Tangler
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Well... he was EA.Originally Posted by Aisynia
As you can see in the above picture (sort of), he is very much /EA. Did the regen help a lot?
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Thanks for the two reviews! I only realised you re-reviewed Might Makes Right just now, even though my last post was just beneath it.
Quote:Can you recall if he was EA or Regen at the time? I've recently switched him to a full powered regen in the hopes of improving his survivability.Originally Posted by Aisynia
Also, I know Dmitri is a scientist, and they are squishy, but if I wasn't /pain, he woulda been very dead (he spawned as an LT. Default difficulty I think).
And one last thing.. I assume the colony had surfaced in the first mission to look for the book? If so, why were they looking there?
It's supposed to represent an office being torn apart, I might try adding some 'ransacked' objects to illustrate this.Quote:Originally Posted by Aisynia
Is the second mission an Abandoned Office because the Coralax are ransacking it? It seems like a place that is used a lot, and not abandoned, but I'm not sure the abandoned office map gives me the impression the Coralax have torn it apart. It does fit the larger theme of the arc though, so if that's what you are going for, it fits.
That's because urm... a wizard said so. Yeah. Though honestly it was a silly oversight when I made it, and I've been meaning to fix it when I thought of something better.Quote:Originally Posted by Aisynia
In the last mission.. why are we waiting until we are in the very lair of the enemy before destroying the book? Why not destroy it before we get there, just in case it falls into their hands? Seems a better idea to destroy it before going. There's also the matter of the barrel, it looks way out of place, perhaps use an older looking, rustic barrel?
As for your re-review of Might Makes Right, I've been meaning to make a big overhaul on that arc for some time now to address most of the nits you have mentioned. It's just that I've wanted to finish going through the Player Awards, and then finish up my own first review batch before finally getting back into authoring proper. -
Quote:You're not the only one who forgot about the official one, and grats to all the nominees.Originally Posted by Bubbawheat
Only 9? That's actually lower than I would have expected.
Wait a second, you're talking about the official architect awards. I've been spending way too much time and thought on my own awards I almost forgot about those.
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Grats on your nomination Aisynia.
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Quote:It's a great arc Aisynia. You really shouldn't be so easily discouraged, especially for something that you yourself admit to pouring your heart into.Originally Posted by Aisynia
I have never had so much trouble taking criticism before. Criticism is what I consider part of my job, I'm very open to it.
But any time I get less than a 4 star on TMIT, I get my feelings hurt.
It's pretty obvious to me now that I put a little bit too much of my heart into this one. Once this official contest is over (which I am not winning) I am going to unpublish. -
Hope I'm not too late, I'd like to submit: Mercytown: The One With All The Fish Arc ID: 6017
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Funnily enough, I did actually get a neg rep for saying I didn't like the meme jokes.
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Thanks for the review.
This is the second time someone mentioned the gf spawn oddity, is there a known fix for this?
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I'll be taking a break from reviewing in order to have some free time to check out and vote for the MA Player Awards. I'd suggest checking out this neat event if you haven't done so already, and also to vote for Mercytown for best TO Range Arc.
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In Pursuit Of Liberty
ID: 221702
Author: @Gypsy Rose
Tags: Heroic, Solo Friendly, Canon Related
In Pursuit Of Liberty can be described as an alternate canon story with a touch of fairytale flavour. Your hero is contacted by Ms. Liberty, who presumably getting tired of never winning any costume contests despite practically living there, has developed fairy godmother level insight and tasks your hero with saving ‘Liberty’. Your hero initially travels nine years into the past through a magic portal in order to rescue ‘little Liberty’ from being kidnapped by The Family, and from there your hero travels into various points of time in order to help Liberty fulfil her destiny, as well as thwarting a mysterious group that are dead set against her doing so.
Your hero will meet up with Liberty through various stages of her life, whose description amongst other things suggests she is the very incarnation of Liberty itself.
