MCMs 'Written As I Go' reviews.

[ QUOTE ]
I’d like to shove an auto-turret up the backside of the Dev whom invented them.

[/ QUOTE ]

As a Psi user, I understand this sentiment completely. Additionally, I also posit that bank vault doors are equally unfun and both need to have their damage resistances tweaked.

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QR

here's my current queue:

This Is War: Part I - the Revenge of Hro'Dtohz 1356
Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend 114284
Terrors of Old 124746
A Close Encounter 233720
Entrusted with the Other Secret 120462
The Invasion of the Space Ape Armada 81043
A.E.'s Premium Quality Mission: "guaranteed qualityyyyLOADING ERROR 0.000459" 148476
Red Typhoon 4912

At some stage I will also be running the following:

The Galactic Protectorate Parts 2 and 3
A Bad Hand from a Worse Dechs 19502
The Tubbius Trilogy starting with 18775
Every Rose 17702
A random arc with the word Banjo in the title.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

[ QUOTE ]
A Bad Hand from a Worse Dechs 195202
Eco.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fix'd.

And thanks again for putting me in the queue.

---

Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.

This Is War: Part I - the Revenge of Hro'Dtohz 1356

This arc has been loitering about my awareness event horizon since I14 went live. It’s one of the ‘most mentioned’ arcs that I somehow hadn’t got around to playing yet. Probably a combination of the dreaded multi-slot arc syndrome (even I’m not immune, it seems ) combined with the anticipation of an EB plus my general neutrality when it comes to Rikti stories.

How about a short Aside?

My favourite faction heroside is the Vahzilok. Dr V is exactly the kind of supervillain I love. I also like the Freakshow and the Carnies.

Anything militaristic has to have some kind of larger than life AV or a suitably campy ‘lazer death ray on the moon’ type plot to appeal to me. This is why I don’t like Malta, but like Marshall Brass and his rogue Arachnos a lot.

The Rikti arcs in the RWZ are military arcs that I do enjoy, because they are well-written and have interesting mechanics. Plus there’s that Diplomat’s party mission. All my characters have a formal wear costume slot just for that mission lol. BUT: The Rikti are a faction I dislike fighting, because a. The drones see through steatlh and Hide, and the Mentalists are a PitA.

So I’m in two minds about what to expect with this arc. The MA can do some incredible things. If the mechanics of this are standout, it’ll be a winner. If it’s a sequence of Rescue [someone], Defeat [someone else], Collect [something], then it could be middling depending on the story. We shall see.

The description rather ominously says ‘multiple Avs’ I did say I’d be soloing this on a blaster, right?

Hmm…it’s marked as neutral, so I can take my stalker in if I want. I think I will; It’s also Very Long (3 unique maps, 1 med, 1 large), so Hide will help with the speed.

Logging back in with The Dirty promise, 50 NB/Nin Stalker…

It’s at 95 plays, 4 stars. I’m in.

The contact is the Lady Grey; she tells me that things are getting a bit dicey. The Rikti are attacking paragon en masse, and that nearby a squad of metahumans needs assistance.

There’s an OOC message in purple telling me that this arc takes place after The Horror of War and the LGTF, and that I should play these first. I’ve done ThoW but haven’t finished a LGTF yet.

Mission 1: Rescue The Trapped Squad

Once inside this cave map, I encounter a trapped Rikti being menaced by some more Rikti. One of the other reasons I don’t love the Rikti is the good Rikti/Bad Rikti faction war thing. Politics bores me.

Warmaster Cher’Tak (Just remembered another thing I don’t like about the Rikti: their difficult to remember names, and their way of speaking. It looks cool, but it’s difficult to understand) says something I don’t really understand about another Rikti but I don’t know if he’s referring to an enemy or not.

He’s an Ally, and so he follows me and my Sneaky Sneaky turns into a Clear All as he aggros everything I’d normally just pass. I leave him to it as the Nav Instructions tell me I’ve only got to rescue 2 soldiers.

I find one of them (nice pose) and rescue him, and then the Nav instructions tell em I’ve got to Defeat the Raid Leader too now.

…sigh.

I’m sighing because of what just happened. The Raid Leader, an EB, spawned in the same room as the rescuee, immediately attacked me, bringing a comm. Officer with him too. There’s no way I can take on an EB without preparation, so I’m forced to flee before he kills me. Leaving the rescuee to deal with him on his own. It isn’t Fun.

I go looking for…See, I just had to look up above to check what his damn name is. Cher’tak.

I find him, laboriously lead him back to the Raid Leader (big hovering floaty thing) and we attack. It’s annoying as hell, because there’s loads of portalled Conscripts, so Cher’tak doesn’t attack the Raid Leader until we’ve dealt with those.

Finally he goes down and we set off back into the map to look for the final soldier, who we find and release easily. The exit popup has the Rikti smirking, which would be a sight to see for sure.

LGs debriefing contains a typo ‘We wdould’.

The briefing for Mission 2 tells me I need to rescue Serpent Drummer. It contains an odd line ‘He stood in the process of…’ – I’m not sure why the word ‘stood’ is being used there. What concerns me more, however, is the news that on this next mission, I might very well meet Malta forces, including a sniper. Brilliant. All we need now are some Knives.

So , Mission 2: Rescue Serpent Drummer.

Inside the Dirty tech base map, I traverse the apparently pointless first floor and use the lift. I’m beginning to think this may be aimed at an audience who likes lots of fighting.

I find Serpent Drummer in a room at the end of a 5 minute bunny-hop through the map. He’s in a room with 5 comm officers, 3 mentalists and a number of infantry, plus about 10 rikti moneys.

I jump in, and slug it out until SD is free and he can give me a hand. As we’re finishing off the last of them, I notice the Nav has altered again. There’s now an optional AV to defeat (no thanks) and I have to lead SD out. So that’s Defeat All you should put on the descr, then.

I’ve also still got to find the Malta leader. If this Malta subplot doesn’t flesh out, I’m going to point the Unnecessary Malta finger.

…I just left SD alone for a sec and had a look back over the map. I’m sorry, but forcing me to Clear All that is totally unacceptable to me. It’s a HUGE map. I’m going to try to get SD killed, and hopefully the mission will fail.
Ah crap, he won’t die. Jesus, this is awful.

…I’ve just done 2 corridors. It took me 5 minutes. He’s a nightmare. He aggros everything, runs off mid-fight to aggro something else, leaving me to deal with hordes of conscripts, and his end is constantly at a sliver so he’s not even any use really. And his health won’t drop. There’s a huge room next full of Rikti.

Right now, I hate this arc.

…and now I’m dead in a room FULL of orange-conning conscripts because while I was carefully trying to edge my way round the room, Serpent [censored] ran into the center and aggrod everything.

After going to the hospital, I re-enter the map and have a look down a passage I neglected on the way thru and find the Malta operative (the first floor wasn’t pointless after all). Thank god he’s a rescuee not a bloody EB. I rescue him, he calls a truce and give me the (optional) task of locating a gunslinger. No thanks.

I leave him to hopefully die horribly a short while later as he too is an aggro magnet.

I plod on thru wave after wave of irritation and wholly unnecessary combat, and come across the gunslinger. I might as well rescue him I guess. After I do, his clue says ‘Seeing you arrive with his CO, the Gunslinger told you…’ a bit incongruously, since I’m alone. I’ll be leaving him alone too shortly, no doubt.

I lead him on, and I die in the next fight under a sea of orange-conning conscripts. I’m beginning to wish I’d brought my Blaster along instead.

Back in, and I make my way back to the Gunslinger and soldier on. We eventually reach SD and are forced to clear the room. I have chest pains by now. We make our way towards the exit, with SD aggroing
Every
Single
Freaking
Thing
on the way.

He even chases down [censored] rikti monkeys.

I make it to the Exit without ragequitting, but if I didn’t like you so much, Devious, and I wasn’t doing this for this thread, I’d have ragequit at about 10 different points during this mission. It took me over an hour and a half. It was horrible.

LGs debriefing and intro to the next mission tells me that the War is escalating and spreading throughout the City. The writing is good in the briefings etc, I am happy to say. Kings Row is where I’m headed next, to capture a Rikti Leader.

The Nav instructions in the KR outdoor map (lots of fighting going on, very atmospheric) say ‘2 Field Commanders to defeat’. I SJ around till I spot an EB, prep up and attack. It’s a nice fight and he goes down. I kill the rest of his spawn…and there’s still 2 Field Commanders to defeat.

A little way away I find another EB. I defeat him too, and the Nav remains unchanged. Then I spy a third EB, and next to him is a normal Boss with the name ‘Field Commander’. Luckily the EB doesn’t aggro on me while Im fighting the Boss, who is quite difficult considering he’s a Boss.

Next I spend a painful time trawling the map for the other Field Commander. The first one had one line of dialogue, no special animations to mark him out, and it was just luck I found him, especially since I was fooled by the EB status of the big Mobile Suit things into thinking that they were the Big Bads for this mission. I really think this arc is aimed at steamroller teams.

I find a few insta-glowies that add some nice flavor about the raging war.

I find the Field Commander, and since the last one was a bit tasty, I eat all my inspires etc. This is the last objective, after all.

Except it isn’t. As I defeat him, another objective pops up. Defeat a named Boss.

OMG THIS IS AWFUL!

I don’t mean your arc, specifically. If I liked fighting, I’d probably be loving it. I want story, and what I’m getting is slog. I can’t find the Big Bad. Put some glowy green gas around him or something, or use a different map, or put a warning in your descr that its combat-heavy.

When I throw my hands in the air and bemoan to my living room ceiling that ‘This is AWFUL!’, what I really mean is ‘this is yellow – but I like red!’, which is the way that ‘reviews’ go, IMO. If I go to a fancy restaurant and the chef is Gordon Ramsey, and he serves me up the best Olive n Anchovy Salad he’s ever made, I’m going to think it blows – because I loathe olives and anchovies.

