Marvel Heroes – Destruction Trailer
Marvel Heroes just upped the action RPG stakes by adding destruction on a massive scale. In this new video you’ll see how much stuff can be blown up, smashed, crashed, thrown and destroyed outright in Marvel Heroes, while the catchy theme tune gets stuck in your head, courtesy of your favorite Canadian mutant!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mGTQmown_o]
Marvel Heroes: ‘Build a Hero’ Developer Diary
The latest Marvel Heroes Developer Diary is all about building the heroes in the game, with a peek behind the scenes and an exploration of how each character offers a unique class and play style in the game.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9gLYukyDMw] (more…)
Founders Program Unmasked for Marvel Heroes
Gazillion Entertainment have announced the Marvel Heroes Founders Program, allowing players to purchase limited-edition Founders Packs for access to their favourite heroes, unique costumes, early game access and in-game currency to buy even more heroes and costumes at launch.
Marvel Super Hero Squad Online
Marvel Super Hero Squad Online is a browser based, family-friendly MMO by Gazillion Entertainment, featuring all your favourite Marvel superheroes and a variety of missions and minigames.
Majesty 2 – Completed!
Well, I’ve completed the campaign at least.. I have the extra missions, and various expansions to go! 😉
I was surprised, but pleased, by how tough some of the missions have been.. The Royal Feat caused me some trouble, though it did teach me to get heroes started on enemy nests as soon as possible, both for levelling and so that they start earning and spending reward money.
The next mission was the Mortal Foibles of Kings, in which I had to capture and defeat King Rat..
Majesty 2 – The Royal Feat
I picked up fantasy kingdom sim Majesty 2 a while back, and though I found the tutorial and first few missions fairly easy, I ran into a bit of a brick wall at The Royal Feat. In order to prove my worth to the people of Ardania, I must perform a Royal Feat: that is, kill Rafnir, the oldest and most cunning of dragons! As Rafnir is nearly invulnerable, thanks to various magic, I also have to seek out a witch and do her bidding so that she will remove this protection.
My Sean Connery sound-alike advisor said that Rafnir would attack if he sees my flag.. but I found him marauding through my kingdom on day 2, before any of my buildings were even completed and certainly before I’d set any flags!
On this first visit, Rafnir informed me that he didn’t come here to eat my underfed heroes. Well, as I didn’t have any buildings yet, I didn’t even have any heroes! Before he flew away again, he blasted away the progress I had made on my Ranger’s Guild..
Dungeons
During ScampLAN, I tried out DUNGEONS on a friend’s PC.
Dungeons is a strategy RPG by Kalypso Media, where you play the role of a deposed Dungeon Lord fighting his way back to power by creating fantastic dungeons and killing off heroes and explorers who come to plunder your riches.
On the first part of the tutorial, you learn how to navigate by taking your goblin minion through a few corridors, and here, I found turning was choppy and awkward. Fortunately, I was told the game itself wasn’t so bad.. though the next part of the story had me escape my original dungeon lair, and I found it very easy to lose track of where the Lord was amongst all the details, never mind the place he was meant to go!
So.. starting off at the bottom again, you have a tiny dungeon with nothing much in it. To enlarge the dungeon and your influence, you need to convert or build monster pentagrams.. first killing any non-loyal monsters. As well as gaining influence, you need a source of Soul Energy, which you gather from Heroes! Heroes enter your dungeon in search of treasure, and build up Soul Energy as they do the things they are interested in.. gather gold, fight monsters, etc. To get the Soul Energy, you simply attack the Heroes and imprison them, which squeezes the Energy out of them!
As I progressed through the first few levels, I found the difficulty increasing too..
Placing monster pentagrams to increase the size of the dungeon meant I kept coming close to the population cap whilst not quite expanding as far as I wanted in any direction.. and meant the monsters were spread around the edges of the map instead of tactically placed near my Dungeon Heart or treasure. I also started to get harassed by the Zombie King, who wanted me to ‘donate’ Soul Energy to him almost as fast as I was earning it.. this left me less room to concentrate on the missions at hand and made it more frustrating than enjoyable.
In addition to increasing his influence, the Dungeon Lord needs to earn prestige by building gimmicks.. coffins, braziers and so on. Apart from using them to entice Heroes along different routes within the Dungeon, they do give a nice bit of atmosphere. However, at times the requirement for a set amount of prestige meant littering rooms with gimmicks and spoiling the illusion altogether.
I did like the options for levelling up the character and his skills, with three skill trees: combat, improvements or building, but felt the only way to go was improvements.. this would then allow you to leave your monsters to handle invading forces rather than trying to micro-manage everything.
Majesty 2
Paradox Interactive’s strategy Majesty 2 is another game I saw a long while back, via demo, and like many other games, I decided to wait till a price drop before picking it up. The Steam Summer Camp Sale provided the price drop in the form of the Paradox Fantasy Pack, and there we have it..
In Majesty 2, you are the last heir to the throne, and the last hope of the Kingdom. King Leonard, who held the throne previously, wanted to make a name for himself and so summoned a fearsome demon, the Baron of Hell.. who promptly defeated the King and took the throne for himself.. 😉
Your first task is to learn how to play, aided by a narrator who sounds like a rather dodgy Sean Connery, and some very easy tasks.
