke density here is at least as high as my arcs; only Zubblygunabbly's 'Running of the Bulls' scores higher. Some of the humor requires knowledge of internet memes, but we all spend a few hours each day reading Fark and Something Awful, right?

The only problem comes in the last mission, which uses Void Hunters as minions. For a Kheldian, this is VERY VERY BAD. I was able to win by sneaking through most of it, and using Dwarf + accolade powers to beat the boss, but most Kheldian players will come up short.

Can You Win The Internet? gets four FAILs if you play it with a Kheldian, zero if you don't. Since I'm the only player in the whole game who uses a Kheldian nowadays, that averages out to zero. Nice work!

Rating:

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Arranged in alphabetical order for fairness and ease of use:
Bayani
Bubbawheat (QPQ)
Burning_Brawler (QPQ)
DeviousMe (QPQ)
Dominemisis (QPQ)
Dragonslay
HolyEvilAoD
Lazarus (QPQ)
Misho (QPQ)
Peacemoon (QPQ)
Policewoman (QPQ)
Purple Lovin's Highly Sarcastic Review Pit(QPQ)
Rapulis
ridiculous_girl (QPQ)
Sooner (QPQ)
Talen_Lee
Venture

EU reviewers
Col.Blitzkrieger
Leese
Master_Zaprobo

Note: QPQ = quid pro quo: Play and rate/give feedback to the reviewer first in order to get a review on your arc, some are more lenient on this than others.

Also, Master Zaprobo's is an awesome idea, someone here should do something similar.

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Arc #70210: Is it Live or is it Memory-X?

Since this arc was listed as soloable, I used my titular warshade, Purple Lovin'. Although not as Awesome as my others, this is my badge character, so I try to do whatever I can with her. As far as I know, she has the most badges of any Warshade in the game (672 at last count). Of course, having the most badges of any Warshade is like having the highest deckchair on the Titanic, but I digress.

On the way to the mission I saw a Peacebringer named 'Pinkbringer', which I found disturbing for some reason.

1) Stop the Fifth Column from robbing a bank. Normally a defeat all with a 15 minute limit would make me drop the arc right there, but on a really small map it doesn't make much of a difference. Some of the mobs were level 48 for some unknown reason. Funny exit popup.

2) Enter Crey base to stop 5C troops from getting stuff. The map is filled with Crey/5C battles, with both sides hostile to you as well. Mob dialog is funny.

One thing I have a problem with, is that in addition to the glowie you have to click, there are also a dozen decoy glowies. They add only a little to the story while making the mission take longer to complete. It may not seem important, but assuming I click five fake glowies at four seconds each, that's twenty seconds of my life wasted. I could have spent that time hiking, watching the sun set over the ocean, reading a-

Eh, who am I kidding, I'd be surfing the net for furry pr0n. (or worse, using the MA to _make_ furry pr0n.)

3) A lab filled with 5C, where you have to click four glowies... which are hidden among more fake glowies. Then you free a hostage (I won't spoil the Plot Twist here), and then, escort him back to the exit. More time wasted that I could have spent making an arc where Mynx encounters her Praetorian counterpart, Bobcat, and subdues her after a fierce struggle. Then, they discover that Nemesis is behind it all, so they track him down together and foil his plans, after which Mynx invites Bobcat over to her place for sardines and milk. Since Bobcat can't get sent back to her own dimension until tomorrow, Mynx invites her to spend the night, and then...

(ehem) sorry, got sidetracked. Anyway, there's also a nice reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I thought no one under 40 would get, but now that I think about it, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" made reference to the same thing. Either 2001 is more of a cultural icon than I thought, or we're all really old.

4) You learn more about the nefarious plan, and go to a Portal Corp lab to rescue some hostages, Statesman and 'the president of the united states', and escort them to the exit. Folks, if you have to escort hostages back across a map, that's pretty much the same as a kill-all, and kill-alls are bad, mmmkay? By now, I could have written "Mynx's Furry Adventure", debugged and published it, had it banned, filed a protest, reposted it under a slightly different name, had that banned, started a new account and posted it again, had my IP forever banned from CoX, then started a new business selling virtual fursuits on Second Life. Oh, the President hostage is set to aggressive/combatant, but he's only an Lt., so you have to babysit him so he doesn't get killed.

5) Here, we get a a preview of the long-awaited moonbase! Granted, it looks just like a Rikti base, but what did you expect, a new tileset? Here, we rescue 5 hostages, which were named 'Hostage' with generic text, but blessedly did _not_ need to be led out. Then smash some glowies, rescue Back Alley Brawler (?) and defeat Master Bater, who was an EB but not too hard.

After exiting the mission, I saw a character named 'eatmewhileimhot', which I found... disturbing.