…

I just had to have a half hour break, as my mouse needed to recharge, so I’ve just come back. I feel much less stressed out now (which isn’t much comfort probably).

Another 5 minutes of searching and I find him. He’s just a boss, thankfully. He’s still a chore to fight, accompanied by his comm. Officer and mentalist. When he goes down, he drops a clue. Here I notice that the field commander earlier must have given a clue pointing out that after the 2 field commanders there’d be another boss appearing, so my bad for that.

I exit the mission and report back to the Lady grey. She tells me that the Leader I just defeated is in Vanguard custody and that he’s bein grilled for info. However, Hro’Dtohz wants him shut up or back, so he’s dispatching the 4 Riders to attack the base he’s in. I’m somewhat sceptical about my chances of winning against these guys from the LGTF, but I’ve got 4 Allies waiting for me apparently. Lets just hope they’re not scattered to the compass points of a Huge Map.

In I go:

Mission 4: Defend the Vanguard Base

I enter the outdoor vanguard base map to find mayhem, and not in a good way. There are battles going on, rikti on rikti, rikti on nemesis, there’s Malta hanging around too. I immediately spot a Rider, Famine, who is aggrod by a Hercules titan as I watch, The Titan gets it down to about half health before it dies. I go to collect my band of allies. There’s 2 Malta and a Rikti, all the guys I’ve met before.
I lead them against Famine and in short order I’m dead. I hosp, eat a load of inspires, and back into the fray. The two Malta allies drop like flies during the fight. Marvellous. That leaves 3 Riders. There should be another Ally around here somewhere I guess.

As we’re looking for it, Warmaster Idiot aggros a battalion of Rikti, who beat him to a pulp. I’m on my own again.

I find the remaining Ally, a Boss Rikti called Kul’bere. I lead him over to the next Rider.

We defeat him, Warmaster kul’Bere ending up at a sliver of health by the time we finish. The Rider runs awry at the first hit into a huge group of bloody comms officers, which of course makes the fight about 4 times as long and 400 times more annoying.

Then I go into the /chickendance emote for 10 minutes waiting for Kul’Bere to recharge his health.

So I’ve got 10 minutes to ramble on about stuff.

This arc really has made me realise that I need to be running arcs for this thread that I am likely to enjoy. This sort of ‘review’ isn’t doing anyone any good is it? I’m not enjoying it, Devious isn’t likely to be happy with my reaction, and I’m not sure if its informative and/or entertaining, in any case?

Still, I’ve started so I’ll finish.

But this is the last Rikti Arc I’ll run I think.

So my Ally has recharged, so it’s onto the next Rikti (the Nav now includes an optional ‘Find the surprise’ instruction, but I doubt it’s a surprise ‘I Win’ button, so I’ll ignore it). We locate the next Rider and storm in.

This fight is HORRIBLE.

Ambushes too, maybe? Great.

I die. Hosp, back in. Eat a load of inspires, and he eventually goes down.

…if theres’ a ‘surprise’ required objective after this last Rider, Im not going to be happy.

Ah crap, I have to wait for my Ally to rest again.

This cannot be aimed at soloers, surely? I think if I was on an 8-man team, it’d make a pretty good farming arc. My ticket haul will probably be quite good. If I was in it for the tickets that’d be something.

When he’s ready I lead him to the last rider – through unavoidable groups of Rikti. I now fervently wish the Devs would remove ALL comms officers from the MA, not for farming reasons but because I’m hating my own life at this point. I die again.

I’ve been at this arc for 4 hours by now.

The last Rider is War, so I get to say to my GF “Honey, look at this – This is War”, but that’s a momentary bit of cheer in an otherwise depressing afternoon. Ironically enough, War is pretty easy to beat.

Mission complete. Phew.

…What were the Nemesis doing there? Maybe that was the ‘surprise’?

Holy God, my last mission is to assassinate [someone pretty uber]. Maybe if I’m lucky it’ll be timed and I can just let it go.

Nah, that wouldn’t be ‘professional’ lol.

This arc is fair groaning under the weight of ‘Epic’ – What can you possibly have held back for parts 2 and beyond?

Mission 5: Assassinate [someone].

The Big Bad killing is the only Nav instruction, so I am really hoping there’ll be some Allies near him.

I set off.

Gah. There’s an Ally just inside the front door.

I’d love to know how long you took to do this arc in Test.

I ignore the ally and speed through the map. There are a few more allies dotted around. The idea is I guess to link up with them all and then lead them as a strike force to the final room. I am not going to baby-sit multiple allies back and forth through a load of rikti, so I leave them there and go find the Big Bad. He’s an orange EB. I deal with him on my own with the help of a trayful and my Widow. Thank god, there aren’t any more objectives to do.

The clue he drops has a Reveal which makes me drop my head to my desk and just rest it there for a moment, breathing hard.

I exit the mission for a final debriefing from the Lady Grey, and with a sigh of relief rate and finish.

I’m truly sorry, Devious, I like you a lot, and I’m gutted that I didn’t enjoy your arc. It was well-written, the plot wasn’t bad, mechanically it wasn’t bad, but everything in it was too long, there were too many bloody comm officers, and I just felt like I was struggling against a tide rather than being carried along on a wave of fun. I had difficulty finding some objectives, as you saw, and the allies were a royal PitA most of the time. Also, That Escort mission was hideous. It gives me palpitaions even thinking about doing that kind of thing again. I think it really doesn’t need to be that long at all. Less is more etc. At least there were no forehead-wrinkling moments, although the apparently (at first) random appearance of Jaegers in Mission 4 was a contender.

My antipathy towards the Rikti coupled with the inordinate length and that Escort Mission From hell drops This Is War Part 1 to a rating of 3-stars from me.

I would play an arc from you that was of a different faction (and maybe shorter lol) without worrying about quailty, though. I’ve no problem with the quality of your stuff, only the difficulty and length.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

That's okay, heh. I guess that's what I get for dropping you an arc that has a bunch of elements that just don't suit you. Yes, this is an arc designed to be fought through, so I kind of expected people who prefer stealthing to find this godawful.

I'm somewhat surprised that you had such an easy time with the boss in mission 5 when the Heavies gave you so much trouble earlier, though. Usually, it's the other way around if the player doesn't pick up the allies. Speaking of, the 'surprise' in mission 4 was a Zeus Titan. So...not quite an 'I Win' button, but with its improved ally AI, it comes rather close. Sooo yeah, you should've gone and picked that up.

In regards to your questions, it took me on average between half an hour and an hour to test (though I of course had the advantage of knowing what I was looking for), and there are enough allies provided to see even the squisihiest of soloists through, though of course if you're a stealther...yeah, you're kind of hosed there, especially with Rikti and all their drones. Sorry you had such a tough time. Maybe I'll go and design an arc around the just-run-to-objectives style sometime. Truth be told, I didn't even consider that playstyle when I made any of my current arcs.

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"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi

Characters

Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend, very Long (3 uniques, 1 sm, 1 lg), Villanous. Arc ID 114284

Taking an alternative approach to this one. I see that it’s for lvls 15-20 so I’ve decided to take Atomicide, my lvl 18 Dark/Dark brute in.

The descr speaks of ‘love, death and betrayal’ in a ‘moral and emotional rollercoaster ride!’ – That sounds like fun!

Lets see, shall we?

The contact is Desdemona the Glint, and she’s offering me a bank job with the added bonus of diamonds. My Brute likes the shiny shinies, so I’m well up for that.

Mission 1: Business As Usual.

I enter the bank, and it appears to be empty. Just the way Atomicide likes it. He’s basically interested in money-making crimes. He spends all the cash he makes on tracking down the Dirty Promise, she’s the cause of his demise and subsequent reanimation.

So – an empty bank? Lovey jubbly! My Nav instruction is ‘get the Ice’.

But wait – what’s this? A coupla Outcasts waiting in the vault, wanting to be heroes?

Laughing, I dive into the fight. Its good. The leader, Ice Age, puts up a fair show of it, but Atomicide’s hands rather ludicrously focus a really small nuclear (and magic) explosion into every punch. Nobody likes a nuke in the face. Ice Age goes down. Plucky little wannabe hero tells me he’s stashed the diamonds in his base, however, so I’m leaving with my hands empty.

Desdemona is surprised at the Outcasts behaviour, but has a plan to lure them into the open so we can find out the location of their base. I’m going to kidnap her! Nice plan.

So then,

Mission 2: Lure Heroes Out of Woodwork.

“Kidnap” Desdemona the Glint, is the plan. In her apartment building, however, there are Longbow in the halls. Hmmm…I’m not sure why they’re here, to be honest, but they’ll do for some punchbag practice. I paper the walls with longbow guts and hunt down Desdemona. She’s being guarded by some patsies in red and white. When I’ve finished, there’s more red than white. She takes off as we hear the Outcasts coming to ‘rescue’ her. Heh. Another bunch of muties taken down. Firezone, their leader, spills big time when I bounce his head off the walls a few. They’re in BB, trying to be heroes, he says. Pshaw! What a pansy!

Desdemona gets wind that there’s something big going down in Bloody Bay. Could be our boys. Seems like the word is out that the diamonds – my diamonds – are there. There might be a lot of goons after the ice – Unlucky for them that I outnumber them, eh?

Mission 3: Visit Scenic Bloody Bay.

