Entry tags:

architect, city of heroes, heroes, remake, short circuit

Can we build it? Yes we can!

Okay, so I finally took a crack at City of Heroes' "Architect" feature. Overall, it's pretty fun, though it took a few tries to figure out a some key things:

1. If you're making a multi-chapter story and you want to test the third act, re-locate it to be the first act so you don't play through the whole thing just to see that you misspelled a bunch of stuff and managed to create three instances of the boss villain by mistake.
2. If you want to have specific mobs in specific areas of the story, you should probably have several custom groups. My "sewer guys" wound up being with my "warehouse guys" before I figured out what was wrong.
3. "Autosave" is nice, unless you've saved your mission under a new name and think that the autosave function is putting your changes under said new name. I noticed this after my fourth debugging attempt on act 3 (and before learning #1).

My first mission ("Captain Zero: The Legend Begins," with apologies to anyone suffering hair loss. I just went with a theme and it kind of became the villain group's key feature) looked pretty good until I really started checking out the top-rated missions. I really enjoyed one about disproving the "Butterfly Effect." It showed off how a good setup can make you forget that the game still consists largely of clicking stuff, toggling attacks, and not dying.

That's not to say I didn't encounter a few bugs (and these could just be my computer, I'll grant). For one, animations on these Architect missions seemed a little messed up. I saw lots of enemies running in slo-mo for some reason, and mobs that I know I selected a starting animation for (i.e. being amused, dancing to a boom box, etc.) just went to the default fist-slam or parade rest stance. Also, I had a few instances were the Architect module wouldn't display all of the custom enemy groups I'd made until I hit the "edit group" button, closed the edit window, and re-selected the drop-down menu.

I also wouldn't mind seeing what I'd call an "insta-kill test mode." That is, you'd get to run through the mission, one-hit killing all of the mobs, just to make sure everything is working okay without a long slog. It'll also seem limiting to all of the budding storytellers out there that you can only "publish" (make public) three architect stories at a time. You can generate many others, but they remain "local," available only to you and your teammates. I'm sure their servers would crash if they put all of the adventures out there, but only three? My epic re-telling of the Iliad needs at least ten to do it justice! :)

Continuing on the subject of crime-fighters, there's been some news about the next season of "Heroes" over at i09.com (spoilers ahoy, though it's mostly new cast members and some descriptions of powers). While these additions include a man more known for his martial arts work in film, I'm thinking that the last thing "Heroes" needed was more heroes. I say this for two reasons: 1. They can barely give enough screen time to the ones they have, resulting in plots that seem thrown-together and lack direction and 2. the show has a very bad habit of making any person with powers who speaks more than three lines have some connection to other cast members that would embarrass Charles Dickens. I believe I read somewhere that Claire will just happen to get a roommate who just happens to have powers, too. I'm beginning to think people with abilities are going to outnumber those without in about three episodes. If the fourth season of the show gets any sillier, I really hope that other genre TV can take its place.

But moving on to what seems an hourly event, another remake is in the works: Short Circuit is getting a new coat of paint. The writer, Dan Milano, has done work for "Robot Chicken," so there's a possibility that this could be subversively good. For one, I wouldn't mind Johnny 5 having much the same personality that the "Nextwave" comic attached to Machine Man.

I have no beer for his robot brain, but I do have the next best mind-numbing experiences:

- From the "ghost of video games past" comes a quite nostalgic (and enjoyable) side-scroller called 'Doom 2D'. All your favorite sprite graphics are back, this time with run-n-gun platforming!
- I think even the G.I. Joe movie doesn't think those "accelerator suits" are all that cool since only one of the action figures appears to be wearing one. Now those costumes look decently "Joe."
- This almost sounds like an adventure hook for a modern-day role-playing game: Apparently, our government has secret lines of fiber-optic cable in D.C. that aren't on any map, so if you accidentally dig one up, expect an instant visit from men in black SUVs.
- I've seen a few blog posts about really badly-crafted novelty ice cream treats, but I stumbled upon something that makes me think that frozen delights can be a tad TOO real for comfort.
- I don't know how he does it, but this is a pretty cool water-slide trick.
- Test your cannon-firing skills with Roly-Poly Cannon 2.
- Stephen Fry and the cast of Q.I. help educate us Yanks about the difference between a cake and a biscuit.
- It's the weekend, and I know I'm wrong for posting this, especially since it needs a big ol' language warning and religious humor warning, but these letters from Satan are a scream, especially the one to Steven Segal and the one to Brown Recluse spiders.
- Lastly, here's one "for science," and I don't recommend you try it at home without adult supervision, a smoke alarm, and insurance, but... if this isn't bogus, it's kind of cool.