MAL is a 'mysterious' character within the arc, who is the mastermind behind all the troubles.
The lore behind the custom group is interesting, and it adds to the overall fairytale feel of the arc.
Though this one actually states as to wielding the most common superpower in her bio (the close up shot was in no way intentional by the way... honest).
Unfortunately there are a few things with this arc that don’t sit well. Ms. Liberty’s fairy godmother like insight (combined with a habit on withholding information for some unexplained reason), her ownership of a time portal and her very personality portrayed in this arc is in stark contrast to her canon representation. MAL is supposed to be a mysterious figure until the final mission, but your hero already knows he’s the cousin of a named and notorious mob boss from mission 1, so it couldn’t have been that hard to pinpoint who he was. I couldn’t really buy into MAL being the big bad he is supposed to be either. We get to see his misdeeds in the future, but his motives are just so small and petty, it’s like trying to take Superboy Prime as a serious major villain. It’s later revealed that MAL seeks to destroy Liberty due to some kind of prophecy, but the reliability of the source I found to be very questionable, seeing as how the person in question never had precognitive abilities.
There is some good groundwork to this arc, building up more on the fairytale like nature of the arc, the idea of Liberty personified, or making MAL a more badass villain would have really made this arc shine.
Final Verdict: A decent arc with some good, if undeveloped ideas.
3/5 Stars -
I've seen some posters post comments including globals with no complaints, but you can always just keep them as anonymous quotes if you want to be sure.
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Quote:You've hit the nail on the head on why I didn't find LOLBAT funny. It's not like (some) memes aren't funny, but it's the difference between one poster deftly posting a meme at the right time in the middle of a thread conversation to mock, and someone who just posts them in every conversation. If LOLBAT's jokes aren't supposed to be funny to the player, then they really needed to have play up LOLBAT as the 'sad clown'.Originally Posted by Bovine_Avenger
In LOLBAT the most obvious failure is with the whole concept of a Meme themed superhero. The whole essence of comedy, even the Meme, is surprise. Ceiling cat is watching you do something, but what is it? Something new, or a new way to present what he's always watching, and you'll laugh... But LOLBAT presents each meme dead straight as it's always been. It adds nothing to any of them, and indeed the plot seems to just be set up to shoe horn them in.
Sonic Blast/Awesome?Quote:Originally Posted by Bovine_Avenger
... we could have had an arc where a Huge figure Brian Blessed in toga and beard comes swooping out of the sky! And who wouldn't be more excited by the prospect of that instead? -
Welcome back AP.
It's a shame you pulled those arc down, but I'll definitely try and get some time to have a look at this. -
I remember playing this, MA needs a 'Cows' tag just to properly categorise this arc.
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Hey thanks for the review, regarding some of your comments:
Quote:Normally I would submit my Malta one as it only has 40 plays, but it's still in need of a fairly big overhaul.Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
Man, you guys already have like 300 plays, do you REALLY still need reviews? Ah well, gives me something to do.
They're all in one group, but sometimes the gfs just spawn more than the regular Hellions themselves. It's luck of the draw really.Quote:Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
-The mission seemed to spawn a hell of a lot more Hellion Girlfriends for me than actual Hellions - are they both in the same group or all the Hellions manually placed spawns? It might be a good idea to consolidate the Hellions into the Hellion Rave group so the spawns are a bit more varied.
Oh trust me, the Leviathan cave is not the the better choice. In fact, there is no reason why you should ever make players go through that.Quote:Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
-The Leviathan caves might be a better choice for this map than the Cimerora caves - Though I'm not 100% if those are an option or not so if they don't even exist just ignore this.
Sounds like another zany coincidence.Quote:Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
-The bombs and acid barrel, and final boss, and altar ALL spawned in the same room. Maybe that's just a really, really odd coincidence, but if they're all set to "Back", consider maybe setting the bombs to "Any" to spread them out a bit more.