When I arrive in Bloody Bay, the radiation plays tricks on me, scrambling my eyes or maybe my mind a bit. Seeing things never stopped me from hitting things, though, so I attempt to Find A Clue. After trashing some CoT heads in I find some rock-loving mage dude called Teremex – Ha, he thinks my diamonds belong to him! I show him the category error he has assumed by utilising the twin philosophical debating methods of Punch to the Throat and Stomp on Face Whilst Opponent is Choking His Last on the Ground. He concedes that I argue a strong point, and offers me a deal. If I go and defeat the ‘guardian of the base’, he may have a deal for me. I think he’s just BSing cos he squirted all his magic out of his bottom during the sound thrashing I just gave him, but I’m starting to calm down and that’s never a good sign, so I decide to come back later after I’ve done some more pounding.

My cunning plan to flush the Guardian out works as follows. I head for the nearest outcast and punch him in the face repeatedly until he falls over, then I do the same to his friends. In this manner, eventually I find that the next Outcast in Line for a twatting is the Guardian in question. He’s a big man but he most definitely is outta shape. Down he goes like a sack of spuds on a Victorian basement floor. He must have had some doodad on him, cos as he croaks I see a previously hidden tunnel into the ground. Secret Base? Don’t mind if I do, thanks.

I head back to the Mage, and he does have an offer, He tells me that my diamonds are in fact useless crystals, and if I get them for him he’ll swap them for an equal amount of real diamonds. Interesting. So I don’t have to bother with the diamonds in the base then, I can just batter them out of him right here. Then it strikes me that two sets of diamonds are better than one, so I pretend to agree.

Desdemona is starting to get on my nerves a bit, with her “Desdemona like shiny diamonds, no? What you wait for? Me so sexy!” faux-russian schtick, but she’s hot and I’ve got glowing green skin and bolts in my neck, so beggars can’t be choosers. I meet up with Teremex again, and he tells me he’s sent some of his goons in ahead to help me. Pfff, like I need any help!

Mission 4: Descend into the Outcast Lair.

I enter the lair and almost immediately I find a bouquet of rage-inducing outcasts. How thoughtful. After dealing with them, I move like a veritable whirlwind of destruction through the caverns, cutting a swathe here, demolishing a roomful there. It’s most therapeutic. I do find a number of ghosties and ghoulies, but I ignore them cos I’m hard as nails, me. I find a chest guarded by some fist-fodder, but it’s locked. In case its trapped or the ‘diamonds are fragile, I endeavour to find the key. It’ll probably be held by a practice dummy nearby.

The practice dummy turns out to be a pet Shivan called Jiggles. His master takes a dive like a welterweight owned by the mob, but jiggles fancies himself as a bit of a Kisser. We dance for a while before he cops it. The slimy key round his neck lets me into the chest, and there are the stones all this troubles been about.

Diamonds? Nah, these little twinklies are evil magical voodoo rocks, its as clear as day. I’d better get rid of em, quick.

Teremex wants us to make the exchange at a cemetery at midnight. Suits me fine, I get a great ‘ghastly tint’ to my complexion in graveyards in moonlight. Desdemona even seems worried about me. Things are looking up for this Brute!

Mission 5: The Cemetery at night.

At the cemetery, I see that the Outcasts have arrived in force. They want to boogie. That’s ok with me; I’m sure the dead can shuftie over and make some space for some more. The leader shouts from somewhere in the cemetery at me, calling me a coward.

I don’t like that, much.

That makes me a tad angry, that.

How angry?

Angry enough to Clear All, that’s how angry.

I waste every damn outcast in the cemetery, working my way round the top to finish at where Teremex is being held prisoner by some Outcasts, then when Ive dealt with them we drop down into the bowl and clear that too, finishing with the Big Bad Outcast leader, Tunguska. He’s all irradiated up and has a couple of girlfriends with him – Shivan girlfriends, that is.

“Bubble Me,” I say to the mage, and I’m in with a grin.

What can I say? It was the perfect end to a magical evening. You can keep your doorstep kisses and smiles through lidded eyes. A lover’s whispered ‘yes’? Not interested. A shooting star flashing over Caribbean waters? Talk to the hand. Just gimme the dull wet thud of my fist in the face of someone who’s gotten me really worked up and I can sleep the sleep of the just.

It couldn’t have been a better fight if someone had paid Tunguska off to perform like it. Not too long, not too short, no namby-pamby running away, just the unadulterated Elegant Simplicity of pure blunt trauma.

Violence is Golden, as they say.

I swapped the rocks with the diamonds, and Teremex pegged it away on his toes, no doubt unnerved by the twitch in my cheek and the bloody red glow where my eyes should have been.

I was now the proud owner of a Big Bag of Diamonds. Bonzer.

Back at Desdemonas pad, she took one look at my sack and was ready to party. Rock on.




[End]


Well, you can no doubt see from my liquid prose how much I enjoyed that. Golden. 5-stars.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

[ QUOTE ]
At some stage I will also be running the following:

The Galactic Protectorate Parts 2 and 3


[/ QUOTE ]

Just to let you know, when the new Issue hits the servers I'll probably be editing all of my published Arcs. I'm fine with you reviewing them before then, but when the next Issue is released I'm going to ask that you wait unti I'm done updating my Arcs (I'll make a post in this thread when I'm finished) before you play them.

I'm looking forward to what you think of the 2nd and 3rd parts of my story, whenever you get around to it!

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Supplemental Galactic Protectorate Fanfic

Oooooooo! I'm in the queue!

Eventually.

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I'm out of signature space! Arcs by Tubbius of Justice are HERE: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218177

Cap,
If you've got room in your queue, I'd love to see how Power Play (#187269) fares in this stream of consciousness review style. I've recently done a total revamp of the custom group. It's designed for solo so bosses will scale to lieutenant on challenge level 1.

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Qr - since I enjoyed Atomicides recent outing so much, I've decided to use level-appropriate toons for future runs. I can't ne sure which AT and powerset I'll be using yet, but if Nyones got any preferences or recommendations for their arcs, please let me know.

Eco

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

Alright, I've finished most of the updating for my existing Arcs, save for some bugs that I have no control over

However, " The Galactic Protectorate - 02 " is ready to go whenever you want to review it, MrCaptainMan

I'll make another post in this thread when I've finished updating " The Galactic Protectorate - 03 "

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Supplemental Galactic Protectorate Fanfic

AE FUN! Tonight, I've slightly altered Graatak's look in City of Ho Ho Ho mission 2 (a troll boss doesn't need a shirt, now does he?). I also just made a considerable update to PENGUIN mission 2 (added a fun new boss! Will play through it tomorrow after my morning class!). And I'm fairly sure I took out Tubbius Regalis's Force Fields on Costume Contest mission 3. Keywords are added to all three missions, with Final status currently on City of Ho Ho Ho and Costume Contest.

ENJOY!

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I'm out of signature space! Arcs by Tubbius of Justice are HERE: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218177

Right, I'm ready with a few more runs.

I had a sort of Road to Damascus style revelation during an AE mission the other day. It hit me that I play this game to have fun, and that what I miss most about that first ten levels on MCM way back when he was my only toon was the innocence of the way i looked at the game, the plots, the powers, everything. I remember back then I thought that there were completely different arc-paths for each AT, and that once I'd reached 50 on MCM (oh, back at lvl 6 I couldn't concieve of putting him on hold to play another alt!) Icould start again with, say a Defender, and play a whole new game!

lol. Of course, playing the saem stuff with a different powerset combo is in many ways like playing a new game, but you get what i mean?

Anyway, whjat I'm trying to say is that I don't want to be a grumpy old veteran know-it-all (not that I know it all), I want to be a fresh-eyed noob again. When I was a noob, i was willing to forgive the game almost anything, I was so chuffed to be a Superhero.

The Hollows was awesome because it's where I fought my first real Supervillain with his own individual base. Now, I hear 'the best thing about being a vet is knowing you never have to go to the Hollows' and I know what's meant, but a part of me wishes i didn't.

So what's that got to do with the AE?

Fun. The AE isn't srs bsns, it's meant to be fun. I'm sitting here looking at Statesman, a guy who's portrayed as real srs, and yet he's a guy who wears a mask on under his helmet!

I want to smile more, not frown.

So I'm going to make a conscious effiort to appreciate the fun in the arcs I run here, and I'm going to do my best to not be overly bothered with typos, or Sloppy mechanics. In short, I'm going to lighten up.

I'll still be honest about whether or not I enjoyed the arcs, and point out any typos I see, and if an arc is absolutely appallingly designed, I'll say so, and occasionally I'll still ramble off on a sidetrack, but in general I'm not going to be particularly harsh, so bear that in mind; if you want a mauling, go see Venture.

And talking of Venture, I'd like to apologise to him for my earlier highly critical 'review'. I still think his arc is dull and not particularly well-made either, but there was no need for me to be as abrasive as I was. He's had a lot of good feedback, apparently, which shows that every arc can be loved by someone.

I'm also going to take a variety of my toons into the arcs, I think sticking to MCM was jading me.

OK, so on with the next run!

Eco.

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

Terrors of Old, Arc ID 124746, by @Dark Aspect. Heroic morality, Long. 4 Missions (3 medium, 1 small map).

The description briefly describes a simple CoT investigation turning into something darker. It warns that I might need to bring along some friends, but the level range is 1-54, so I decide to take a fairly new toon in.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Robin Copperfield, my lvl 13 TA/A defender. Here’s her bio:

"Gadzooks, thou knave! Verily, I sayeth this - by my troth, I shall...ah, hahaha...ah...heh…Sorry, can't keep a straight face. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. Bow, check. Green outfit, check. 'Robin'? Yep. You got me; I'm from the middle ages. No, really. Didn't take me too long to learn the language here, though - I don’t want to sound like a yokel. No, I never met 'the Hood'. I bumped into Merlin, one time, though. [censored] tried to kill me. The blokes at M.A.G.I tell me if I wasn't a magic-user myself, the spell would have fried me. Instead, BAM - I'm 600 years later. Lucky me, eh? Heh, I didn't even know I had 'the gift', or whatever it's called. The M.A.G.I people say it probably runs in the family. I don't know about that - none of my ancestors ever walked through walls or flew or made statues disappear or what have you. Buuut - you know what does run in the family? We CAN hold a grudge. I tell you, if I meet that spell-popper again, he's going to have a face like a hedgehogs backside!"

