ZERO STARS: The Worst of the Worst of MA

*Blows dust off an old, old topic*

Hey, all. I've got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is, TerminusEst13 has stated that he really has no interest in returning to City of Heroes anytime soon, if ever. Even before that, he'd commented that he wasn't really enjoying the humor writing that he did for Zero Stars.

The Good news is that I've finally got a Level 50 Hero to go with my 50 Villain, so I have an alt on either side that has no fear of debt. And I don't have plans to leave City of Heroes anytime soon.

So, what does this mean? It means that Zero Stars has a chance to revive, like some sort of freakish garbage phoenix. But it won't do that unless I can get some help. I need fodder to review, and I might need a teammate to help me fight through the extremely difficult enemies that some arcs seem to love.

Zero stars may return, but I need help. Any takers?

Smashin Fashion
Playthrough Cohorts: @Hostile V, @Geiger Therapy
Arc ID: 99095
Characters Used: Lil Red Hood (Mercenaries/Traps)

Well, this is a feeling of trepidation I haven't felt in a while. It's been a while since I used the AE, much less intentionally picked something bad for the sake of a review. This one even had a little tag from Terminus on the list:
[Note: Terrible. Review-worthy]
Oh, dear.
Now, before we get started, it's no Uniocracy. It's no REALMS OF PAIN, which is still my personal top of the list for 'most painful arc I have ever played'. It's not laughably, entertainingly bad (blood AAHHHHHHHHH).

Clearly, nothing can go wrong here. Might as well relax and start the review.

The contact for these missions is named 'Baron Von Baron' and he uses the Arbiter model, implying some affiliation with Arachnos. Or Legos.


So once again, Doctor Delilah, what was briefly yours, is now mine! There is nothing you can posess which I cannot take away! AHAHAHAH! For the glory of arachnos!

( By the way, what do you think of a City of Heroes Lego set? I think there's totally some potential there. )

Anyway, Von Baron is going to be your best, best buddy through this mission, whether you like it or not. That's because he's the absolute only person in the entire three mission story arc who has anything to say. Anything at all. And all of his dialogue is entirely a single sentence:

"You must go to the Longbow warehouse and destroy all oposition!"

You, of course, are a villain, with no greater aspiration than being an Arachnos lick spittle, so you accept and run off to go destroy everything, lamenting your fate to never be sent on a mission where the objective is to throw an absolutely killer tea party and how no-one ever wants any tea and how much villainy sucks. Von baron chides you to "Come back with your shield or on it" starting you on the epic adventure:

"Goobers Fall:
When Goobers Die"

Not pictured: Me searching, assuming this was some archaic racist slang and finding out it apparently means 'peanut'. Why I didn't know this despite growing up in the middle of Texas I do not know.
(TERMINUS KNOWLEDGE INTERLUDE: It is. It’s a term for wee Scottish lads forced to dance in pubs for a bar’s amusement, coming from the Scottish verb “goub” meaning “to dance”)

COMPASS INFO UPDATE:
Defeat All Opposition -
Defeat ALL Enemies

Yeah defeat alls! Yeaaaaa-
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...7&postcount=66
*girly scream*

;_;

Anyway, here we are in a longbow warehouse. Except it's not full of longbow. It's full of 'opposition', a custom enemy group called 'Garfunkel' with random but decent costumes. There's nothing eye-rending here, just a lack of cohesion in the enemies. More importantly:

Garfunkel. Uh. WHAT? And like I said before. No dialogue. Guess what, that means none in the enemy info panels. Why they're called Garfunkel? Who knows. Who needs plot? Who needs text, for that matter? I'm better than these schmuck writers, I'll tell my Mission Architect story through INTERPRETIVE DANCE.

For a custom enemy group, there's really only two things of note here:

1. These Garfunkel folks LOOOVE Darkness. Every enemy but one has it for at least one powerset.
2. With a single exception, they are all Minions.

The fact that everything here is a minion makes everything a breeze to blow through, even with all the -acc from the dark powers being thrown around, so let's imagine up some backstory and motivations for these poor fools:

Defender: The heart of the team. Lead his allies in a minion rebellion and overthrew the tyranny of the bourgeois Lts and Bosses. Now spends his spare time knitting. Dark/Energy

Bangkok Dangerous: Rival and intelligent foil to Defender, uses energy instead of dark energy. Is a cool loner.
Is also the name of a fairly successful action film. I smell wacky pop culture reference! Energy/Energy

Bio Scrap: Loves curry and engaging enemies hand to hand. Once attempted to combine these two passions, but was stymied by the lack of available weapons-grade curry and frustrations of chefs ranting about how their food is not a weapon. The muscle of the group. Dark Melee/SR

Death Nurse: Remaining remember of the Bosses, defected to the minion rebellion and helped overthrow her kin with her bubbly forcefields. Adds the necessary feminine touch to the team.
(The nurses are seriously rare, I only saw one through the entire mission although I'm told there was another.)