The punchline is somewhat hidden in the text when you do 'ask' where he got the submarine from in the unsolicited contact speech bit. He'll push you to hurry it up before Longbow find out they're minus one sub.Quote:Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
-There weren't any Russians! You should put some in as the payoff to the "Don't ask where I got the submarine" line from the intro.
I understand if you didn't buy into their fates. As for not caring because you're a villain, I guess it really depends on your villain's personality.Quote:Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
-The reference to "Chinatown" doesn't really fit the tone of the arc, to be honest. It's a villain arc so I'm not really expected to care about the fate of the Veidts anyway. -
Quote:Maybe you should consider stating it in the arc description?Originally Posted by Zaphir
- It is indeed supposed to be set before the 'original' JK arc. It's kinda tricky to tell this without breaking the fourth wall, so I used a line in the first briefing making an offhand reference to the mysterious and unresolved disappearance of Invisible Falcon as per Glazius' suggestion in his first review. It may be too subtle, but I couldn't figure out a better way.
If you want to keep the sense of urgency, that's fine. My main issue really was that the time limits were not stated before you click accept.Quote:Originally Posted by Zaphir
- About timed missions: the last one is supposed to 'go both ways' (again evoking a sense of urgency common to spy thrillers), and you 'succeed' even if you fail (let me just say I spent some time on the 'net trying to find fissile materials that have a half-life under 40 years /cough). Some of the people who played the timed missions love 'em, others say they're a bit excessive, I may look into making 'em untimed later. -
An update to my submissions: I'll be opening up a 'second batch' that authors can submit to the queue. Keep in mind, I am still planning to take a break from reviewing or at least slow down after this batch is done (though you can still jump the queue by quid pro quo), but the queue is there if you want to line up for a review when I pick it back up.
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The Coldest Of Wars
ID: 299972
Author: Zaphir
Tags: Canon Related, Save the World, Mystery
The Coldest of Wars is a spy thriller that has a campy, 60s silver age era influence to it. In it your hero is contacted by Agent Kellum of the FBSA, who has been investigating the ever suspicious activities of the Crey Corporation. Her inside man has reported that a major breakthrough has been made in the past 10 hours in one of their super soldier programmes, and it is up to your hero to safely extract the personnel, as well as any information pertaining to this project.
You get to play spy for the first 2 missions, breaking into systems, finding out the latest office gossip, etc.
Your hero soon discovers that the super soldier project in question is none other than the macabre Revenant Hero Project, and it was during one of Crey’s excavations for ‘samples’ at local gravesites that they discovered a mysterious unmarked tomb. Inside, they unearth several personal that have been kept in cryogenic stasis that they haul back to the labs for further study. The personal turn out to be Soviet Russia era super spies, and ones that inevitably break at that, in order to complete their decades old mission to bring back the terrors of the Cold War by putting Paragon City to its frosty doom.
'Most surprisingly, Z reports the crypt did not in anyway lead to Oranbega, or was a den for various other villain groups at all.'
'Like I haven't heard that one before, so what's your plan-'
'Ahem, well I for one, welcome our new raspberry ripple overlords.'
You'll face off with many of the operatives including their leader who is appropriately and devastatingly enough an ice dom EB. It's a shame we can't add or even customise music in MA yet, as I would have so wanted to have this played for this encounter or even the last half of the arc.
The arc is tied into the Revenant Hero Project though it is erroneously called the Paragon Protector Project here. The timeline is a bit muddled, as it never directly mentions that this arc is a precursor to the RH storyline at the start which certainly made things confusing, however its level range is set to be above the level where heroes resolve the mystery of the RH Project. Also, it is never clear how studying the Russian spies will directly aid Crey in making the RH Project a success.
Missions 1 and 2 I found to be particularly long, and since they both used the tech themed maps they also felt quite samey too. Most of the missions are timed, and while the time is usually generous save for the final one as the objectives were more demanding, it would have been better served to state the exact time allotment before accepting a mission.