Investigating the CoT should be right up Robin’s alley.

In I go. Take it away, Robin.

So, this guy Cameron Baldurant says he’s the leader of a citywide task force that monitors CoT. Some missing persons have been found – which is great! – but they’ve been found dead – not so great. Luckily, the rozzers have a lead to where there may be other missing people, hopefully still alive, and that’s what Mr Boulderdash here wants me to go check out.

[you might want to make the ‘accept’ line sth more than the default ‘accept’, unless you’re trying to avoid speaking for the Player – some folks don’t take too kindly to having words put in their mouths, I know ]

Mission 1: Find the Missing Citizens

I enter the building. I’m looking for three people, according to Baldersgate. I edge up to the first corner and peek round to see a bloody great big bloke in a huge suit of red and black armour! He looks well tasty. I’ll have to be careful.

[lvl 14 orange conning lieut, I’m guessing dark something…]

Let’s see how he likes a coupla arrows in his jacksie.

…Ok, he wasn’t too dangerous after all. I kept him down with ice, net and glue arrows, and with some patience he went down. Not a problem. Next.

I get a bit too close to the next one, and he whips out a coupla blades and tries to slice me up, so I glue him and back off again.

[that’ll be DB then ]

Round the corner, I see a few more of this crowd. There’s a woman who’s got her face tattooed black and a bloke with steel plates grafted onto his fizzog. What a bunch of nutters. I think I’ll try to avoid them as much as possible.

I see a huge hole in the floor leading into some caverns under the building. I have a quick dekko round for any likely looking rescuees, but there’s only this guy in a suit of armor who throws some fireballs at me. I lock him down and stick him.

I’ll check out the hole…

I find another armoured man down here. There seem to be quite a variety of these [Hell Hounds is the mob group name – I assume they’re a variant of the CoT – they also have standard archer mobs in the custom group. The bios are detailed and well-written] geezers.

In singles, they’re ok. I might have a problem if I meet more of them at the same time, however…

[I’m aware that I’m at a very low level. Let’s see how this pans out lol]

Uh-oh. I round a corner, and spy some body bags in the distance. There are two guards near; I attack.

The bodies inside were tortured before they were killed, it seems. Not good, that. I hunt around a bit in the caves and find a third body too.

[Then I get a Magical Infodump telling me to defeat someone, just one patrol with a line of dialogue ‘The Overseer is blah blah’ or sth would sort that out]

I decide to have a gander a little deeper in the caves before I leave.

Good job I did too; in a large cavern there’s this big bossman type bloke [lieut called Hell Hound Overseer]. He’s got a fiery shield and a great big buggering sword. He’s also got a coupla mates too, so I scratch me head a bit before I have a go.

He’s annoyingly [to Robin, not to me ] resistant to ice arrows, but he sticks in the glue easy enough. I deal with his minions first. It seems as long as I keep these boys at range, I’m alright. [The fights are careful affairs, and actually quite fun so far; I wouldn’t like a Clear All, though, it would take ages]

After his mates take a dive, I’m feeling a bit groggy from all the fire and voodoo head-games they’re throwing at me [psi blast, some of them have], so I retreat and rest a little. Then I go back for the Big Man.

On his own, he’s not exactly a pushover, but over I push him, nonetheless. I search him and find a note from someone called Hellbent. This crowd have been using the people they’ve been kidnapping as slave labour. They’re looking for some ‘artifacts’.

I leave and head back to Cameron. Those weren’t any CoT I’ve met before.

Cameron tells me that the red and black armoured guys I met were the Hell Hounds, a group of mystics from a while back. They’re not very nice blokes.

I go home to restock on arrows, and when I get back, Cameron’s got some bad news. A team has gone into those caves to have a deeper scout, and hasn’t been seen in 30 hours. He’s asking me if I can go in and look for them. Yeah, I think I can do that. Not a problem.

Mission 2: Find the missing Investigators.

[I don’t think you need a period at the end of that]

I end up deep underground, in a much bigger cave complex.

[hm..its an oranbega map. Not sure how big yet, but I’m not a fan of these tbh}

I venture in. it’s difficult for me to avoid them in these narrow corridors, so I’m forced to fight them as I go. On their own it’s not so hard, but I meet a group of three and they nearly take me down.

[kind of not liking this so much now.]

I know I’ve got a big job ahead of me [map looks bit big after enough of it’s uncovered], so I grit my teeth, shoulder my bow and run full-pelt into the complex, straight past a few groups of Hell Hounds. I manage to lose most of them, though I’m taking my life in my hands with this tactic, cos’ I keep running from one group into another. I take a breather after spotting a funny looking stone altar tablet thing. It looks important, and the two blokes near it seem keen on guarding it, so I decide to blow it up. I’ll freeze it and then fire it, that should do the trick.

[Magical Infodump of the Nav ‘4 ancient tablets to destroy’ here – another foreshadowing would be nice]

After doing that, I get attacked by a load of the bloody sods [ambush?], so I just leg it. I find another tablet and with some trouble I sort that one out too.

Then I move on, and end up in a huge room with water in the center. There are a few groups of Hell Hounds surrounding some prisoners, who are being forced to dig, it looks like. The Hell Hounds guarding them are in a right state, jumping up and down and generally being a bit mental.

[animations are nice, but one group unfortunately spawned on the roof of one of the interior ‘buildings’, so if he is supposed to be digging, he’s going to just drop down into the totally visible room below him]

I whip out my bow and stick the bad guys. The prisoners are well happy with that.

I search on, finding another tablet [last one, phew]. This place seems huge. I’m running out of arrows, too.

Finally I find another room. Water drips from the ceiling and there are more prisoners digging. Into the fray!

It’s a hard slog, this last fight. There are two groups of guards quite close together, so when I attack one group, they both get interested. Back and forth, ice, net, glue, it’s a long haul.

Finally, [f I n a l l y . . .], I defeat the last one, and the prisoner tells me that he’s the last [he doesn’t, actually, the nav does, but…]. I take a fragment of tablet with me and also…a tablet rubbing…[?! lol the image of my hero kneeling down with charcoal and paper is quite amusing]

And then I sneak out with a sigh of relief.

[An hour on that mission. I have to say that on my 50 Blaster, I’d probably be steaming through this, so please don’t think I’m blaming you or your arc for this unduly, but that was a long effort]


Cameron’s got some more news for me when I check back in with him after a shower. The rubbings tell the tale of…well, it’s your basic Portal to Somewhere Nasty, and it’s that that the Hell Hounds are looking for. It can be opened by using some magical obelisks, and it’s those that Cameron wants me to destroy. Not a problem, although if my last foray into those caves was anything to go by, my tan’ll be fading by the time I see sunlight again.

In I go.

Mission 3: Stop the Hell Hounds!

[Nav instruction kindly points out that the obelisks will be glowing )

The ground starts to quake as I push deep into the cave system. It looks like something’s stirring under the earth…

After a bit of exploration [enough to realize that the maps going to be quite large], I decide that a speedy surprise strategy would be best. In and out! I shoulder my bow and peg it.

I soon find a room with a glowing obelisk guarded by two [yellow-conning] Hell Hounds. I make shortish work of them and the obelisk.

Another frantic sprint past a few groups of startled Hell Hounds leads me into a huge room with giant hand statues around it. The room has a few Hell Hounds dotted around [and is apparently pointless; none of the objectives are there]. I have a quick recce and leave, trying another direction.

I find a room with a nice little water feature, and the last obelisk [according to my Nav – maybe you could add the number of obelisks need to open the Portal in the briefing, “…must be powered up by a set of four mystical obelisks before…”?] . After I destroy it, I decide to have one final check around [enabling me to ‘Defeat Hellbent’, which has just appeared in my Nav as a particularly jarring Magical Infodump]. Maybe I missed something in that big room back there…[lol, what are the odds?]

I head back to the huge room, and sure enough, Hellbent has obviously arrived whilst I was elsewhere. My instincts never let me down!

[I really hate things like this. How about after the last obelisk drops, you give a clue that lets the Player know that Hellbent is here? I can see that his spawning room can be the last room, but if a player misses the ‘first’ obelisk, the one in the little room close to the start that’s, well, not unmissable, then they’ll have been to the last room, as I did, before backtracking to the first.]

I don’t like the looks of the numbers in this room, so I take a careful approach, hanging back and [pulling singles] picking them off one by one with long shots.

Once Hellbent [lvl 13 orange-conning Boss] and his two closest guards are alone, I head in to medium range.

Ow. [Held, 2-shotted].

Once I’ve come round at the hosp, I grab a couple dozen extra sharp n spiky arrows and some really fiery fire arrows [I stock up on reds]. With these babies, and a little luck [and Lucks], Hellbent might be…hellbent.

I run back to the room, and with my new ammo and a bit of luck, I bring him down. As he falls, he tells me that I haven’t won…yet.

[I also now see that I have a carved stone disc in my clue list, I’m sorry, but I have no idead where I got it or what it’s supposed to be connected to]

I leave to report to Cameron.

He thanks me, and tells me that now we’ve destroyed the obelisks, we can concentrate on making sure the Portal is never opened again…

[I thought the only way to open it was with the obelisks?]

The stone carving I found on Hellbent [ah.] is a key to a door, it seems. And also, we know that the Portal is still not safe! It’s on the verge of being opened. An altar needs to be destroyed to stop the Evil Plot.