GRIIIINNNNND *ding!*
Clue: "Obliteration! Destroyed All Oppostion!"

Good job, you killed everyone and doomed the revolution. Why, we dunno. Go talk to the contact again. Though you get a 'Booyah!' from the mission exit text box, but that guy's just plain easy to please.

Von Baron sees that we have returned and congratulates us.
"Great Job! You are well on your way to becoming a true Evil mastermind!"
Woohoo! We're gonna be masterminds! Except for Red, who's already a mastermind. She'll be a double mastermind. She'll summon mercenaries riding on top of bots. It will be glorious.


ON TO MISSION 2

'Go forth and destroy' . . .Okay?
'Go forth and destroy' I heard you the first time.
Compass :'Destroy All' Yes, I got that.
'Defeat all enemies!' AAAARGH

In the council cave base: Longbow! Defeat them all.

[Team] Patchwork Shift: I am losing faith in the creator's storytelling abilities.
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: DEFEAT ALL
[Team] Patchwork Shift: It's like that one game.
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: YOU HAVE DEFEATED ALL
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: YOU ARE SO MIGHTY
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: GO DEFEAT MORE
[Team] Geiger Therapy: No no no.
[Team] Geiger Therapy: DESTROY all.

And so on. Seriously. Look.


See this picture? Now look at it for five to ten minutes as you tap your 1, 2, 3 keys in sequence.
That's this mission. The only way to escape without chewing a leg off is to have someone to talk to. Conversational topics pursued through the course of the mission:

Who would win: The Incredible Hulk Vs. Kira from Death Note

Valkyrie on Miss Liberty lesbianism

Homosexuality and tolerance in Paragon and the Rogue Isles

Ways to assassinate superman

And and insightful discussion on economics, particularly the actions taken during the current administration, the bailouts, actions by banks following said bailouts, John Stewart's opinion on the matter, and our eventual decision to simply bum money off team member Hostile V following the revelation that he had won $500 dollars in a recent lottery.

Mission Exit: "Good job destroying"

TO MISSION 3!

Holy genre shift, batman! We're mixing up the whole game here!
We still have to kill everything on the map, but now we're restricted to level 10 for the duration!
Von Baron, why?! It SUCKS being level 10! Being a lego man, you may be unaware of this, but in this simple act you've reduced my move pool to several traps of dubious usefulness and cut my squad of trained minions to just enough for a doubles tennis match. Is this some sort of artistic decision? Is this an Ourobouros story in disguise, and we must now go defeat a warehouse full of Infected to set the time stream right again? Is there a flesh eating nanovirus that we have been exposed to by longbow soldiers? Did Dr. Nerf burst through, ambushing us with his deadly Nerfbots, and dip the entire team, one by one, in a deathtrap full of steaming liquid nerf? Just what exactly happened here?!”
"Kill Em"
Oh screw you, mate.




JERK MOVES: -2 (DEFEAT ALL. DEFEAT ALL. DEFEAT ALL.)
INCOHERENCY: -4 (No text outside of your contact, who just urges you to kill things)
IRRITATION: -3 (Enemies and powersets chosen completely at random.)
COMPLETABLE: -1 (Totally completeable, probably solo-able.)

FINAL ANGRY METER: -2

This managed to annoy me, surprisingly. It's like Sephiroth Run Down without the charm of having EBs to fight and you're expected to do it three times. Worst of all...
I just plain can't make this funny. It's three defeat alls, one custom group with a weird name and no reason for pointless destruction. I'd assume it was a farm of some sort if not for the weird minions-only mission in the beginning. This is the sort of mission the incredible hulk would write: It's three solid missions of 'HULK SMASH!' and doesn't even have the good grace to be entertaining.

What a refreshing look on MA! I really haven't encountered a great story yet, (I haven't looked too hard) but I have encounteredm plenty of these types of reviews. I hope you keep up with them, they are quite entertaining.

V_Marcone

Hey Scientist_16, I don't know if you're accepting suggestions for "zero-star worthy" arcs to run, but if you are, I'd like to suggest "Be the Sidekick!" (Arc ID#: 298348) by @Noctis

A big thanks to Coulomb2 for bringing this arc to my attention back in November, this one-mission long arc brings players all the excitement of, well... being a sidekick. It's short, filled with spelling/grammar errors, and has some unintentionally hilarious dialog (in what little dialog there is in the arc, anyway). Probably the most impressive thing about the arc is that it actually has a chained objective.

Anyway, you might want to quickly run through it to see if it qualifies for one of your "zero-star worthy" reviews. Just a suggestion!

(By the way, I like your avatar; that's Meiling from the Touhou series, right?)

You know I'm on Virtue as well, usually have time for a horrible snark fest. Global is the same as on here and I've got a few 50s on both sides or WTF, I can always SK or Exemp