Starting with just the castle, you create your town by picking buildings for your peasants to get to work on, starting with the marketplace, a tower or two for defense, and Hero Guilds, such as the Warrior’s Guild.
All you have to do is place the building where you want it, and the peasants do the rest..
Once you have completed a Heroes Guild you can then hire heroes, who you can then get to do your bidding via the setting of explore, attack and defend flags. Well.. if you offer a reward, that is..
During the tutorial, my explorers seemed to wander the map freely, but after that they needed enticing with some reward money on the flags. An easy task, such as exploring just into the fog of war, or defending a nearby building, seemed to only need 100 gold to attract interest from a hero, while missions further afield needed a larger reward to get any interest.
More difficult tasks require more heroes to take part, and also then need a larger reward.
I failed to get enough heroes to defend the trade caravan on my first attempt at the Engine of Commerce quest, as it started off further from town and had plenty of attackers on the way.
The game has an interesting economy.. spending more gold on rewards for tasks you want completed turns out to be a good thing. Your heroes purchase goods and equipment from your Marketplace and Blacksmith with their reward money, and are therefore more effective on the next mission.. and the money then returns to your coffers via taxes!
Taxes are levied on every building; so as your town grows, your income grows too. Caravans, which set off from Trading Posts, also bring you more gold, although they need to be protected on their journey as they attract attackers.
The tutorial continues through the first few missions, adding a few more building types and introducing more concepts.. there’s also a multiplayer mode, though as my usual gaming buddies don’t have this game, I might be leaving it alone for now.. till I think I can beat random opponents, anyway 😉
Darkspore
Darkspore is a sci-fi Action-RPG by Maxis Software, published by EA. The player takes charge of squads of genetically mutated heroes which come in five types: Plasma, Bio, Necro, Cyber and Quantum, and fights to save the galaxy from the nightmarish Darkspore.. a hive mind of mutated creatures which are a result of genetic alteration gone mad.
Tim pointed Darkspore out to me a while ago, after seeing a rather nice trailer.. I signed up for the closed beta and had some fun with the first levels, using a couple of the heroes and messing around with the character editor a little.. though not creating any phallic creatures for which the original Spore was known 😉
I’ve been waiting for this to enter open beta so I could play with friends too, and so I was pleased to see it arrive on Steam this week. Last night we got together to play the first two levels.. and for once it was me who was running off, using Blitz’s rather cool teleport ability to get right into the fight.
Of all the heroes I’ve tried so far, Blitz is my favourite.. look at those claws! His teleport ability, ‘Ride the Lightning’, makes up for his lack of ranged attack, and he cuts through enemies fairly quickly. His shield also comes in handy, zapping enemies who come too close.
During the closed beta, I unlocked Arakna, a Necro hero who collects the souls of downed enemies with one ability, firing them out around her in a rapid burst, where they then explode with another ability. She would have been my second squad member, but my heroes were reset with the start of the open beta, and this time I decided to unlock some different ones, starting with Vex.
Vex is a Quantum Hero, with time-travel abilities. The Chrono Blink reminded me of Blitz’s teleport, but seemed to use more energy, and I felt that his melee attacks were rather slow. I replaced him with SRS-42 the Missile Commander, a Cyber hero who uses ranged explosive weapons.. can’t go wrong with that, huh?
SRS-42’s abilities include a Missile Barrage, which brings down 15 missiles in quick succession on a location of your choosing.. best used on a slow moving target, or on a unit stunned or incapacitated by an ally. His other abilities are more for self-protection; one removes all status effects, while the other detonates enemy projectiles on-route to SRS-42.
The open beta is available via Steam until Monday 4th April.. I hope to get some more time in on this before it finishes so I can try out more heroes.. and I also want to try out the PvP 😉
Back from Holidays
Just spent a fantastic 10 days with friends in the Netherlands, seeing the sights, eating out, and relaxing, watching a bunch of TV shows and playing some games on the PS3, including Guitar Hero, all on the projector which took up a large portion of one wall! Our 26″ TV feels small now..
There were also some new shows for me to sink hours on: Big Bang Theory, Chuck, and How I Met Your Mother. I don’t know how I missed these, but I’m going to catch up, time permitting. We also caught up a bit with Heroes, and spent many hours watching House, curled up on the couch with a cozy American quilt and sometimes a small tortoiseshell handwarmer too 🙂
Quite enjoyed playing Worms on the PS3 too, getting a little competitive but still loads of fun. We’ll be picking that up shortly ourselves, but otherwise we’re putting spending on hold for a bit. We spent rather a lot 🙂
We also have some more outgoings, though due to a much less fun reason than holiday..
We arrived home at midnight, to find our boiler has packed in – no hot water and no central heating! One very cold house.. and to cap that, when it came to calling the gas man, we found the landline isn’t working either..
Earliest we can get anybody out to either the boiler or landline is Monday! So till then, we might well be playing more Wii games to keep warm!