That said, I enjoyed the colourful, campy, silver age adventure, the equally colourful Russian cast* and the outrageous doomsday plot that were the hallmarks of the era.
Pretty much sums up the arc.
Final Verdict: Do you have a guilty pleasure for silver age comics or even Saturday morning cartoons? If you answered yes to either one you should be giving this arc a play, and if not you should probably give it a try anyway.
4.5/5 Stars
*Which for those who have played my Mercytown arc may have realised, I do have a certain fondness for Soviet villains. -
Please do check out Mercytown, as it does have some light horror in the arc.
I've been meaning to check out Tomorrownaughts ever since I saw the thread title for it.
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Quote:The arc is just fine when the contact isn't speaking. As for the memes, being played off as part of the gag doesn't stop it from being any less painful to read through in this case. See: Tidus laughing on the bridge.Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
I don't know why people keep saying this. Only the contact dialogue is written in memes, the clues and NPC dialogue are all normal, and the deluge of memes is played off as being just as stupid as it sounds.
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Quote:Was it showing up 2 arcs with different IDs or the same? Either way that does quite frustrating.Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
The new id number for this arc is 338602. When I tried to edit it and republish, it put 2 arcs of the same name up. When I tried to unpublish one of them, I unpublished both and had to republish the arc from scratch.
Hence the new arc id. -
Out of curiosity, are you actually typing out those quips while in the middle of a fight?
Oh, and I don't think I could have gotten past the shotgun blast of memes to ever rate LOLBAT all that highly sadly. -
Quote:I've had a few people ask about this. I'm a bit hesitant to do so, as my update speed may slow down after this batch, and I don't want to leave the authors hanging for a review.Originally Posted by The_Thorny_Devil
Awesome reviews Tangler! Are you still not accepting submissions?
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Quote:Thanks, I was going for a Jonathon Ross format when I decided to do the review, though any tv style review is just as accurate really.Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
I'd certainly appreciate it if you would review it, Tangler. I've read your review thread and I like how you put your reviews together... sort of like the old Siskel/Ebert review show where they'd give a brief synopsis of the film along with a taste of what's there (with snippets of the movie for them and your screenshots for you). Spoilers get sort of a bad rap, I think. Most of the time, it's what I see of a movie beforehnad that's often the driving factor on whether I'll pay the money to go see it.
I've stopped accepting arcs for now, but I'll be more than happy to have a look at your arc when I open it back up. -
The Power From Out Of Space
ID: 64800
Author: Dr. Spoon
Tags: Solo Friendly, Kid Friendly
The Power From Out Of Space is an arc where your hero follows the growth of five citizens who after being empowered by a mysterious power (spoilers: it’s in the title) manifest various super powers tailored to their own personality quirks, such as photographer Chrystyne who becomes the gadgeteer markswoman Lens Flare, and coffee aficionado Ken who transforms into the brick known as Blue Mountain. Alarm bells are set off however when this new superhero team are climbing up the security levels at an unprecedented rate (even faster the pre-nerf MA farms? Now that is something), and it’s up to your hero to discover the source of their power.
I actually had to Google the name in order to get the reference. Yes, I flunked coffeenology when I was a kid.
*Hint hint* to all you authors out there even considering using the Oranbega maps.
Our heroes ladies and gentleman. Just ignore Mind Strum, he just likes to sniff people's hair.
This is a light and enjoyable arc, with nice pacing and small maps to keep everything short and sweet, and there was also an optional clue I found that was a nice touch. There was an odd case of backtracking in mission 2* for spawned chains that really shouldn’t be, and of course heroes should expect a big bad that will be involved with the plot, though while his plan isn’t bad in theory, it does have logistical issues due to the rather ‘specific’ nature of his plan.
Final Verdict: Light and appealing.
3.5/5 Stars
*Amendment: the backtracking occurred in mission 2, not 3 as I originally wrote.