[I’m having difficulty suspending my wossname here, I’m afraid. I just did a mission to stop the Portal from being opened, and now I’ve got to do it again. Which is standard, I guess, but there’s this ‘the researchers have found out another thing!’ stuff too. How do they know its an altar if its been locked in a secret room that Hellbent had the only key to?]

In I go.

Mission 4: Destroy the Portal of Souls!

It’s another maze of caverns [sick of oranbega now], so I do my hit n run strategy again. I encounter a [defeat boss objective from mission 1], so I gird my loins [eat all my inspires] and attack.

After he goes down, I get a sneaky feeling that things aren’t going to get any easier [and another defeat boss appears in the nav].

I run on doggedly [horrible map horrible map horrible map] and run into another big armoured guy[orange boss]. I wake up in the hospital shortly afterwards.

[pff..From here on, I’m just filling my insp tray, running to the boss, eating everything and defeating, running to the next one and dying, then repeating. I can’t sneak around or pull because they’re in corridors and there are other groups, and wild horses wouldn’t get me to Clear All on the way with this horrible map.]

I run back and defeat the bossman [prompting another defeat boss nav instruction, this one with the unfortunate name of Hell Bender – ‘bender’ was slang for ‘gentlemen who dress to the left’ in my youth, so at least it raises a smile], and [die and restock] keep on into the depths. I eventually find Hell Bender [small typo in bio ‘veins of what. almost’] in a big room with lots of pillars. I brace myself [with a full tray] and lay on!

He takes a while, ranting at me all the time [missing comma in ‘Flee while you may fool!’], but goes down eventually, and then I spot the Portal of Souls [disguised as…a group of barrels? You need to check your Destructible Object Choice. It’s three barrels in a group]. I attack the guards, and the Portal speaks! [describing stuff, is it?].

I defeat the guards, and destroy the Portal, and I’ve done it! Er…

[Mission complete, so Portal Destroyed, yay! – But there’s an ambush of Darksoul Harvesters shouting ‘free! We shall harvest this world!”, which would suggest the Potral got opened after all.]

[typo in mission exit popup ‘enterance’ should be ‘entrance’]

I leave, the roof collapses, sealing in the remains of the Portal and the few creatures that got through forever…I hope.

[end]

OK, so overall, I was pleasantly surprised that my lowly TA/Arch Defender could actually finish it, but it did get a bit trying at times due to the difficulty I had with avoiding the mobs. Plotwise, I started off interested, but Oranbega got old quick, and towards the end I was definitely veering towards ‘meh’. The last mission especially was a let down, I thought, being essentially the same mission as the one previous.

I’ve got no complaints about your customs, really. They all looked the part, and their bios were nicely detailed, I noticed. I note the system messages etc were also fleshed out, which is always nice to see.

However, I’m afraid that Terrors of Old (good title, btw) didn’t really light me up, and so I dropped 3-stars on it come the finish.

Eco.

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

City of Ho Ho Ho, or a Claus in Paragon, by @Tubbius, Arc ID 18775 Heroic morality, Medium length (3 missions, all small maps)

The description of this (The first in the Tubbius Trilogy) briefly introduces the contact, Tubbius, who’s ‘a bumbler’ who needs help.

It’s a short but cute description, and so I’m taking in my short but cute grav/FF controller, Blush Bubble. Blush is currently lvl 15, and here is her bio:

‘Blush is the product of a long line of 'masters of the dark arts', but she doesn’t have to like it. She'd have preferred to have been born a mutant, or got her powers in some cool lab explosion. Magic is sooo 1890s. It was such an embarrassment admitting to her friends that her mom and dad actually call themselves 'wizards'. And those fogeys at M.A.G.I didn't make things any easier. She'd tried applying to G.I.F.T., arguing that maybe her magical ability was genetically based, but they weren't having any of it. She’s just glad that her powers at least don’t look that magical. When she concentrates, her dad might call the resulting phenomenon 'The Dread Evocation of the Protection of G'Narhl!', but she calls it a force field.’

So without further ado, I log in as Blush, and start:

So the contact is this loopy fat guy in a red suit, calls himself Tubbius Claus. He says he’s Santa, on vacation. So he’s either a crazy bum in a red suit, or he’s Santa, on vacation. What? Santa’s not real? Look, my dad rescued a little midget personification of Time last Christmas, and he got to the alternate dimension where the little ankle-biter was being kept by visiting a ski lodge floating in voidspace or somewhere weird. So if this guy says he’s Santa, that’s OK with me. Besides, he kinda reminds me of my Granpa.

Tubbius wants to tell me a story about his early days as a crimefighter. I’ve got a few hours to kill before I have to go to the Mall, so that’s cool.

He says he was in trouble and needed rescuing, and I was the one who came to his aid! That’s why he looked familiar, I guess? It’s not my Granpa I’m thinking of.

Mission 1: Rescue Tubbius

His story begins, and I’m in an apartment building, looking for him. The building’s full of Outcasts. I smile sweetly, and do my gravity thing.

After giving some Outcasts a few hugs, I go upstairs and find a box of donuts. They’re tasty. A little while later I find a note on a bulletin board talking about going to Santa’s office in City Hall and sacking ‘the room for Santa's Wish List’! These Outcasts are a bunch of scumbags! What about the kids?

I’d better find Santa quick.

On the next floor, I find some more donuts, and here’s Santa too. He’s being menaced by an Outcast in a leather jacket. He looks like the kinda guy my mom would call ‘a bad sort’. He’s got 6 friends with him. Time to party, boys.

As I attack the thug in the rug, he shouts for help. Ha, some gang leader he is! 6 of them against a girl, and he needs help!

To be honest, 9 outcasts is a bit more than I can handle, but Santa needs my help so I gotta try, right? I concentrate on the three that are crowding him. Once I’ve given them a little cuddle, they go down and Santa has some room to move; this is pretty cool actually, cos I get tired quick when I’m squeezing bad guys. Pistola’s the name of the leader of the Outcasts, and, well, with Santa helping me with these thorny plant-things and blasting me with some kind of healing energy, he’s soon out of ammo.

There’s some more donuts nearby too, which is lucky, cos I need the energy!

Hmm…I think it’s all coming back to me now. How’d I forget all this, anyway? I’ll ask my mom.

She says it might be a Giant Psychic Robot, or something called a PsychoChronoMetron, or possibly Nemesis brainwashing, but probably I just forgot like I forgot my sister’s birthday last year.

Anyway, Tubbius tells me that after I rescued him, he was worried about some Trolls that were on their way to his office. They wanted to steal the kids’ wish list! He rushed off to save it, but they captured him and took him to the sewers. It was time for another rescue!

Mission 2: Find Tubbius’s Wish List

So here I am in some really stinky sewers, and I’ve got to rescue Santa, defeat the naughty troll leader Graatak, and find Tubbius’ wish list too. I don’t like trolls anyway.

This sewer is disgusting. I don’t want to be down here any more than I have to, so I bubble up and run through.

I find Santa. Poor Santa, those nasty trolls are making him kneel down in the sewer muck! That’s not right. He’s Santa! Time for some squeezing.

Once I’ve rescued Santa we set off deeper into the sewer to look for his wish list. The poor old guy says he’s cold and he doesn’t like it down here. I don’t either, but it’s much better fighting the Trolls with his company. He makes me smile even when we’re trudging knee-deep through glowing green gloop.

In a big room we meet Graatak. He’s throwing webby stuff around, so I bring a pool table in through a wormhole and throw it in his face. It doesn’t improve his looks any, so I try a fridge, then a small atlas, and finally I lob a forklift truck at him and give him a little squeeze to finish him off. Then we find Santa’s wish list!

Those trolls had stuffed it in the garbage.

After leaving, Tubbius reminds me that after that little adventure, one more thing happened. Pistola escaped from prison and came after Tubbius! At City Hall! Time for another rescue.

Mission 3: Cast Out the Outcasts.

Inside City hall, I find Santa in the first room, squeeze his guards a few, and after they ‘oof’ to the floor Santa and I head upstairs. The old duffer’s surprisingly spry for his big fat roly-poly size.

We fight through 2 floors of Outcasts. He pricks them with thorns and strangles them with creepers and when they complain I throw pinball tables at them. It’s excellent fun.

Fun fun fun.

On the final floor, we find Pistola. He’s ranting about getting his revenge on Santa, on the Trolls, on everyone, for not getting enough presents as a kid. He seems pretty upset about it.

So I give him a hug

The fight is a disco fever carnival party of funfun, with wormholes. Santa and Blush FTW!

As he crashes, he drops his cool shades. I think I’ll take em as a souvenir.

And with that, it’s storytime over, so I say goodbye to Santa, until next time…

[end]

tl;dr: A romp. 4-stars.

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

Polar Emergence Neutral Government User Interface Network (PENGUIN), by @Tubbius, Arc ID 29205 Heroic morality, Long (3 missions, 2 medium, 1 small map)

The description warns that Crey have recently started a secret program called the Polar Emergence Neutral Government User Interface Network, and it warrants investigation.

Investigation? Blush bubble is ALL ABOUT the investigations! I’m in!

So the contact is Jonathan St John Smythe. My mom always says never to trust a guy with too many names, so I’m gonna watch him carefully. He’s a doctor, maybe, and his medical supplies he gets from Crey have dried up, and now Crey’s stopped returning his calls. He wants me to go check out what’s up. Easy!

Mission 1: Learn Shipping Information

So I’m to check the base out, and find out where the medical supplies are going. I enter the base and almost immediately these grumpy Crey geezers try to throw me out. I’m here on an INVESTIGATION; don’t they know how important that is? I give them a taste of 40gs.