Is it Live or is it Memory-X? is a well written mission with a good story and a some funny bits, hampered by some time-wasting parts. One FAIL out of five.

Rating: FAIL

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(And although what little inuendo there was was very tame and fairly light - I am surprised you didn't go for Two Girls, One Cup..Err Calendar type of title. )


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I was actually worried that it was too risque as is, although no one has complained so far. Even so, it probably has no chance of becoming a Dev's Choice, although that's hardly an issue right now. 'Curiouser and Curiouser' is even more blue in a few places, but then, no one's playing it :-( 'Two Girls, one Calendar' would be... interesting. (I've already seen a 2G1C reference in one arc already).

"Two Chicks at Once" was intended to be an Office Space reference, although I found out afterwards that the actual quote is "Two chicks at the same time". :-(

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Heh... I find it kind of funny that you mention the very first robot story at the start of this review- once I get more slots one way or another (I'm an eternal optimist, but I'm mostly expecting to have to pay for 'em ), I've got a sequel to How to Survive a Robot Uprising in the works, called "Robot Uprising Redux" (or... "R.U.R."? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, knowwhatImean, knowwhatImean?)

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Nice, although only .001% percent of the people will get it (except those who have read this column, of course).

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Unfortunately, Council robots cap off at level 35-ish, but, thankfully, they have Shadow Shard Reflection counterparts.

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Clever.

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As to the major reason (or at least the one you expounded most upon) that you consider my arc unsoloable... the contact specifically tells you to avoid the Malta Titans, which is quite doable with any travel power...

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I saw that. However, there is one group of FOUR ZEUS TITANS that was standing directly in front of the desk glowie. Since all stealth suppresses when you _begin_ to click a glowie, you pretty much need to defeat this group.

Now, I'm willing to bet that at least half of all players who _have_ a 50 can beat one group. Any tier 9 defense power should be enough. Dominators should win if Domination is up. A good Stalker could possibly take out one Titan with BU+AS, run and repeat. Those with a defense based powerset can just go right for the glowie. Masterminds, of course, can just send their robots toe-to-toe with the titans. Non-robot MMs will get killed, but they're used to it by now

Oh yeah, that reminds me of another nice touch; at one point the dialog addresses the possibility that the player has robots, or even is a robot. Cool.

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Thanks for playing my arc! I'm glad that you thought it was good, at the very least. I'm a little saddened that you thought it was forgettable but I guess I shouldn't expect everyone to be floored by the arc. I'm honored that you came up with a whole new rating just for my arc, though.

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Uh, what arc?

Seriously, if the devs had inserted this among Crimson's regular missions, no one would think it wasn't an Actual CoH Mission.

Arc #12669, How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Robots have been turning upon their masters ever since the very first story about them. Still, this arc manages to avoid most of the cliches, and even pokes fun at them briefly.

The mission description says it's "solo UNfriendly", so I used Fast Kitty again. Your contact is named /hide, and meows as a box of parts. You are deliberately kept in doubt about who or what he is, which works out believably.

1) You meow into a base where you are attacked by robots from various factions, some of whom are transparent for some reason. One of the author's characters appears to help you; normally self-insertions are a mark of a lousy arc, but this was meowed well, and the character name, Archimedes' Lever, is a clever reference. The boss is a Vanguard HVAC, which I haven't even seen used in MA before. Mob chatter is well written.

2) An Arachnos base, where you meow more robots.

3) You learn that the 'virals' are trying to subvert Malta robots, so you meow onto a cargo ship to stop them. This is where the arc stumbles. The first thing you see upon entering is a group of FOUR ZEUS TITANS. They are fighting some regular Malta, who die in five seconds flat.

Now, Fast Kitty is Really Awesome, so I was able to meow in and smash them. (yes, FOUR ZEUS TITANS at once, without using the tier 9. There should be a badge for that.) Beating the Titans isn't strictly required, but there were groups of FOUR ZEUS TITANS all over the ship, one of which was right in front of a required glowie. This would no doubt present an insurmountable barrier to someone who isn't on a team and isn't Really Awesome. This isn't a fatal FAIL , since the arc did say it's solo UNfriendly, but still it will meow this arc off limits to some. (ever try to get a non-farming AE team together? try it sometime).

4) You enter Portal Meow and fight all sorts of Praetorian robots, like Seige's RAM series, Nightstar's SPECTRA robots, and Neuron's Electrodes. Good variety here.

5) Time for the Final Showdown, where you are meowed by _three_ of the author's character's (the minion group is Shameless Self-Insertions ), yet there's no Big Baddie. A mistake? I don't meow. The mission meows off with a nice souvenir.

Rating this one is hard... it's fun and challenging if you're Really Awesome (or on a good team), but unplayable if you aren't. Since you were warned about the difficulty, I'll give it just half a FAIL .

Rating: FA