A little way in I find a computer; my awesome hacking skillz soon discover a…floppy disc? These things still exist? I’ll have to check it later.

Just round the corner from that, I rescue an environmental demonstrator called Phineas, whose wife is also being held captive in here somewhere. He mentions something about ‘PENGUIN’ before he runs off. I think I remember my Dad spouting off about articles he wrote about Crey – something about ‘our feathered and furry friends’?

On the next floor, I run into a big bunch of Crey. They’re a bit too much for me, so I retreat for a rest. I get tired a lot when I’m using my powers.

After a rest I venture upstairs again, and find Phineas’ wife Melinda. She drops some photos.

With nothing else left to find here, I head out and back to Smythe. This PENGUIN thing needs more investigating. There’s something going on at Crey facilities to do with Arctic experimentation.

Smythe sends me off to a warehouse in Kings Row. There’s been a lot of Crey activity there lately. Perhaps I can discover something.

Mission 2; Learn about PENGUIN

Brrr – this warehouse is cold. Too cold. I overhear some guards talking about snowmen. Wouldn’t surprise me. I turn the corner and run into three Crey goons. I turn the gravity up to 60gs for them. Mid-way through the fight my mom calls me on my cell. How embarrassing! I’m like “Mom! I’m BUSY!” I don’t tell her I’m on an investigation though. She freaks out when I get super. It’s not like she wasn’t fighting Baron Seventies and his Bad Old Boys when she was my age! She hears the last Crey choking and she’s like “What’s that?” and I tell her it’s Janice, and anyway she tells me I have to go home for dinner real soon.

When she’s gone, I figure I can do this quick. I power up my force bubble, and head into the warehouse. The Crey are all like “hey!’ and “you can’t go in there!” and I’m like ‘Stop me then, granddad”. Then I overhear some of them talking, and they mention a guy in a Santa suit who sounds like he’s on an investigation too! Can there be two guys in Santa suits heroing in Paragon?

Some of them chase me but I give them the slip and find a refrigerated box. I’ll need some kind of biotech data card to get it open, though. Some Crey spot me and just won’t let me alone, so I mess with them a little.

I take another look around, and nearby I’m attacked by a woman in a power suit called STROBE. She’s such a girl - she doesn’t even get one hit on me! She has the required card on her, which lets me open the box. It contains snow, and the label says the snow inside was ‘Defeated by PENGUIN experiment #923353: Waddle' – weird.

I leave through a side door and head home for dinner.

After dinner, I sneak out and return to Smythe. He’s mighty interested in the contents of that box. Walking snowmen! I’m like all blasé and stuff, on account of my Dad telling me all about the Winter Lord invasions. Smythe tells me to go to the Crey’s Folly base referred to on the label of the box. It’s time to find out what PENGUIN is once and for all.

Mission 3: Infiltrate the Lab.

Woah, like it’s cold in here! Really really cold. Down the stairs into the first corridor, I see why! Walking snowmen! They’re big and slow and kinda cuddly, so I decide to practice a few squeezes on them all. I work my way into the base, and after a few of the frosties fall, I find Tubbius! Yay! He’s come to clear the snowmen out and find out what’s going on. We can do the job together. On the way, I think I’ll also use my awesome hacking skillz to see what’s in the My Documents folders of any computers we come across.

We clear our way round a big room, and then we find a…kind of little penguin-man called Waddle. He’s incredibly cute. He ‘hates snowmans!’, which is cool. Now there are three of us! We’re like the Three Musketeers…if the Three Musketeers had been a girl, Santa and a mutant penguin.

We carry on into the base. The snowmen are easy targets for the incredible trio.

Hey, maybe we could call ourselves that! No, hang on, ‘incredible’ doesn’t alliterate with ‘trio’…the Tremendous Trio! Ew, no. The Titanic Trio…? Nope, sounds like an old movie. TheThrilling Three…aw I’m terrible at this.

It’s not brain surgery, this stuff, it’s not much of a challenge, more like a workout for my powers. But these two guys are so much fun to be around, I’m having a blast.

I find the last computer in the room with the last two snowmen, and Waddle and Santa finish one of them off while I hack. Then I give the last one a little 60g squeeze, and bang! I feel a sudden rush of power! I think I just increased my powers or something. My moms going to freak that it happened in Crey’s Folly, I’ll probably be grounded or at least on restricted Hollows duty or something. Pff…

Anyway, the files explain who Waddle is. He is…heh, he is the mysterious new hero Waddle, and he is a penguin in Paragon City.

We leave the base and Waddle rushes off. I say goodbye to Santa and return to Smythe, who doesn’t really have much else to say.

What a day.

[end]

Conclusion: Can one custom with a single line of dialogue really be worth 4-stars? Yep. Waddle FTW.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

This Costume Contest Sponsored By Tubbius! Arc ID 101933Heroic morality, Long (2 mediums, 1 unique map).

Description: Tubbius wants to hold a costume contest in Atlas, but the heroes are missing! Blush has an AWESOME costume. If she can help find the rest of the contestants, Tubbius can hold the contest, and Blush can win!

Blush is accompanied on this run by special guest star Eliot Greenleaf, a lvl 16 kin/elec defender. Here is Eliot’s bio:

“My mother was Illya La Fey, an elf of some standing. You may have heard of her? My father was William Greenleaf, a human. I never met my father, he died when I was still a babe in arms, but my mother told me so many stories of his exploits in fairyland. What she didn't tell me until yesterday, my 18th birthday, was that I have a sister. She too is a mortal, my father’s child from his former life, before he became stuck in fairyland. I must find her, tell her she wasn't abandoned, that her father died trying to leave this magical place, striving to be able to hold his daughter once again. I have inherited my father’s natural origin, but I have enough of my mothers blood to be able to cross the magical barrier that separates here from Paragon City, so now I must go to my sister. I must find Lucy Greenleaf.’

In we go!

Eliot’s an elf. He can do magic, he creates electricity out of the ether or something, and he also does all this speedy stuff and power exchanges and things like that. It’s good for me, cos I get tired a lot, when I’m bending gravity or bubbling. Mom says the magic is why we’re friends, we’ve got it in common, and he says it’s magic too, but he’s an elf – it’s like normal for him. I’ve tried to get him to go to G.I.F.T. and apply for a recategorisation but he just laughs and says I’m weird.

Tubbius is reminiscing again, the daft old buffoon He’s telling the story of how he had some help from me and my friend Eliot one time, starting with a rescue mission to the Atlas park sewers…

Mission 1: Find the Missing Heroes

We enter the sewers and Eliot does some elf magic on me and I’m like all zipzipzip. He’s good like that.

In the first big chamber we find Waddle, being menaced by a group of snowmen. Waddle has a vendetta against these guys, and I don’t blame him. With Eliot’s buffs and my grav attacks, the snowmen are no match, really. We also save Phineas, that environmental protestor, again.

Eliot, and I, accompanied by the plucky penguin hero Waddle, go deeper into the sewer system. We find Capon, and check this out - he's a chicken! Ha, yep, a mutant rooster who can like do kung fu moves and stuff! Honestly, seeing him all 'buck-buckaw!' and crane kicking with his little wings flapping is awesome hilarious.

VIBRATE is the next hero to be rescued – by now, our little band are steam-rollering away, no problem. VIBRATE’s a guy in a power suit, seems a bit energy inefficient lol, but he does ok. He’s got these shrieky blasts too.

Lastly, we found Santa on his knees in the gloop, but we soon freed him and then the whole gang of us polished off the rest of the snowmen, leaving a lovely, uh, clean sewer lol

Tubbius pauses here in the story, the twinkly-eyed old podger, and then resumes with the tale.

Phineas had been investigating, and had discovered that Tubbius’ old enemy Pistola (on Santa’s Naughty List since like forever) had allied with the Council, and was kidnapping heroes. Tubbius still needed more heroes for his costume contest, so we had to go rescue them from the Council!

Mission 2: Find the Missing heroes

The Council were hiding out in an office complex. Eliot and I enter, and immediately those nasty fascists start on us. We fight through wave after wave (well, alright, so I’m exaggerating a bit, sue me!) of Council, and then in a room we findthe first hero to rescue, the Paragon Bomb. He’s a very large man! Unfortunately, before we can free him, I catch the attention of a huge group of goons (I like ran in, looked at The Bomb and was like ‘Ha! Easy, only 3 guards – er…’ and then looked left…and right…) and they sent me back to the hospital! My bad! We regroup and have a fairly touch and go job of it in that room, but the forces of Blush and Eliot prevail! One free hero to help!

He’s a very large man, did I mention that?

Further in, we find in fairly quick succession Lord Mime, an old gripper in quite cool white gloves and a black suit who turns out to be a dab hand with a bow, and the Orange Butterfly, a mysterious martial artist in an orange tunic. Lord Mime doesn’t say much, cos, you know, he’s a mime.

And lastly, we rescued good old Tubby Santa again, just before the big fight with Pistola – who fought like my sister! He was easy.

After that, we left. Surely now there’d be enough heroes for a costume contest!

Yes, there were, but first, we had to deal with one more problem, Tubbius told us. There was someone hanging about in Atlas Park pretending to be him!

No-one should pretend to be Santa! My dad told me that when I was little.

So, to Atlas!

Mission 3: Stop Tubbius Regalis

We arrive in Atlas Park to find this Tubbius imposter right there! Right there! Right there, waiting for us! The cheek! He attacks us, rants a bit, shouts for help from some men in bandannas who come crawling out of a sewer grate, and then falls like tree in a storm, and that’s us done! Victory, in a very very short amount of time!

And after all that hard work – Santa says that the costume contest can’t happen because all the heroes have run off to do some heroing elsewhere! Like, what? Typical.

Ah well. Eliot tells me he’s got to run and do some housework, and I need a shower anyway, so we part company from Tubbius, the chortling old grampus, and I go home.

[end]

Hmm…Weaker than the first two, and that last mission very much a let-down, so 3-stars for this one.

COMMENTS ON THE TUBBIUS TRILOGY OVERALL

The Tubbius Trilogy is, on the face of it, mechanically sparse, narratively silly, text and dialogue-light, extremely easy, and pretty short. It’s mostly a collection of Rescue [someone], Repeat, Defeat [someone], and each mission as I played it ended up being a Defeat All in practice, because of the allies, who turn a solo player into a steam-roller team and steal most of the rewards from you if you’re not careful.

It also has a few commas missing or in the wrong place, and the framing device of Tubbius telling you the story of how you helped him out earlier doesn’t quite work perfectly (and is abandoned for the second arc in the trilogy (although I should point out here that this could be unjust ‘criticism’ because @Tubbius himself doesn’t actually claim it’s a Trilogy at all afaik – that’s what I’ve taken to dubbing it).

So why am I so enamoured with it, then?

Words like ‘cute’, ‘sweet’, and ‘nice’ spring to mind. I feel strongly that the main criteria for judging an arc should be this: Is it enjoyable? If I’m playing an arc with gritted teeth, indigestion and an overwhelming desire that it be over as soon as possible, then perfect grammar and spelling and the presence of a Deep Meaningful Theme about Someone Learning Something is irrelevant.

Waddle has just 6 lines, I think, none of them very complicated or revealing, and his bio contains just one bare character trait, but he’s just such a Smile Generator that it’s a pleasure to fight next to him. Likewise, Capon the mutant chicken looks just cutely ridiculous doing MA moves (he’s really short with wings, honestly, you have to see him), and Tubbius, from the start, spawns real affection IMO.

The last arc is the weakest, although it does contain Lord Mime, who’s another good creation, even though he has no dialogue at all. It’s the sheer incongruousness of his look and the bow lol.

The last mission of the CC arc is crying out for the Atlas Park fashion show map, ALL the customs you’ve rescued so far, and Tubbius, for a Big Fight against a slightly beefed up Pistola and Tubbius Regalis, culminating in a successful costume contest. I was gutted that Tubbius didn’t get to have the CC! Poor Santa!

And surely, “…and the winner is…$Name!” is a must-do?

I totally recommend this trilogy for heroes at lvl 15-is looking for a lazy fun 9-mission break from the Hollows. Everyone in CoH should meet Waddle, IMO.

Eco.

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

QR

So my queue is now:

A Close Encounter 233720
Entrusted with the Other Secret 120462
The Invasion of the Space Ape Armada 81043
A.E.'s Premium Quality Mission: "guaranteed qualityyyyLOADING ERROR 0.000459" 148476
Red Typhoon 4912

At some stage I'll also get on to

The Galactic Protectorate Parts 2 and 3
A Bad Hand from a Worse Dechs 19502
Every Rose 17702
A random arc with the word Banjo in the title.
Power Play
Ctrl + Alt + Reset! 137561

Eco.

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

If I'm catching this the right way, it means you could use some more low-level friendly arcs. Might I submit:

Ctrl + Alt + Reset!
ID#: 137561
Level Range: 15-30
Mobs: Wyvern, mixed custom standard group, custom boss
Description: Foreshadow sends you off to retrieve a temporal artifact before it causes any mayhem. Guess what? It's too late, and now you're stuck in a time loop and have to find your way out.

---

QR - Sounds good, Bubba. I'll add it to the queue.

But no more requests, please (sorry, I should have said earlier) until Ive cleared the short one I have now. I'd like to run anyone's who asks, but i'll start to panic if i end up with a massive list!

Eco.

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

WOOHOOOO!

Thank you, MCM. I heartily enjoyed reading your analysis.

Commas out of place? Remind me to check this. I teach English. . .

And I'll see what I can do about the last mission of Costume Contest.

---

I'm out of signature space! Arcs by Tubbius of Justice are HERE: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218177

Heh.. well.. For the story I was telling there is really only once choice right now for cave maps... the CoT maps. Most of the other cave maps are either horribly small... or even more annoying than than the ones I picked. They also fit the feel I was trying to get and the CoT tie in at the beginning.

You wouldn't believe how many different maps I tested the arc with. I drove my SG nuts with test runs on different maps.

As to the information on the portal... remember you are getting a partial translation.. as far as Cameron knows at that point there is only one way to open the portal but he can't be sure.

The portal opens above an altar... and I know I checked that as soon as I15 was released... so something happened somewhere and I'm thinking the republish didn't go through because there WAS an error with the object for that mission.

I'll go back in and check those the errors you caught and fix that destructable object.

Thanks for the review, I appreciate it and I can sympathize with your feeling on the map set lol.

Edit: I was right. Unfortunately the republish didn't go through or didn't take.. whatever. You just had all the luck to play the one that wasn't fixed for I15. This, however, is now corrected.

---

Follow up!

EXTREME EDIT to Costume Contest! Fourth mission added with every single major NPC from the Tubbius Trilogy present in force!

About to test. . . .

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I'm out of signature space! Arcs by Tubbius of Justice are HERE: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218177

A Close Encounter by @Baler, Arc ID 233720. Heroic Morality, Long (3 small, 1 unique map).

Description is a sort of vague call from the Special Investigations Unit for the player to sign up and help. It’s for 1-54s, so I’m taking my lvl 37 Kin/Rad Defender, The Accelerated Man, in on this one. Here’s his bio:

“Al Bejesus was a flawed genius. His genius was in the field of particle acceleration. His flaw was a tendency to move to practical tests of his incredible inventions before he'd ironed out the theory completely. One fateful day, his genius and his flaw clashed, with disastrous and explosive results. Al theorized a tad incorrectly that if a single particle could be accelerated in his hadron collider to phenomenal speeds, then more particles would produce even more speed. Like, say, the amount of particles in a human body. Strapping himself into a laxly-tested device, he flicked the switch. His eyeballs, fingers, toes, nipples, all of his skin and a lot of his surface muscle particles were accelerated right off his body, but the bloody mess that was left displayed amazing powers when he emerged from the 19-month coma that ensued. Replacing his outer layers with technological prosthetics, he spent hours with a thesaurus, and then The Accelerated Man thrust himself into the fray against the forces of darkness!”

I login as AM…and the servers go down for daily maintenance! Is this an omen of things to come? Find out soon, in The Amazing Scientific Journal of the Accelerated Man!

[and…start]

“-‘s not working. Every time I switch it on it just sits there and the little number thing doesn’t go up. Look, I’ll try agai-”

“-ust stopped it and I’m sure it wasn’t recording anything, Gavin. Where did you get it from?…And how much was it? I hope you got a receipt, I’m already over-budget with having to buy those hydroelectric shock absorbers for the Centripetaloscopic Gyroscillator-oh,hang on, the little number’s are going up…Yes, they’re going up now!…What? Really? It’s recording right now? Oh I see! Haha, D’you know what must have happened?…I think I must have got the…ah, yes, how did you guess? Well anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’s working, that’s the main thing…Yes alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, Gavin. Bye…Right, that’s that sorted out…I’ll just….switch…you off…

[footsteps, door opens and closes, three hours of silence, door opens and closes, footsteps]

“…OK, now I can-oh! It’s on already! What? Oh, never mind. It’s working. Right...ahem...Alain Bejesus, AKA the Accelerated Man here, Journal entry 575b point 3. This case started when I was put in touch with a Major Davis of the Special Investigations Unit. Davis asked me to take some surveillance photos of a mysterious paramilitary ‘prescience’ at a ‘classified crash site’. Having recently upgraded my prosthetics, I needed to test them under field conditions, so I surmised that this would, ah, be a good opportunity. I didn’t really know much about this SIU or Major Davis, but she seemed a genuine sort...

[googling the SUI brings up a Canadian civilian police agency. I was a bit confused by the lack of any information about your SUI – we can now give our contacts information, this would be a good place to put sth about the SUI maybe?]

Mission 1: Gather Intelligence Data

“Once in the area of the crash site, a lightly forested region in the countryside, I set off to investigate, and run into some unpleasant fellows in bandanas and whatnot brandishing guns and generally behaving like thugs. They set about me with twin swords and fancy martial arts moves, which is no way to greet a man of science! I introduced them to the concept of kinetic energy transference, and they became rather lethargic after that. It was terribly invigorating for me, though. My new inertial exchange algorithm seems to be performing well past its theoretic norms. Gavin, remind me to ask Professor Ginormous if he’s found any strangely successful results whilst using the BigFoototron I designed for him last month; it uses the same waveform to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow….Where was I? Ah yes, the investigation. After giving those military looking chaps a short lesson on Newton’s Third Law, I proceeded at a fair old rate of knots around the area. I discovered a group of the troops surrounding a captive – and it wasn’t human! I’m afraid I had to resort to violence in order to free the being – oh, and Gavin, take a side note for Dr Mentalist: I suspect I’m starting to enjoy dealing out physical justice to miscreants a little too much – Is this normal? – Thank you Gavin…ah, the alien – yes, it didn’t thank me for the rescue, just rushed off. Luckily, I was able to photograph it before it vanished…

[The customs are nicely costumed, but look more casual than I’d expect a paramilitary outfit to be, They appear to be wearing jeans, for example. The clue for the freeing of the alien says that he rushes off, but he didn’t, he just did the ‘rubbing my elbow’ animation and then stood there in place. This may be because the outdoor map has no ‘run to exit’ possibilities]

“After freeing the alien, I had another delve about, and found some interesting items to photograph for Major Davis. The items I photographed were all alien artifacts of some sort. I returned to Major Davis, who told me that the alien I photographed was new to her. The group trying to get the crash remnants were the Eagle’s Talons, a low-grade army-for-hire affair. They’d been hired by Earth For Humans, and the warehouse where they’d taken the artifacts was known. I readily agreed to lend a hand to stop the handover of the artifacts and maybe unveil what was going on…

[The ‘accept’ line is ‘always a pleasure working with you Major’. There should be a comma before ‘Major’, but more importantly, I haven’t met her before, so this jarred for me. Also, at this stage, I’m not hugely sure why what these guys are doing is so wrong – the aliens might be the bad guys, the artifacts don’t actually belong to anyone, do they (apart from the aliens I mean)? - and Earth For Humans – isn’t that a legitimate political organization?]

Mission 2 : Secure the Wreckage

“Once inside the warehouse, I turned the first corner to find my way blocked by a hard-faced woman in a baseball cap and a grim looking man in a military short-sleeved shirt and fatigues. There was no way I was going to be able to sneak past them, and as they looked like they meant business [yellow minion and orange lieut] I decided that offense was the best form of defense to apply here. I soon made short work of them. The woman was shooting bullets all over the place, and that man certainly seemed impressed with his own bladework, but really, it’s simply a matter of scientific principles. If they only understood that when I split the total kinetic energy of a body into the sum of the body’s center-of-mass translational kinetic energy and the energy of rotation round the center of mass, they’d realize that all that frantic ducking and weaving and swiping about with their swords and blasting around with the bullets only made things worse for them. Really, the average thug’s level of ignorance of simple physical laws is astounding…which is what made me a bit peeved, I’m ashamed to say. After they displayed such an appalling lack of education, I’m afraid any qualms about hurting them fell away. I decide that it would be an invaluable scientific education for them if I were to show them that whenever they meet me, they are part of a system, which has a total kinetic energy equal to the sum of the kinetic energies of the bodies it contains, and that due to the fact that it is I who can control the distribution of that kinetic energy and also transform it from and into other forms of energy and transfer it between said bodies at will…uh, well, they’d be essentially screwed. But – it would be a learning experience for them!…

[kin is awesome. I had no trouble. On Heroic diff, the spawns were 3 max, I was meeting 1 orange lieut and 2 yellow minions, and they couldn’t reduce my health or end more than halfway before my Trans x2 put them back up again. Great fun]

“…I pushed on, finding some boxes and crates. They contained the artifacts the Talons had taken from the crash site. All I needed to do now was secure the warehouse…

[The stuff in the boxes etc is the same stuff that was in the collectibles on Mission 1. This mission comes across a little bit repetitive without anything else to spice it up]

“As I was brushing my hands off after defeating the final thug, the technicians from the SUI arrived to take the artifacts. I reported back to major Davis, who wanted me to wait around while they interrogated the miscreants I’d apprehended, I assumed to see where the crates were going to be shipped…

[hmm… now I’ve got this image of AM standing in a corridor, arms crossed, tapping his foot and looking at his watch whilst the lights flicker and ‘BZZZT’ and grunts and screams are heard from the interrogation rooms]

“After the goons had told what they knew, Davis had another request for me. It seemed that the aliens were [something which I won’t spoil]. Davis wanted me to infiltrate an Earth for Humans labs to see what they were angling for. My scientific curiosity was definitely piqued by this; I agreed. Davis kindly supplied me with a device which would let me make a record of what I found there – I’ll splice the sound from that recorder into this journal entry now, hold on…there we go…any second…wait just a minute…ah, what’s it doing now?…Oh, for goodness sake!…I know, I’l-“

“oing? What’s wrong with good old fashioned audio tape recorders, that’s what I want to know! All these newfangled digital thingamajigs are more trouble than they’re worth!…Yes, I’ve done that!…No, I haven’t done that – should I have done?…Well why doesn’t it say so on the front, then?…well I managed to estimate the entropy of a proton falling into a black hole to fifteen quadrillion decimal points using vacuum tubes, I don’t see why…Yes, Gavin, I know what to do now…No, Gavin, I’m sure I won’t need you for anything else tonight…Yes Gavin, sorry to interrupt you – what were you doing, anyway?…Really?..Oh but that’s a marvelous opera!...Front row, really? That was lucky!…Yes yes, of course, I’ll let you get o-hello?…hello, Gavin?…hm…OK, now then…I press…this!

Mission 3: Check Out the Lab

“Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? OK, here I am, uh, I’ve just entered the Earth for Humans base, and it appears to be fairly quiet so far…I’m just jogging along a corridor, hello…who’s this?…ah, the specimen is humanoid, grey-skinned, slightly oval reptilian face, naked, shorter by some way than an average human, slim…I shall attempt contact…ahem. Good evening, my name is Alain-gah!…Aaaiiieeghghghrrruuurghh….NNGGGGGG!!!!!…ahhhh …why, you little swine…ugh…aarghh…why, I’ll…hmmmf..grhhh…ahhh…hang on let me turn this thing off it’s getting in ….aaeeeeiii…the-”

“…[tap tap]…OK, well, they’re not friendly, anyway. I’ve just stopped to catch my breath and report in. They appear to have some kind of psychic assault powers, and there are also slightly squatter types that are tough little beasts who pack a bit of a punch. Those ones are also quite resistant to damage. I fought a few of them and then encountered a larger group [2 minions with psi blast and I think a superstrength/regen?] guarding a human lab technician. It took me a bit of effort to subdue the aliens or whatever it is they are, and then he ran off after telling me [something]…

[nice animation on the lab tech ]

“Hm, there are a few computers here…I’ll have a quick look at their files if I can…[tikitikatikatikadikatikatidika]..hm, interesting. Encrypted files…and also [something]…that’ll do, I think…I don’t fancy meeting a big group of those little butch fellows…er…ahem!…Accelerated Man, signing off!…[footsteps for 2 minutes, door opens, door closes, footsteps, city noises]…taxi!…[slam]…yes, SUI HQ, plea-oh, good grief, it’s sti-”

“-at’s too much, how am I supposed to pause the dratted thing?…Oh, blow it… Um, yes, well, I reported back to Major Davis with the files…

[I enjoyed that mission, but you should know that the lab tech and the two computers both spawned in the first room on the right by the stairs. I had a little look ahead, and noticed that there were some elevators leading to another floor. There was no need to go up there as I played it. I’m quite happy to have small maps, especially when the story elements are not huge too, as they are here, but I thought I should point it out in case you didn’t realise]

“Major Davis rushed the files to the lab whilst I used the toilet [the briefing does say ‘use the facilities’ lol], and, well, since my buttocks got blown off at 574 TeV per nucleus in the ion collider accident, it takes me quite a long time to have a movement – heh, that’s quite ironic, really, if you think of my powers…aanyway, I have prosthetic buttocks now, and they’re serviceable enough, so that’s that….Where was I? – Ah yes, when she returned, she had some interesting information about our alien friends. They were [something that made me go ‘oooh, niiiice’ – I must say I like the little tweak/twist to them that the briefing for Mission 4 reveals].

“Someone had to shut down the alien’s lab, and I immediately volunteered. Well, just think of it. Me? The Accelerated Man? In an alien laboratory? With my reputation? QED!…

Mission 4: Shut Down the Lab

“Once inside, I knew what I had to do – Look for any alien technology and take extensive notes of it to further the March of Science!…And then destroy it of course so that couldn’t be used for any nefarious aim…by now, I knew enough about these aliens abilities and tactics to be quite casual about any meetings with them. I must say, I surprised myself with how many of the creatures I was able to beat off.

[Fantastic combat in this mission, I really enjoyed it. I noticed grav powers being used by some minions too, and energy melee. Found myself fighting quite large groups of multiple spawns at times, too, and it was good fun stuff]

“I did find a number of arcane esoteric devices, and they proved as susceptible to ultrafast entropic decay as the test hamsters back in my lab. After I’d destroyed a number of them, I heard a strange noise, and felt an odd psychic tingling in the back of my head…I felt drawn on to find something…someone…

[woah! Met a big bunch of them together, aggroed some more on the way up the stairs, and that fight was hard. I succeeded though! Wicked]

“In the depths of the base I found a room with quite a few of the beasts, and one who was not naked as the rest were. The naked ones attacked me, of course, but the lone one, who was wearing a power suit of some kind, didn’t. After I’d finished off the others, this one said [something], and I led him to the exit.

[hmm…the clue from him was a bit strange, if you ask me, considering what came before.]

“Once out, Davis and the alien leader conversed, and…

[a resolution occurred – the end debriefing makes it a little clearer what has happened, but I had to read it again to fully grasp it.]

“I had amassed a great deal of data for my experiments, and also gained some valuable combat experience. A most instructive day….ahem…this is Alain Bejesus, AKA the Accelerated Man, Journal entry 575b point 3, signing off…okaaay…what?…Off! Off, I said, you stupid machi-”

[end]

So, overall, it’s Fun. The customs look good, are just about in this side of challenging (do they all have /regen?) and the leader in the power suit matches them nicely. The plot is fine, I could see it in canon easily. I didn’t notice any typos. Mission 2 is a bit of a ‘meh’ point, and perhaps the arc as a whole could have some more bells and whistles, but it made sense, didn’t have any hideous mechanics or EBs or what have you, and I’d be happy to see the alien group again. I’m not like ‘Woohoo! Get the bunting out! Let’s have a parade!’, but I don’t feel I’ve wasted my evening at all. If we could mark out of 10, it’d be a 7 IMO, but we can’t, so have 4 stars instead.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

Hey, just wanted to pop in and announce that I've finished updating " The Galactic Protectorate - 03 ", so now all my arcs are ready for review.

Feel free to review parts 2 and 3 of my story whenever you're ready, MrCaptainMan

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Supplemental Galactic Protectorate Fanfic